Your kid will be weird (and that’s okay) | TK Coleman on the homeschooling socialization question
“But what about socialization?”
It’s the question that haunts every homeschooling parent’s dreams. The subtle accusation wrapped in concerned tones from well-meaning grandparents, concerned neighbors, and even random strangers in the grocery store checkout line. When family members ask about socialization, they’re rarely wondering if your child can make friends. What they’re really asking is: “Will your child navigate life successfully?”
But what if this worry—this fear that children need to be surrounded by exactly 30 kids their own age to develop “normally”—is completely backward?
TK Coleman, co-host of The Minimalists Podcast and educational freedom advocate, has a provocative response to parents worried their homeschooled kids might turn out weird: “Yes, your children will be weird. And that’s a very good thing when the concept of normalcy has been defined by a whole set of indoctrinated values that aren’t even yours in the first place.”
In a wide-ranging conversation on the OpenEd Podcast, Coleman turned the “socialization question” on its head, challenging listeners to reconsider what kind of social development actually prepares children for success in the real world.
Table of Contents
The Age-Segregation Paradox
The standard K-12 environment—where children are grouped exclusively with others within 12 months of their age for 13 years—exists nowhere else in society. It’s an artificial social construct that research suggests may actually inhibit rather than enhance social development.
“You never want your children to be the kind of people who only feel comfortable around their own age,” Coleman explains. “When we place our children in these age-segregated environments where you’re in sixth grade and you’re always and only around sixth graders… by the time they get out of college, they have a year or two of depression because they no longer have that artificial campus where everyone is your age.”
This observation aligns with developmental psychologist Peter Gray’s research, which demonstrates that children who have more opportunity for free age-mixed play and exploration show better social understanding and more social skills than do children who spend more time in same-age settings.
This age segregation doesn’t reflect the social environments children will navigate as adults. But parents continue sacrificing educational freedom on the altar of this peculiar form of “socialization” that has existed for less than 150 years.
Coleman speaks from personal experience. Despite having what many would consider “eccentric” interests—”listening to jazz at 18, 19, when that’s supposed to be like an old man activity”—he describes his social life as “the easiest part of life.”
His secret? No preconceived constraints on friendship.
“I usually don’t put preconceived constraints on who my friends can be,” he says. “I just moved to a new place and immediately within two weeks, there’s some 80-year-old guy at my church that I’m just friends with and I look forward to seeing him.”
When Coleman hears people struggling with socializing, he realizes the difference: “Percentage-wise, the number of people who are my exact age might only be 20% of my friendship network.”
Opt-In vs. Opt-Out Social Development
Ela Richmond, who experienced both traditional and alternative education models, highlighted a fundamental difference in how children develop socially.
In traditional education, she explains, you start by automatically “opting into every single social game” and conforming to expectations. Richmond recalls, “My goal was not figuring out what I was interested in. It was not fostering any unique individuality inside of myself. It was making myself as unindividual as possible.”
Only later in life must you painfully decide which social games to drop—often after you’ve deeply invested in identities built around them. Richmond describes the challenge: “Opting out once you’ve already opted in is so hard.”
By contrast, her younger brother who had a more open education started with his authentic self intact. “He has developed his sense of self very deeply,” she notes, which allowed him to later selectively opt into useful social skills and norms from a position of strength.
This pattern is consistent with findings from Koehler and colleagues, who discovered that homeschooled children often demonstrate greater maturity and better socialization than conventionally schooled children precisely because they develop a stronger sense of self before conforming to social pressures.
Morehouse frames this contrast perfectly: “The traditional approach, you start with the assumption that you have to play all the social games. And then at some point in life, you’re forced with the decision: Which games do I actually care about playing?”
The alternative approach flips this script: “I don’t have to play any games. And then when the games start coming, I can say, do I want to play that one? Yes or no?”
The Fleetwood Mac Effect
Perhaps the most telling illustration of our backward thinking about socialization comes from what Morehouse calls the stark contrast between high school and college social dynamics.
“Someone in high school who’s like, they’re the kid who’s really into Fleetwood Mac. And it’s like, well, nobody likes Fleetwood Mac, some weird folk band from the seventies. That’s just the weird kid,” Morehouse explains. “You get to college, that is suddenly the coolest thing ever. You have a unique interest that’s not just part of mainstream pop radio.”
Coleman proposes a radical idea: “What if we took that Fleetwood Mac phenomenon and unhooked it from ‘this is how the world changes for you when you go from high school to college’? And we say, this is how the world has always been.”
Instead of forcing kids to wait until college to discover their “weirdness” is actually their strength, why not “facilitate experiences early on in life so that you can see whether it’s Fleetwood Mac, Star Wars, or physics, you are already cool”?
The Long-Term Advantage of ‘Weird’
Parents worry about their kids being weird as a proxy for a deeper fear: Will they struggle? Will they suffer? Will they feel left out?
Morehouse acknowledges that every child will struggle in life regardless of educational approach. The real question is: When and how will they struggle?
“Kids who have an alternative approach to education, a much more open education, where they’re around people of different ages… even if they’re not as comfortable in a classroom setting with 30 other kids their age,” he notes, “by the time they’re out of that very, very artificial environment of K through 12 schooling… they suddenly have an easier time than anybody because they already have a more developed sense of self apart from what is cool in the group.”
This isn’t just philosophical mustering—we see it play out in the real world and research confirms it. The “weird” homeschooled kid who doesn’t fit neatly into grade-level social norms often emerges in college and adulthood with distinct advantages: stronger sense of self, ability to communicate across age groups, and clearer understanding of their genuine interests.
Richard Medlin’s comprehensive review (2013) found that homeschooled children consistently demonstrate strong social skills, emotional development, and leadership capabilities—often exceeding their traditionally schooled peers. The National Home Education Research Institute (2024) reports that homeschooled students don’t just catch up socially—they often excel, showing higher rates of community involvement, leadership positions, and entrepreneurial ventures.
As Morehouse puts it, “Who are you trying to help them become for later in life? As a parent, your job is to get your kids to where, once they are out there in the world, they can thrive independently. And worrying about how they thrive as a dependent is less important than what you’re doing today that’s going to help them thrive independently later.”
When Order-Taking Matters
Let’s not dismiss the legitimate concerns beneath the weirdness worries. Coleman, a master of charitable interpretation, explains the question beneath the question:
“I know that as a parent, part of my job is to raise my children up to function independently of me someday,” he says, channeling worried parents. “And I want to know that my child is prepared for the world as they’re actually going to experience it.”
The world sometimes requires conformity. Sometimes you need to simply follow orders and do your job. As Coleman puts it: “There really are a whole lot of moments where you can only be valuable if you just know how to take an order or if you just know how to fit in.”
But this obedience-entitlement balance doesn’t require traditional schooling either. Morehouse argues that open education naturally creates diverse environments that teach children when to lead and when to follow.
“Let them be sometimes in a place where they’re the oldest, most knowledgeable person in the room. And other times where they’re the youngest, least knowledgeable person in the room. Let them be in places where they have all kinds of different mixes of these environments.”
A 1995 ERIC Digest review of mixed-age learning environments found they create “a family-like atmosphere where children can develop sustained relationships with older and younger peers, learn to help others and accept help from others, and view themselves as unique individuals rather than members of a designated ‘age group.'” This type of environment more closely resembles the diverse social contexts children will navigate throughout adulthood.
Sheltering vs. Exposure: The Parent’s Dilemma
The conversation eventually turned to a related challenge: What should children be exposed to, and when?
Coleman offers a refreshing perspective: “Nature has designed it to be the case that we will all experience varying degrees of suffering at every stage of life. And you actually have to go out of your way as a parent to insulate your child from those things.”
The real challenge isn’t ensuring children experience hardship—that comes naturally. It’s knowing when to shield them from unnecessary suffering and when to let natural consequences unfold.
“The hard part is how can I put a check on my natural tendency to intervene to protect them from all the suffering that I can see that they don’t know they’re walking towards?”
Morehouse proposes a memorable framework: “Principles before particulars and pacing before pushing.” Children need foundational principles to make sense of difficult topics. And they need to encounter challenging ideas at their own developmental pace, not according to arbitrary age-based curriculum schedules.
What Parents Should Really Ask
The question shouldn’t be “Will my kid be weird?” but rather “What kind of weird do I want to help my child become?”
As Coleman challenges: “Every parent ought to be asking themselves: In what ways do I want to help cultivate my child’s weirdness? In what ways do I want my child to be weird?”
He suggests parents look inward: “Look at your life right now and ask yourself, in what ways am I weird to my own benefit? In what ways am I different from everyone else that actually allows me to create value for everyone else? And how do I want to pass that on to my children?”
The greatest gift of educational freedom may be allowing children to develop their unique identity first, then learning to navigate social contexts from that foundation—rather than conforming first and discovering themselves later, if ever.
Richmond, reflecting on her own journey versus her brother’s, concludes: “If I were to go back, I would rather his experience, because I see a lot of my friends that don’t get to ask, ‘Who am I anymore?’ Like sometimes you don’t get the opportunity to do that.”
The real socialization concern isn’t whether children will be weird—it’s whether they’ll develop the authentic sense of self and diverse social skills needed to thrive in the world as it actually exists beyond the artificial environment of traditional schooling.
And if that makes them a little weird? That might be exactly the point.
Join our community of families navigating the educational freedom journey. Visit OpenEd.com to learn more about our resources and support networks.
Sources
ERIC Digest (1995). “The Benefits of Mixed-Age Grouping”. ERIC.
Medlin, R.G. (2013). “Homeschooling and the Question of Socialization Revisited”. Peabody Journal of Education.
Gray, P. (2023). “Age-Mixed Play II: Its Benefits for Social Development”. Substack.
National Home Education Research Institute (2024). “Research Facts on Homeschooling”. NHERI.
Koehler, L., et al. (2002). “Socialization Skills in Home Schooled Children Versus Conventionally Schooled Children”. Journal of Undergraduate Research.
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