In the last year I have heard some interesting questions when I share with others that we homeschool. The one that is the highest on the list is, ‘What about socialization?’ This question is most often asked when they find out I have teens in my homeschool. If you were to talk to anyone in person about my children, you’ll know that my teens don’t have any issues with socializing. They talk to people everywhere we go. Often times they choose to be amidst the adults when we are fellowshipping with other families.

‘But what about socializing with other teens?’ In this world today there aren’t too many choices on safe teen circles. We need to be careful who our teens socialize with. I had a long conversation with my husband about this and here is what I said, ‘How do we expect our teens to become responsible, mature young people if they spend so much time with irresponsible, immature teens?’ Have you ever been just around the corner of a room where teens congregated alone without adult supervision and listen to what they talk about?

It’s rare to find a group of teens that speak in a mature manner and keep on a proper topic, but add a wise adult to the room who knows how to guide conversations and you’ll find teens who open up and talk about mature topics. We do all we can to surround our teens with adults who are like minded with us and who we can trust to be a good influence on our teens.

I have come to the point where I dislike the term, ’socialize’ and have come to embrace the terms ‘fellowship’ and ‘people skills’. Learning how to handle relationships is a practice that must be taught by the parent and having trusted friends can help enhance these skills in our teens lives.

Here are some ways you can get these people skills.

1. Volunteer- Find organizations in your community that you can participate in with your teen. In our community we have an animal shelter, soup kitchen, community clean ups, local drama theater, church, etc.

2. Create a community calendar for young people and their parents to participate in. You can use a yahoo group or Meet Up to create your group and make flyers. Places like the library will allow you to leave a stack there and the chamber of commerce may be able to assist you as well.

3. Community Sports- See if your community has a sports league or activity center that your family can get involved with. Volunteer to be the leader so you can be sure the group stays on track with the guidelines you require for participation.

4. Backyard Bible Club- Create a Backyard Bible Club and invite the neighborhood children to come over. Teach them Sunday School songs, teach them a mini-lesson, have crafts, and snacks. Some call it a 5-day club as well. You can find lots of information by just doing a search in your search engine. Train your teens to be the leaders and be there to assist them as needed.

5. Spend time with them yourself- You are their primary influence. If they grow up to be just like you what kind of adult will they be? Get involved in your community as well and be their example. We volunteered to be the community coordinator for Toys for Tots. This is a three month commitment for our family from October-December 24th. We work in the community together and meet a lot of very caring people. Toys for Tots and various organizations like them are always looking for volunteers to help. Find something you can do together as family and enjoy the time you’ll have before they grow up and become parents themselves.

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Recently a new blogger and friend asked me how he could get more hits to his site. Being the blogger who loves blogging so much and wants to share that love with others, I quickly compiled a list for him to go off.

Here is that list of ways I found that are great to get more hits to your blog.

#1: Get your name and url out there. Go to people’s blogs. Leave comments even if you don’t know them. Comment on their post, then kinda introduce yourself.

#2: Get things like mybloglog. When I see a new face on mybloglog on my sidebar I click it, and then go to their blog. If they are savory!

#3: Get on blogrolls. There are a couple blogrolls on the bottom of my right sidebar, you could consider joining.

#4: Get on stat counters. Counters like Homeschool Gold and Blog Statter.

#5: Send out blog alerts. When you send them out, people will see it and click it and read.

#6: Blog often. I try to blog on Saturdays and Wednesday, but usually end up posting more. I think that a blog receives more attention when it posts often. I would try to post more than once a week. If your friends know that you blog alot they will come and visit to see if you updated.

#7: Blog about many topics. The more things you blog about, the more searches your url will come up on.

#8: Blog about what you know. You don’t want to sound high and mighty, but you want people to know what you believe or what you have learned. I try hard not to talk about things that I don’t know about. I would go and post about how you can be an astronaut, because I don’t know much about it. Talking about things you don’t know about turns people off.

#9: Exchange ads and links. Talk to your friends about exchanging links and ads. I have an ad that people can put on their sidebar that links to me. If you don’t have an ad, you can email my awesome sister and she can come up with something that is totally you!

#10: Contribute to carnivals. Carnivals are a GREAT way to get your link out. I mostly participate in The Carnival of Homeschooling and The Homesteading Carnival. You can go through a list of carnivals at Blog Carnival.

#11: Enter contests. When you enter a contest, not only do you have a chance to win something, but you also get your link out.

#12: Hold giveaways. This goes hand in hand with entering contests. You can give away something that you won in a contest, if you don’t want it.

Comments:
When I first started, I commented all my friends. I got to know them. I made sure they knew me and would come and comment me back. Now I just comment people who comment and every once in awhile I comment people who I don’t normally comment.

Now if you want some things that will show you where people are coming from and things like that, I would get a Sitemeter for sure and probably a Feedjit.
I would get a Stumbleupon. My Mama has one and she blogged last nite and put it on her stumbleupon and had almost 200 people within less than 2 hours! After I saw that, I got a stumbleupon. lol!
Here is another article you should read about Feeds and Readers. That gives great advice on how to get them and what they do.

Pretty much the biggest thing is to get your link out! And also to get to know bloggers you want to be friends with. Make a relationship with bloggers. Another thing is you don’t just become a superblogger over nite. It does take time!
One thing to remember, blogging isn’t about getting people to your blog and getting a bunch a hits. It’s about relationships and about what you want from your blog. Mrs. C did a wonderful article about Better Blogging: The Purpose-Driven Blog. If you didn’t have a purpose for your blog when you started, maybe its time to think if you have one yet.

Better Blogging To You!

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The Gift Outright

The land was ours before we were the land’s.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia,
But we were England’s, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.
~Robert Frost

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