Dear Subscriber,

We have had a lot of new subscribers to our newsletter this week, and I just want to say a big welcome to each of you! Noss Galen Baby is of course a business, so one of the purposes of our newsletter is to introduce products that you will want to purchase from our store. But that is actually NOT the main reason I am writing to you each week. The true purpose for this newsletter is to offer bits of wisdom, encouragement, and humor to help make your chosen vocation, parenthood, a tad easier. What qualifies me for this role? As with most things in life, the #1 qualifications are desire and effort, and I promise to give both of these in ample helpings.

What I would like to share with you tonight is a new study on the effects of home-schooling on children's ability to socialize. Now, home-schooling is not for everyone, and Alison and I are living proof (at least, I hope so) that you can turn out just fine after growing up in the public school system. But if your local school district is going down the tubes as rapidly as ours is here in Albuquerque, then you are likely to find yourself looking for alternatives, just as we have.

When we first started thinking about home-schooling, we thought about a lot of the negatives. I ran track in high school, for instance, and that was a big reason I ended up at Stanford University (where I met Alison, incidentally). Organized sports are a big plus for the public schools, and harder to come by for home-schoolers. Many other kinds of extra-curricular activities are also more difficult to access if one is not in "the system," though this too is changing thanks to the ever-growing number of home-schooled students (1.1 million in 2003). But the #1 negative that came to our minds was the issue of socialization. Not having been exposed to many home-schoolers, I think we both held in our minds the picture of the stereotypical nerdy, other-worldly home-school kid who only listens to classical music and thinks that you should wait until marriage for your first kiss.

But it turns out this "stereotypical home-schooler" doesn't really exist; it is a false image created largely by people who simply can't imagine what home-schooling is like, because they've never seen it in action. The truth is that home-schoolers not only outperform their public school counterparts academically (this has been documented so heavily that it cannot be reasonably disputed), but according to Susan McDowell, a Vanderbilt Ph.D. and author of "But What About Socialization? Answering the Perpetual Home Schooling Question: A Review of the Literature", home-schoolers also reach young adulthood with better socialization skills than their peers.

McDowell's book, which is a meta-study (that is, a study of previous studies), researches 24 socialization studies from a diverse range of sources. What she found is that, although there is a widely held assumption among educators that home-schoolers are at a social disadvantage, this opinion has never been substantiated by research. In fact, where any difference in social skills has been found, it has been in favor of home-schooling. For example, home-schooled children are on average less disruptive, more cooperative, and more comfortable socializing with members of the opposite gender (my guess is that this has something to do with a lack of scarring episodes of middle-school & junior high romance).

So like I said, home-schooling is not for every family. But if you are interested in considering it for your children, do not be scared away by the fear that your kids will become anti-social misfits. It just doesn't happen that way.

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Our Featured Product of the Week

Father's Day is coming up, and this past weekend we made two new shirt designs to help you celebrate! One is called "My Dad is #1", and the other is "I Love Dad". Mosey on over to www.NossGalenBaby.com/shirts.html to have a look for yourself. Both designs can be customized in any way you like, at no extra charge, and they look super-cute on infants and toddlers alike.

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God Bless, and have a wonderful week!

Sincerely,
Paul

Paul & Alison Martin
Noss Galen Baby LLC
www.NossGalenBaby.com

Copyright, Noss Galen Baby LLC 2005