117: Socialization and Pandemic Pods

One of the questions I see asked most often in parenting forums these days is some variation on:

"I’m worried about my child’s socialization now that it looks like daycares, preschools and schools have been closed for several months and will likely remain closed for several more months. Can someone please tell me if I really do need to worry about what the complete lack of socialization with other children will do to my [only] child?”

So we'll take a look at that, and then we'll go on to take a look at the other kinds of socialization that happen in school that you may not have even realized happens until we dig into the research on it.

I also let you know about a new Pandemic Pods 'in a box' course.  A lot of parents are thinking of forming what are being called Pandemic Pods - a small group of children who are working together either in some kind of parent care exchange or with a hired teacher/tutor.

As I'm sure you can imagine, there are a host of ways to set up these pods in a way that exacerbate existing inequalities that pervade the public school system.  And there are also ways to set them up that might actually help us to begin to overcome some of these issues.  Listen in to learn how!

Click here to learn more about the Pandemic Pods 'in a box' course

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Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast.

Today’s podcast episode is on the topic of socialization, because one of the questions I’m seeing most often in parenting forums these days runs along the lines of "I’m worried about my child’s socialization now that it looks like daycares, preschools and schools have been closed for several months and will likely remain closed for several more months. Can someone please tell me if I really do need to worry about what the complete lack of socialization with other children will do to my only child?”  So that’s the main topic for our conversation today.

But I also wanted to let you know about some other resources I’ve been putting together for parents who are struggling to cope right now, and this episode is related to those as well.

You might have already seen that I have a course called The Confident Homeschooler, which gives you all the information you need to decide whether homeschooling could be right for your child and your family.  It’s based on scientific research, as everything I do is, but it’s not huge and indigestible.  It’s a series of short videos that you could binge-watch in an evening or two, and it gives you everything you need to make a decision about whether homeschooling can really work for you

whether you’ll need a curriculum, and if so, how to choose one;

how to use your child’s interests to develop their intrinsic love of learning,

the social and emotional learning that will enable your child’s success when they return to school,

overcoming problems like working with children of different ages,

and ways to assess your children’s learning so you can feel confident they are keeping up with academic standards, if you decide that’s important to you.

If you want to find out more about The Confident Homeschooler you can do that at yourparentingmojo.com/confidenthomeschooler.

But with many districts announcing that they are moving to remote-only learning for at least the first part of the fall semester, many parents are no longer in a position where they’re choosing whether homeschooling is right for them, they’re doing some form of it whether they want to or not.  And parents are panicking.  They’re panicking about their children’s learning, and whether their children are somehow going to ‘fall behind’ if they can’t make attending school two days a week work, or if they already know from what happened in...