how often do you (and your dc) socialize during the week?

[chrissy]

i'm just wondering how often, and of what type, you are in social situations with your homeschooled kids during the week.

can you tell me what kinds of activities you and for what length of time?

[branwyn]

right now my oldest (11) is at music camp but generally we have people come over or go out to a playdate maybe every few weeks. in a month or so that will change as i hope to get the 11 year old and the 5 year old in scouts. but we have also been known to not do anything "social" for a month or longer. hth!

eta: i have an 11 year old, a 5 year old and a soon to be 3 year old. they play with friends in the nieghbourhood, but scheduled social time or "classes" are few and far between.

[Dar]

Do you mean social situations where I'm with my child and we're both socializing? Or when just she is? Rain and I usually don't hang out with the same people... like, maybe once every week or two we'll go out with a group and do something, or have lunch with a couple of our mutual friends, but mostly she hangs out with her friends and I hang with mine, or else we just hang out together, the two of us... or I drive her and a friend places, but I'm not really socializing with them... well, kind of... but not really.

Dar

[RedWine]

I have a 4.5 year old and a 2 year old.

For the 4.5 year old (5 in December), she'll have (Sept. on):

library story time once a week
Suzuki violin (private and group lessons, along with required Music/Movement class with other kids...each once a week)
swim lessons (once a week)
soccer (once a week)

pure unstructured time with others:
once a week with new (to us) homeschoolers, twice a month with good homeschooling family friend of ours, hopefully once a week with library friend, once a week/every other week with older girl across the street.

I've been worried my 4.5 year old won't have enough consistent playtime to make specific, long-lasting friends, but other posters have alleviated my concerns somewhat.

2 year old has own music/movement class (with mama) and swim lessons. She tags along to everything else.

[muse]

I have a 5 yr old and 2 yr old. My 5 yr old sees friends 2 or 3 times a week for playdates or walks. In the fall we will cut back a bit and have a weekly co-op with a group of kids. My 2 yr old sees friends of hers about once a month or more. We are in public places often where they both meet and play with other kids.

The only scheduled things we do are a music class and capoeira, besides the fall co-op.

I'm finding the less the better. My kids entertain themselves together for hours. I'm also learning to keep my social needs separate; I see friends in the evenings or weekends.

[HRC121799]

2X a week right now my older ds has baseball games, we're out for 3 hours at least for those each time, and little ds hangs out with me and plays with kids and the other parents. Other than that right now, they have friends over 1-2 times a week. Oh and little ds does a baseball class on Fridays with 4 other little kids. It is the cutest thing. That's for an hour.

But I'll tell you, they talk my ear off all.day.long,lol. Very social little bugs they are.

[AnnR33]

every day things:
going to the store, walks, talking to neighbors

every week:
library trips, science class during school yr, play dates with friends, playing at the park, karate class-2x per week

monthly or more:
field trips, museums, Lego Club (thru homeschool group), LaLeche League mtg

I see talking with the clerk at the store as just as important as playing with peers at the park. I want my kids to learn manners, how to ask questions, problem solving, and how to respect elders and peers in appropriate ways. I feel these things can be learned better in a variety of settings and with a variety of people than with a single age peer group in a controlled class-KWIM?

[beanandpumpkin]

My kids are 6 and 4.

For the summer, our weekly activities are: a regular playdate with an almost-4-year-old little girl and her baby brother, a playdate at a friend's house when the moms do a Bible study, and the children play (kids are 6, 3, and sometimes 2, 5, 8 and 9), a homeschool park day, and then occasionally an MDC mama meetup, free movies, things like that. During the "academic" year, it's pretty much the same, except that instead of the playdate-Bible-study, the kids attend Community Bible Study, which has an excellent childrne's program for homeschooled as well as preschool-aged children. Also during the school year, we have PE instead of homeschool park day, art classes, and monthly (or more) field trips with our homeschool group. And of course that does not count normal "real-life" socialization, like going to the store, to restaurants, to the children's museum, etc, etc, etc. And our little neighbor is a 7 year old boy who is good friends with my 6 year old... they play together a few times per week, either in the backyards or at our house.

They're socialized.

[NannyL]

We socialize every day of the week. We (especially the youngest - 2 years old) get cranky if we spend all day at home. So if we don't have any classes or special trips planned, we go grocery shopping or to the bookstore, or somewhere, just to get out of the house.

For regular, scheduled socialization, we have gymboree and gymnastics classes. Sometimes we do gymboree twice a week. We go to the Farmer's market every Wednesday and visit our favorite farmers. (4 year old definitely has her favorites, and she gets to pick out most of the food.) We go out to lunch an average of twice a week. (We are regulars at the restaurants so the owners and waiters know us well.) And out to dinner with friends one night a week. And we go to the zoo or science museum or somewhere at least once a week too.

We are very socialized. (Even though we are all pretty shy.)

[phathui5]

My kids are almost 7, 4 and 2. I'm starting to wish there could be less socializing in my life. Let's see...

- Ds1's friend from next door comes over practically every day.

- Usually one day a week we end up doing a field trip with another family.

- On Tuesday and Thursday afternoons I babysit a pair of brothers (3 and 1).

- Friday mornings we go to a local AP playgroup.

- Usually during the school year, ds1 takes a spanish class for kids at our community college once a week.

- Sunday mornings we have church and we sometimes go to a local house church Sunday evenings.

[UnschoolnMa]

Well we socialize with each other daily.

Dd is sometimes off at her friend's house for a few hours or for the night. They went to a concert and then swimming last week. We all went to a big BBQ with about 30 people the other day and there was plenty of interaction with adults and kids.

Ds is starting to look for a job so he does some socializing in that. They both socialize a lot online, but I don't know if that is what you mean exactly.

[townmouse]

Mine have church twice a week (worship on Sunday, and Bible study and just hanging out on Wednesday). They have free classes at the library several times a month. They have homeschool gym on Fridays, and homeschool roller skating twice a month.

We always go to the same places in our community, and have taken the time to get to know cashiers, postal workers, waitresses, etc. We would be missed if we weren't in our usual places every week LOL

And then we have an enormous extended family. They see at least one other family once a month, and a few times a year they see 80 family members at a time!

As they get older, they'll belong to more groups, I imagine.

[Peony]

Most of the year our week looks like this:

Monday- once a month is LLL, rest of time I go to a group at the family center, DD1 plays with other siblings.

Tuesday- homeschool group in am, dance in the pm

Wednesday- homeschool storytime at the library (wonderful) followed by a park day

Thursday- most of the time DD2 has allergy sessions 40 miles away so it ends up taking most of our day.

Friday- is a free day, sometimes we don't leave the house, other times we head to the children's museum and met friends there.

Swim lessons, gymnastics, and soccer get mixed in there at certain times as well. We stay pretty busy, in fact, I've been needing to free up more time for reading, and etc... :

[nicole lisa]

Originally Posted by AnnR33

I see talking with the clerk at the store as just as important as playing with peers at the park. I want my kids to learn manners, how to ask questions, problem solving, and how to respect elders and peers in appropriate ways. I feel these things can be learned better in a variety of settings and with a variety of people than with a single age peer group in a controlled class-KWIM?

:

We don't keep a schedule at all and last year we ditched all organized activities for a break but we definitely socialize every day. We're out for a few hours everyday so we see a lot of people. DS is 7 in Sept. and has no problem making instant friends when he's out so even if it's a week he doesn't get to see his closest friends he doesn't feel he's lacking in anything.

There's a guy on the street we've gotten to know quite well over the years so we make sure we see him each day and pass some change his way. The corner store owner loves chatting with DS as do the day time librarians at our local branch. While we were so busy with blues fest the past two weeks daily DS found another kid or kids to run around with, play hackey sack etc. Sometimes he even roped 20 somethings into playing with him . Who can say no to hackey sack?

It's really cool to see how much DS has blossomed socially since we took a break from the organized stuff. Before long he was way more comfortable in approaching anyone and interacting in so many different transactions. It's been great. He's definitely a butterfly, especially in settings with tons of people. He loves to jump from new person to new person checking out what's interesting about each one.

[Karenwith4]

It depends - lol. We tend to socialize intentionally less in the summer and with the exception of soccer we have no planned/scheduled regular activities

During the school season we have classes and sports programs (where the primary focus isn't socializing but it happens anyway) , semi structured activities (field trips, volunteering, etc) where socializing is one of the main goals and playdates/get togethers where it's mostly about socializing.

I try to limit my kids to 2 sports/lessons each per school season in addition to the stuff we do as a family. We're less likely to socialize when we are busy with programs and semi structured stuff.

Our year next year is shaping up like this:

Monday: science or art co-op (all kids) , skating lessons followed by a free skate with friends (all kids), and a French co-op (all kids). This is a heavy day and I am rethinking some of it.

Tuesday and Wednesday are home days and I'll try not to schedule anything for these days in general. We may go out but it won't be an intentional "socialization event" - - maybe a hike or a museum trip or to the grocery store.

Thursday: French preschool for my youngest in the morning, older kids at home for the am, dance/gymnastics and indoor soccer (various kids at various things in the late afternoon/evening) We'll probably slot playdates in on Thursday afternoon.

Friday: our enrichment program for the whole family (alternates btn nature centre, musuem field trip, community volunteering and general fieldtrips with the same group of 25 kids) followed in most cases by a lunch or snack together as a group.

Saturday - Hockey for ds9.
Also thrown into the mix is a regular weekly visit with grandparents and a monthly co-op family gathering/potluck or outing with 10 families.

Frankly it exhausts me to read it written out like that.

With 4 kids it often feels like most of us don't need any more socializing than what happens in our family.

ETA that almost all of these activities happen with families my kids consider to be their best friends and many of the programs are either relaxed or have a time for play built into them.

[oldermamato5]

We are very much a go with the flow family. We don't like set schedules for much of anything so we go to the library alot,play at the park,swimming........