Karting and the social thing

It never ceases to amaze me that the usual thing that pops up when being questioned about home education is the lack of socialisation. I know it's the bug bear of most home edders when people in the street, relatives, friends etc always bring up something along the lines of "well yes, but they won't be able to socialise will they?" It gets to me everytime, and probably makes me laugh alittle, which I guess puts that person's back up! If only people could stop and think alittle before they speak and just think about life in general. Do they really think home edders are going to keep their children locked up in the house 24 hours a day? For one it would drive the parent(s) (and I would imagine the kids) absolutely mad and secondly, surely one really can't survive very long without stepping foot outside their homes once in a blue moon? The vast majority of us socialise at every opportunity, not just with the teacher and a bunch of others in our class, but face to face and MSN/facebook/twitter to MSN/facebook/twitter with people in the street, the postman, shop assistant, librarian, neighbours, aunts, uncles, grandparents and other family members, the kid on the swings in the playground - all socialising at different levels. We are also lucky that we are still able to get along to our old home ed group. We have a good number of friends there that are all different ages, backgrounds and cultures who all want to get along together and be supportive of each other.

This last term has been full of social activities for Katie and Ben. When it's not as socially manic, Katie gets to meet others at the stables every day, or at her riding stables when she has a lesson. She sees friends every Friday afternoon and has a large group of on-line friends that she chats to regularly. She goes shopping with others or goes to the library and is confident to speak to others when she needs to. Ben has tennis every week, as well as jujitsu. He too also sees his mates on a weekly basis and for both there is usually at least one group activity to get involved in.

Social problems - I don't think so!

This week, we had a very large group of home ed children go karting at the Peterborough Raceway. It was quite an expensive trip, even though the group was given a substantial discount, and many of us thought it would be a one off - I don't think so! It was absolutely brilliant. Everyone who took part got completely hooked on the racing, taking part and trying to better their scores and perhaps beat each others lap times. Several teams of about 5 or 6 each had two 10 minute karting sessions. This was once they'd been well briefed on the safety issues and got kitted out with racing suits and helmets. Ben was in the first team of probably the youngest bunch of children. Having come straight from the briefing they were very, very careful on the track with lap times of over a minute! Their second race cut this time in half - they just wanted to put their foot down and race. As the groups moved along through the ages it was interesting to see how the confidence and speed rose. The adult race was very fast indeed.


Can't wait to go again (I may even drive myself). I don't think I've laughed so much in ages and witnessing the determination on their young faces and the smiles as they got out of the cars itching to see their lap times was fabulous.