How do home educated children socialise? UK guide
Home educated children can have rich and varied social lives, but friendships outside school do not always happen automatically. Here’s what socialisation actually looks like, from local groups and mixed-age friendships to teenagers, online friends and children who simply need less social contact.
If you tell somebody you home educate, there is a good chance one particular question will appear before long: “But how do they socialise?”
It is probably the most persistent myth surrounding home education. The image seems to be of a child sitting alone at the kitchen table while every other child their age is somewhere else making friends. But home education does not mean staying at home. Our own years of home education have involved groups, workshops, museums, walks, clubs, trips, activities, friends' houses, online friendships and a lot of time spent with people of different ages.
During the Covid lockdowns, people occasionally said to me, “You must be used to this.” I wasn't. Lockdown was almost the opposite of our normal home education life. Suddenly we were stuck at home rather than going out to groups, seeing friends, visiting places and learning in the wider community. I joked at the time that it was the first time we had actually been home enough to keep up with the housework.
But I think there is a better answer to the socialisation question than simply insisting that home educated children are enormously sociable.
Some are.
Some aren't.
Just like children in school.
The important question is whether a child has meaningful opportunities for relationships, community and social development that suit them.
Socialisation isn't the same as being surrounded by children all day
When people ask about socialisation, they are usually asking two slightly different things. Will my child have friends? and: Will they learn how to get along with other people? Those are related, but they are not identical.
Socialisation is much broader than having a large peer group. It includes learning how to communicate, cooperate, negotiate, deal with disagreement, understand other people, take turns, make decisions, participate in communities and form relationships. Children can learn those things in many settings. School is one of them. Home education groups, sports teams, theatre groups, Scouts and Guides, libraries, volunteering, family relationships, neighbourhood friendships, clubs, workplaces and everyday life are others.
Being physically surrounded by thirty people of your age for six hours a day does not automatically mean having thirty meaningful relationships. Equally, being home educated does not automatically create wonderful friendships. The setting alone tells us surprisingly little about the quality of a child's social life.
What does the research say about home education and socialisation?
The reassuring answer is that research does not support the simple assumption that home educated children inevitably have poorer social development. Reviews of the research have generally found home educated children performing comparably to conventionally educated children on measures of social and emotional development, with some studies reporting positive differences. However, researchers also repeatedly point out weaknesses in the evidence, including small or self-selecting samples and heavy reliance on parents' and children's own reports.
There is also much less UK research than we might like. One particularly relevant UK study interviewed home educated young people aged 11 to 14 and their mothers. The teenagers described a variety of social experiences, including home education groups, friendships and contact with people of different ages. Participants felt their social lives supported confidence, happiness and a sense of community. The researchers themselves were careful not to claim that their experiences represented every home educated teenager. I think that is about the right level of confidence to bring to this subject.
There is no good reason to assume that children need school in order to develop socially. There is also no good reason to pretend that every home educated child automatically has a brilliant social life.
Much depends on the child, family, local community and opportunities available.
Friendships are about more than proximity
School has one enormous social advantage. Other children are already there. Your child does not need a parent to find them, arrange the activity, drive twenty miles or send a message asking whether anybody fancies meeting at the park.
That daily proximity can create genuine, important friendships. But proximity and friendship are not the same thing. Children at school are mainly grouped according to age and geography. The people they spend their days with are largely determined by catchment areas, year groups and class lists.
Outside school, relationships can form differently. A child might become friends with somebody two years older through drama. Someone younger through a home education group. A neighbour. Another child who shares an unusually specific obsession. People they meet through sport, gaming, Dungeons & Dragons, art, conservation work or volunteering.
As adults, most of us do not build our social lives entirely around thirty people born within twelve months of us. Children do not necessarily need to either.
Mixed-age socialising is very normal in home education
One of the things I noticed quite quickly in the home education community was how much less important year groups became. Groups often contain a wide spread of ages.
Siblings come along.
Parents talk to children.
Teenagers help younger children.
Children talk to adults who are not teachers.
Someone who is twelve might happily spend half the afternoon talking with a ten-year-old and the other half with a fourteen-year-old.
Age still matters, particularly as children move into adolescence and want peers at a similar developmental stage, but it does not have to define every relationship. That wider age range is not a strange home education invention. It is much closer to ordinary community and family life.
Different children need different amounts of social contact
This is something I think gets lost whenever we talk about whether a child is “socialised enough”. Enough for whom? Some children genuinely want company almost every day. They thrive on groups, busy activities and lots of friends.
Another child may have two close friends, see them regularly and be perfectly content.
A neurodivergent child may find a large group exhausting but happily spend five hours talking to one person who shares an interest.
A teenager may communicate constantly with friends online while having relatively little interest in organised home education groups.
A quiet child is not necessarily a lonely child.
And a child who can cheerfully speak to everyone in the room is not necessarily forming meaningful friendships.
I would look less at the number of social events in the diary and more at the child.
Do they have people they care about?
Do they feel lonely?
Do they have opportunities to meet people?
Can they participate in social situations that matter to them?
Are they content with the amount of contact they have?
That tells you far more than counting activities.
Home education groups can be hugely important
For many families, local home education groups are where community begins. They vary enormously. Some are informal weekly meet-ups in a hall or park. Others revolve around sports, science, art, forest school, gaming, theatre or particular age groups. Some are wonderfully welcoming. Some won't be your child's people at all. That is normal.
If you are just starting home education, I would try several, several times before deciding that “home ed groups don't work for us”. A child may hate an enormous noisy meet-up and love a six-person board game group. A teenager who has completely outgrown a mixed-age play session may suddenly come alive at D&D.
The activity matters less than finding an environment in which relationships have a chance to develop. And that takes time. Turning up once to a room full of strangers is not the same as belonging to a community.
Finding your local home education community
Facebook remains one of the main places UK home educating families organise locally. Search for your county, town or nearest city alongside terms such as home education or home ed. Local groups are often where you will hear about:
meet-ups
teen groups
sports sessions
museum visits
workshops
park days
group discounts
classes
trips
one-off activities.
But home education friends do not have to come exclusively from the home education community. Children can meet people through:
sports clubs
Scouts, Guides and cadets
music
dance
martial arts
youth theatre
libraries
community organisations
faith groups
gaming
volunteering
part-time work as they get older
neighbours and extended family.
A shared interest can sometimes do more for friendship than putting children together simply because they are home educated.
Socialising can require more work from parents
This is the bit I would not gloss over. When a child is in school, much of their social contact is built into the day. When you home educate, parents often have to create the conditions for friendships to happen.
That can mean finding groups.
Driving.
Organising lifts.
Inviting people over.
Remembering which Wednesday something happens.
Standing around drinking slightly questionable hall coffee while children disappear somewhere outside.
And sometimes travelling a ridiculous distance because your child's closest friend lives in another town.
This can be particularly difficult for families who live rurally, do not drive, have limited money or are home educating several children with completely different social needs.
So yes, home educated children can socialise. But access is not equally easy for every family. That deserves acknowledging.
What if my child doesn't make friends at home education groups?
This happens. Home education is not a magical land in which every child instantly finds their tribe. Sometimes the local group is too loud.
Too young.
Too old.
Too cliquey.
Too far away.
Or your child simply doesn't click with anybody there.
That does not necessarily mean home education itself is the problem. It may mean you need to look beyond generic home education meet-ups. Shared-interest activities can work particularly well because the children already have something to talk about. A teenager who stands silently at a general meet-up may have plenty to say at a gaming club, climbing session, theatre group or D&D table.
And sometimes friendship develops slowly. Children do not have to collect friends as evidence that their socialisation requirements have been met. One good friendship matters.
What about shy, anxious or neurodivergent children?
Home education can give families much more control over the kind of social contact a child experiences. That can be enormously helpful for children who find big groups, noise, unpredictable interactions or social pressure difficult.
They can begin with smaller groups.
Meet one friend.
Stay for an hour rather than an entire day.
Take breaks.
Choose activities built around an interest.
Leave when they are overwhelmed.
For some children, removing the daily social demands of school actually gives them more energy for relationships they genuinely value. But I would also be cautious about assuming that avoidance should always be accommodated indefinitely. If a child wants friendships but anxiety is preventing them from doing anything they would like to do, they may need support with that. The aim is not to make every child highly sociable. It is to help them have the relationships and participation they want and need.
Teenage socialisation can look completely different
This deserves particular attention because the home education world is very good at producing activities for younger children. Teenagers are trickier.
A twelve-year-old may happily attend a general home education meet-up. At fifteen, the prospect of “socialising” because Mum has located six other home educated teenagers can be received with considerably less enthusiasm. Teenagers increasingly want friendships to belong to them, rather than being arranged entirely through their parents. They may meet through courses, D&D, gaming, sports, volunteering, work, college tasters or interest-based communities. Online friendships may also become genuinely important.
Research into UK home educated adolescents has suggested that as children grow older, families may rely less on general home education networks and young people increasingly develop their own social networks and choices. That has certainly been my experience of teenage home education.
The job gradually shifts from arranging socialisation to helping a young person access places where relationships can develop.
Online friendships are still friendships
This has changed enormously since many of us were teenagers. Young people may talk every day to people they know through gaming, Discord or other online communities. Those relationships can involve humour, arguments, support, creativity, collaboration and all the other complicated things friendships involve. I would not dismiss them simply because they happen through a screen.
At the same time, online friendships require the same safeguarding awareness as any other online activity, particularly when a young person is interacting with people they have never met offline. And I would still look at the whole picture.
Is your teenager happy with their social life?
Do they have opportunities to interact with people face-to-face if they want them?
Are online relationships adding to their world rather than becoming the only place they feel able to exist?
Again, there is no magic number.
What if my home educated child is lonely?
This is where I think the old socialisation debate sometimes becomes unhelpful. If we are too busy proving that home educated children aren't isolated, we risk not listening when one actually is. Loneliness can happen in home education. It can happen in school too. A child can spend all day surrounded by other children and still feel profoundly lonely.
The answer is not to defend whichever educational system they happen to be in. It is to take the loneliness seriously. Ask what they are missing.
One close friend?
More frequent contact?
People their own age?
People who share an interest?
Somewhere they feel they belong?
Do not assume another generic group is automatically the solution. Sometimes the right answer is finding a much smaller community, helping an existing friendship happen more often, joining an interest-based activity or giving an older child more independence to maintain relationships themselves. This is one of the subjects I think deserves its own article, because “home educated children can socialise” and “my particular home educated child is lonely” are completely different questions.
Socialisation isn't something we finish teaching
None of us reaches adulthood fully socialised and receives a certificate. We keep learning.
How to set boundaries.
How to apologise.
How to recognise a bad friendship.
How to cope when somebody dislikes us.
How to speak to people who are very different from us.
How to be alone without necessarily being lonely.
How to find our people.
Children learn these things gradually too. Home education does not remove them from society. Done well, it places learning right in the middle of family and community life. That can involve toddlers, teenagers, parents, grandparents, shopkeepers, librarians, tutors, coaches, neighbours, friends and strangers. It can also involve conflict, disappointment, awkwardness and friendships that do not work out. Those experiences count too.
So, how do home educated children socialise?
In much the same way the rest of us do.
Through family.
Friends.
Shared interests.
Groups.
Communities.
Work.
Hobbies.
Online spaces.
Everyday life.
The practical difference is that school provides a ready-made pool of same-age peers, while home educating families often have to build their own networks more deliberately. That can be a strength. It can also be work.
Some children end up with a wonderfully varied social life.
Some prefer a small circle.
Some struggle to find the right people and need more help.
There is no reason to assume that a child will be socially disadvantaged simply because they are home educated. The research we have is broadly reassuring on that point, although it is not strong enough to support sweeping claims that home education automatically produces better social outcomes either. Perhaps that is the myth worth dropping.
Children do not need school in order to have a social life. But they do need relationships, community and opportunities to learn how to live alongside other people. Our job is not to prove that home education automatically provides those things. It is to make sure our children actually have them.
