Social Life of a Homeschool Family
For most of these 11 years, my husband and I have lived far from family and town. He has been an intern on a ranch, a cowboy, or a ranch unit manager. It has been hard to have friends when we live anywhere from 20-60 minutes from the nearest town. At times we have been very lonely and I’ve had to make the priority to get us out of the house even if it costs quite a bit of money. I once read a beautiful talk about our Savior. I can’t remember what it was. However, it said that even our All Powerful and All knowing and All teaching Savior had friends on the earth. If we are to be like our Savior, He has taught us friends are an important part of our lives. I also want to throw out the best way to make a good friend is by being a good friend. So what things have we done for the kids and me to feel our social buckets?
The biggest thing that has always given us a solid start is going to church. We are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Our church is throughout the world in almost every country. This has made it so wherever we travel we have a church family. We have still had struggles, but it has been a family away from our family.
True friendships are based on love of God and sharing that love with others.
Rasband, Ronald A, True Friendship, March 7, 2010, https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/new-era/2016/10/true-friendship?lang=eng
The next thing I can’t understate is the importance for the kids and I staying in touch with family. This includes friends we’ve made that we count as part of our family. Each summer we go to see cousins for part of my husband’s time off, or they come and see us.
Sports are another big thing in our home to make friends. I have coached several different sports and ages. I have made several friends and so have the kids through sports. Having said that, I have other feelings about sports that I don’t want to overly focus on here. To briefly sum it up, I think when overused and abused sports can take families away from sharing important spiritual and growing time together especially family dinners and just time for the kids to unwind.
The newest thing that we have tried as a family is going to a homeschool co op. My oldest child made two best friends in public school when he was going there. He sees them quite often, so I don’t worry about his social life. The other three are lacking a little bit with friends. We started attending a co op for them to make some more friends. When I went, I was very pleased that they loved it. Surprisingly, I also made several friends. I can’t recommend it enough. If there are several in your area, you can check out several different ones and see which one fits your family’s needs best.
The last things that I’ve been doing are facebook groups and podcasts. Both of these things give me a since of community, advice, and expertise with raising my family that I wouldn’t have available to me otherwise. On the facebook groups, it also gives me a chance to not only get advice from other moms but to give advice to. It feels wonderful for me to be able to help others with questions I’ve already asked in the past.
With all of this advice about having a social life, I also highly value saying no to things. I think it is extremely good for children and parents to just be home and slow down most of the time. I would say that is true especially Monday-Friday. Our lives are so frazzled when we have a sport for 3 months of the year, and I can’t imagine living that way all the time. One mom told me, especially about living in the country, that people who live in town just don’t understand. She told me her son was the star quarter back, and she had to tell the high school no he would not play football. She said she doesn’t regret it at all. I believe you learn the things of most importance at home as a family. Sports cannot teach your kids to love God and worship Him. Those things are learned at home living and loving life together and slowing down. So I encourage you to have the courage to say no more often.