Have to admit it, I just don't understand it, really that afraid of letting the kids be around other kids their age?
I don't know any homeschoolers who care one way or another if their kids are around others their own age.
But outside of public school, it doesn't happen naturally that often. Most ballet classes, the students are fairly close in age, ditto the scouts I think (never sat down and asked all the kids in the boys' troop
) -- I know various levels are determined by age, anyhow -- but those are the only two I can think of where people are sorted by age rather than ability or interest.
I'm really intrigued that there are at least two posters here who are so concerned about homeschooled kids not having access to team sports. My high school graduating class was some 600 people, and very, very few of them had
anything to do with team sports.
I also think the idea that homeschoolers keep their kids in a bubble is pretty funny. My oldest son regularly plans trips without us, and has since he was fifteen, although obviously back then he had to line up a chaperone or otherwise convince us someone had his back (he's diabetic, which makes it a bit more complicated). He rode 90 miles on his bike Monday to go to a seminar that interested him; he paid for the seminar, arranged lodging, everything. Our only request was that he give us regular updates as he rode down and back, since he doesn't have a biking buddy.
A Notre Dame student called today because she wants to haul my fourteen-year-old off to Mississippi for a weekend in September to do a presentation related to a project daughter did last spring. If we can work it without daughter missing too many Nutcracker rehearsals, she's going. And I don't think we're atypical homeschoolers in that our kids have their own interests and are allowed to follow them.
IMHO, any caring parent, homeschooler or not, is going to respect their kids' interest and do what they can to support their child in doing what the child loves. Hubby and I have no interest in ballet, but we still put a lot of time and effort over the years in supporting our daughter who loves it. Our kids all tried out team sports when they were younger; none of them had any aptitude to my inexperienced eye, but more importantly, none of them had any interest in pursuing it except my daughter who loves ballet -- there came a time where she had to choose between soccer and ballet, and ballet was her choice, not ours.
In high school, I was a computer geek, but I hung out with a lot of band geeks because that's what my brother was, and the band geeks were convinced it was the football and basketball players who lived in a bubble rather than the real world.
It's all a matter of persoective.
Maybe it's just that the real world is too big for anyone to experience all of it very deeply.
...here we go..... I actually agree with your statement,though I don't think you posted that in a polite tone
It just equals....time in an enclosed space with 50 people you may or may not want to be near.
). I believe second son could make it in computers or as an engineer too, but my money is that he'll do something I never could have imagined -- he reminds me a lot of a guy I knew in high school who I believed would do something "interesting" with his life, and the guy from high school went on to build his own business. I'm less sure what the girls will pick for a career, but I'm not terribly worried about their survival, either. 
