Mom Is Teaching

I’ve talked before about kids using online programs for homeschooling, but since then I’ve thought a lot about homeschool kids online in general.

There are a lot of parents out there who blog about homeschooling their children, but there is also a growing number of homeschooling kids who are blogging themselves. Some use social sites such as MySpace or Facebook and some set up their own blogs at places such as Blogger and Wordpress. The level of maturity out there on the web makes me wondr a bit about how these kids handle the web. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying homeschooling kids are not mature. Actually it’s the rest of the world that often seems to be lacking in maturity.

I get comments every day that never see the light of day on this blog. Comments that are posed as being from adults yet have the intellectual merrit of “I know you are but what am I?“. As an adult I can handle the name calling and pointless insults thrown in their futile attempt to show me how homeschooling is a terrible choice. But I’m curious how homeschooled children deal with similar comments left to them.

I went to public school myself, except for one year in high school where I was homeschooled. I am very much aware of the all too common need to put others down in order to A) get a cheap laugh, and B) feel better about yourself. It’s something most of us learned in the middle school years, and unfortunately somethign that many people never outgrew. Comment trolling, to me, is just an online example of the kind of bullying found all to often in the schools. A shining example of the kinds of socialization homeschooled kids are supposed to be missing out on. After all, learning how to get along with people different from yourself is one of the merits of public school often waved like a flag. Unfortunately that “getting along” is in the form of beating them up after school or insulting everything about them that is not the same as you.

Unfortunately, for kids who have never experienced public schools they might not be prepared to handle the kind of brutal bullying that occurs. Which could leave them unprepared for their first experiences with online bullies. If they have a blog you can help monitor it for hurtful comments and set up a comment policy, but is that enough?

I’m throwing this out as a question to all homeschooling parents with children who regularly gte online. Have you see a problem with online bullying that your children were not prepared for? Or where they more amture so as not to be phased by it? And how do you handle those kind of situation as they happen? I’d love to hear your advice and opinions.