Socialization occurs in the context of the family unit as a whole. For example, to keep the household running smoothly, everyone needs to pitch in. Children begin to understand that they are needed by the family by doing chores. At a young age, children can help by making their beds, setting the table, folding laundry like socks and towels, and helping pick up toys. When our boys were four and five years old, I set up a chore chart for them, which they liked. They could see what needed to be done and enjoyed the feeling of accomplishment when they finished each chore.
Another way to learn social skills is to choose an activity in which the whole family can participate. Our first experience with this was camping. My husband Brian and I both grew up camping and have such happy memories that we wanted our children to experience the same. Camping requires planning, which in the early years, Brian and I did the bulk of. But sometimes things didn’t go as planned. That’s when endurance, flexibility, and problem-solving were learned. On one memorable camping trip near a lovely mountain lake, a hailstorm collapsed our tent. We had to set up the tent again, this time in the dark. Needless to say, we slept a little damp that night. The next day, the warm sunny weather dried everything out. The reward for our tenacity—we caught lots of trout in the lake. Yum!
When our youngest was seven years old and able to carry her own gear, we introduced our children to snow skiing. Again, Brian and I both have fond childhood memories of skiing. We started with a homeschool ski program and participated in that for ten years. This program was held on Fridays and served as our winter physical education. Sometimes Brian was able to join us, and we often took other families’ kids up the mountain with us. We also worked in some extra ski days just for our family when time allowed. The children often wanted to show us what they had learned in their morning lessons. After a few years, they wanted to try snowboarding, which Brian and I knew nothing about. They had all gained enough confidence with skiing to branch out beyond their parents and learn something new. Wonderful!
The longest lasting activity that our family engaged in was reading aloud together. We started reading board books to the children when they were babies. From there we continued with picture books, chapter books with some illustrations, and then finally chapter books with little or no pictures at all. Visiting our local library was a weekly outing, and I was always on the lookout for good books at yard sales, library books sales, and the used curriculum swap at our state’s annual homeschool convention. Although our schedules were busy with co-curricular activities, we maintained reading aloud as much as possible in the kids’ high school years when we read books like Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.
We began each read-aloud session with a family devotion, reading a Bible-based lesson from a wide variety of devotionals and then spent time in prayer together. Then we read whatever interested us. Sometimes these books were connected to what we were studying, but not always. When we advanced to chapter books, the children were allowed to do another quiet activity while a parent read. The boys especially liked to play with Legos while listening. One year, my daughter and I worked on cross-stitch projects while Brian read. Sometimes the kids would beg for another chapter, which we could oblige because of the flexibility of homeschooling. As a family, we shared adventures and made memories by reading good stories together. The children learned about godly character from the books’ heroes and what ungodly character looks like from the villains. This could be called socialization through the written word. Ultimately, they experienced by example that reading is an important pathway to learning.
I leave you with another view of Monument Valley in northern Arizona.