Do teens mature faster when their homeschooled?

Question

It's another question I have. This may not be the best way to go about asking them, but there's a theory going around that home-schooling causing young people to mature faster then the public school? Do you think this is true, or is the public school environment stiffling to an adolescent's maturity? Do dating and peer pressure play too much of a role?

Answer 1

Things that you don't learn at the same pace when you are home schooled:

- how to deal with people you have to work with that don't like you much

- how to deal things that are unfair

- how to negotiate when everything is due at once.

- how to be a dork and grow into not so much a dork.

- how to be silly with friends and laugh at yourself.

- how to work on projects with people you don't know or know but don't like.

- how to interact with people smarter/or not as smart as you and everyone feel like it's positive.

- how to deal with mean,rude,people.

etc etc etc.  I always suggest that if a parent is going to homeschool that they think about how to enrich experiences so that their student learns this.

Answer 2

i think you mature faster when you are around mature people so it depends

Answer 3

i believe that maturity comes from experience...physical maturity from physical expereince...emotional maturity from emotional experience and the same for mental maturity...as a 14 year old myself i think a teen would mature faster at a real school because of their expereinces in a new enviornment and with new people

Answer 4

in my experience, home-schooled kids do not mature as quickly as non-home schooled kids.  I went to public school my whole life, but I had a number of friends through work, and later in college that had been home schooled, and they are far less mature socially, and more naive as well...i think if you kids can handle stress or social struggles they will be better off attending school for the social interactions that are far more limited in home schooling.

Answer 5

If they are not surrounded by immature children/teens all day and instead my a parent; of course they are going to mature faster.  But then they heavily lack in social skills from what I've seen.  I think dating and peer pressure will have a huge role b/c if you're dating and hanging out with people your age all the time you are going to act like them; mimic them; "try to be cool".  If you are with your parent(s) you are going to act like them (hence; be more mature).

Answer 6

Yes, plus there smarter

Answer 7

It really depends. I don't think homeschooled children are necessarily at any disadvantages when it comes to social development either. There are so many different factors involved (environment, temperment, support systems, inner resources, etc). Two children can attend the same school and have the same teacher, and have two completely different experiences.  Attending public or private school can be a great hindrance for some. Some children may flourish in that environment, if they are able to avoid or overcome peer pressure and, for some, daily torment at school.

Answer 8

This answer would depend a lot on your definition of maturity.  If you mean "do homeschooled kids act more like adults than public schooled kids", I'd have to say yes.  As a group, they tend to understand responsibility better and be more serious about making and meeting goals, for example.  Homeschooled kids tend to skip a lot of the peer pressure, silliness, group-think, that public schooled kids live with.  Therefore, they can seem more naive about certain social situations.

Answer 9

Depends on the person, of course, but as a veteran homeschooler (10+ years) I would say that I was much, much more mature than most of the public schooled kids.  Granted, I lacked in some areas - "social" aspects mostly, not catching on when there was an inside joke going around, etc. - but I know I was better prepared for post-high-school-life than the other kids.

Answer 10

The bigger picture would be why.  Most home schooled children are also put into a lot of activities like gymnastics, martial arts etc so the still get socialization experience.  Perhaps some of these things teach them discipline etc that your average public school person doesn't get on a large scale.

Answer 11

No

Answer 12

I don't think so.   My husband and I work in the public school and we homeschool.   We see kids who are more mature in both places and also see kids who seem immature in both places.

Our own son is mature in some ways and immature in others.

Answer 13

Yeah sometime its seems like this.

Answer 14

It depends on the individual person and their home and/or school enconvironment, but I think as a general group, yes, homeschoolers do tend to mature faster than public schoolers. Of course that also would depend on how you define "mature". When I think of maturity, I think of the following.

-The ability to hold intelligent/appropriate conversations with those your age as well as those older and/or younger than you. Homeschoolers in general tend to posess this ability as they are not age-segregated for most of their life like public schoolers are and do interact on a daily basis with people of all ages, intelligence levels, etc. They learn to interact with adults as well as other children.

-The ability to take responsibility for themselves. Homeschoolers, in general, tend to learn this one a lot earlier than public schoolers do because frankly they're given more opportunity to learn it. In public school (and I've been there...didn't start homeschooling until highschool) everything is spoon fed to you. There's always someone holding your hand and telling you where to be, when to be there, what to bring with you, what to do with it, and how long to do it. Your schedule is made for you and there's always someone making sure you stick to it. You've got teachers checking and double checking that you're taking notes and studying the way they think you should whereas in college your professor will just tell you what needs to be done when and expect you to do it. You've got people reminding you constantly to check your grades, turn in forms, meet deadlines, and if you aren't on top of it they call your parents, bypassing you entirely. And then so much is done for you behind closed doors in the administration office. I know public schoolers who didn't even know how to calculate their GPA or what graduation requirements in their state were, and they were in 12th grade! It had all just been taken care of for them. I also knew a homeschooler who only started homeschooling in her 11th grade year and went right back to public school because, as she put it, "it was too much work. Why do all that when regular school will do it for you?"

When you're homeschooled, yes, you still have a lot of guidance from your parents, teachers and professionals in the community, etc... But things USUALLY aren't just spoon fed to you. You learn a lot about setting and achieving your own goals, figuring out what's expected or required of you anad how you can achieve it, meeting deadlines without the constant reminder from teacher or phone call home, managing your time so that you can get things done and still have time for fun things you just want to do, prioritizing and deciding what's most important to you and what you can do without, and just generally surviving the REAL world, not the heavily regulated, artificial school world.

- The ability to understand and deal with both your own and others' emotions. Studies have shown that homeschoolers tend to be emotionally advanced and therefore better able to adjust to and cope with the stressed of adult life. People say that homeschoolers are "sheltered" because they don't deal with the "drama" that takes place in public schools, but anyone who thinks gossip about who kissed whose girlfriend under the bleachers at the last football game, who called whom a s**t behind their back, and who you shouldn't hang out with because they buy their clothes at walmart is drama... well, that person hasn't spent enough time outside of school and in the real world to know what real drama is. Of course homeschoolers understand and have likely dealt with situations like these, but most homeschoolers also realize how insignificent they are compared to real world issues. I doubt a homeschooler would lose much sleep over typical highschool drama, but that doesn't mean they can't empathize with someone who's having a hard time.

- The ability to cooperate with others and work as a team, whether you like your team mates or not. Well, homeschoolers may not necessarily have the upper hand here, but they are at the very least even with public schoolers. Between team sports, co-op classes (groups of homeschoolers who study a particular subject or several together as a class), drama clubs, academic teams, robotics teams, camp activities, leadership programs, OM, volunteer groups, and so on... homeschoolers get just as much opportunity to practice working as a team with a wide variety of individuals as public schoolers get.. Possibly more since for a number of things, homeschoolers might ave to seek out and form their own teams. I myself recently realized that our local homeschool group didn't have a yearbook club, so... I started one. I put up flyers and found a few other homeschooled highschoolers that I didn't know as well as some adults in the community (a librarian who could get us space in the library's meeting room, a techie who could get us the software we need, a parent who could organize a fund raiser with us) and we started getting things organized and signing kids up... kids of ALL ages, some we were friends with and some we didn't like, and we've done some great things together. And homeschoolers form their own Odyssey of the Mind teams or teams to enter the Science and Invention fair together, and even more forming fencing teams or People to People International chapters. There's no lack of teamwork in homeschooling.

- The ability to plan ahead. Homeschoolers are usually very good at planning for upcomming events, and they usually have a pretty good idea of where they want to go in life and how to get there.

- The ability to see yourself as an individual. That's something I KNOW homeschoolers are typically better at than public schoolers. When you're homeschooled, you usually develop a really strong sense of self. You know how to be yourself and think for yourself, and you do it with confidence. Yes, you have friends. Yes, you have an active social life. You've got clubs and activities, field trips and social events in the community and with the homeschool group you'r in. You've got prom and sports and homecomming and friends you just hang out with casually, but you ARE NOT (usually) peer dependent. You don't have that overwhelming need to fit into some clique or group that public schoolers seem to have programmed into them. You don't worry all the time about what other people are thinking or saying about you, or what everone else thinks is cool and if it differs from what you think is cool, so you don't give in nearly as easily (if at all) to peer pressure. Most homeschoolers are individual, free thinkers who know how to socialize with their peers without being dependent on them.

If this is the criteria you use to determine if someone is mature then yes, I'd say that homeschooling does a lot to help kids mature faster.

Oh, and on a side note... just wanted to respond to an answer that wasa posted here before mine.

- how to deal with people you have to work with that don't like you much

Homeschoolers do this all the time on sports teams, in co-op classes, in duel-enrollment college classes (yeah, lots of homeschoolers start taking college classes fairly early), in clubs and activities, with siblings they don't get along with... pretty much everywhere.

- how to deal things that are unfair

Life is unfair. Homeschoolers have to experience life too. Everything from fighting with siblings to getting grounded for things they think are unfair to the bigger issues like their educational freedoms being threatened or being discriminated against in the community for whatever reason. I know I've experienced a lot of unfair situations. h**l, I'm blind, and that's unfair, but I deal with it.

- how to negotiate when everything is due at once.

Um, homeschoolers have due dates too, and since we usually have to not only manage assignments (both at home and in co-ops and duel enrollment classes) but also our own schedules, homeschoolers tend to be better with time management.

- how to be a dork and grow into not so much a dork.



I'll ignore the fact that this sentence barely makes sense, but homeschoolers grow up and mature too. That's what this question is about, remember?

- how to be silly with friends and laugh at yourself.

Okay, homeschooled kids are kids too. We have senses of humor. Homeschoolers play games and tell jokes and act silly and laugh at themselves and with their friends. We're human!

- how to work on projects with people you don't know or know but don't like.

Already responded to this one in my answer. See above.

- how to interact with people smarter/or not as smart as you and everyone feel like it's positive.

This goes along with the no-age-segregation thing I talked about earlier.

- how to deal with mean,rude,people.

Do you think that mean/rude people only exist in school? You should get out more. They're in the real world too, and hojmeschoolers spend A LOT of time out in the real world.