My older dd is taking it today with writing. SHe is a good writer but is much more used to writing on the computer. I will be praying for all those taking it today.

I don't know how to link this story but apparantly an American single woman in TN adopted a Russian boy and decided he had too many psychological problems and had her mother take the boy to DC and put him on a flight to MOscow where they had previously paid someone $200 to tranpost him to The Russian Ministry of Health or someplace like that. Russia has now halted all adoptions to the US unless the US signs an agreement with them about placements. I understand that the mother was overwhelmed and didn't know what to do but where is the adoption agency with all of this? Shouldn't she have been required to have health insurance to deal with potential mental problems. THe grandmother states the boy was beaten and malnourished and so they send him back instead of trying to get a more appropriate placement here. I find the story so sad.

Aunt Pol, I had a friend in college who went to schools like you describe. She was a white Jewish girl but lived in a poor neighborhood and went to a majority AA school. SHe learned black history, but not accurate history. SO she came to college thinking that Montana was a primarily AA state. How did she get such a misconception? Why, the only cowboys she had ever heard about were black cowboys and these history books or the teachers always portrayed them as being in Montana. They also didn't ever talk about anything else to do with Montana pass the Cowboy era. She lived on the East Coast and had never traveled very far at all so she really didn't know any better and she was math and science oriented so never bothered to check out any history books. I can just imagine the shock of some of her fellow students who may have joined the AF and got stationed in MT.

I think one or two of the colleges I have looked at for one of my kids said something like if you get ___ on the ENglish portion, you move up to higher level of English class and something similar with math, maybe. I think one college I looked at had a certain math class as a requirement unless you got a certain SAT or ACT score. I wasn't impressed by the college since the only required math class was pre-calc and you could get out of it.

My plan for my engineering dd is 1 year of western civ (SPeilvogel and videos, maybe), one year of American history, geography, economics and government- all for half semesters. THat will give her 3.5 yrs of social science and she has expressed interest in psychology so she might end up with 4. I am not doing great books with her except in literature. She is simply not interested and I do want her concentrating on the things she has talents for. This is a regular amount of social science and will fully fulfill college requirements. I think she would go nuts doing TOG rhetoric. It was too much for my much more literary and social sciency kid with her other work and that was with one who likes that kind of thing. With a kid who prefers textbooks, I wouldn't dream of doing it. I would have liked it and my oldest did a great books program but it wasn't the right thing for my other two.

No, I don't have to talk to anyone about it. People just don't seem to be wearing perfumes or other smelly things in the circles I travel in. Maybe its because they know how to wear scents. After all, you shouldn't be having it that people can smell it from a distance. It should only be that someone standing very close to you can smell it. Since I am not snuggling with church members other than my family, and that's not even in church, I don't have a problem. But really, I think that perfume wearing has just gone out of style.

Never personally had this experience in a homeschooling group, but I agree with the other posters. Don't ask her back or flatly tell her she isn't welcomed. I know that one family was not welcomed at a previous group because they had no control over their children who were exhibiting dangerous and disruptive behaviors and ignored the leaders' concerns about those behaviors.

I don't go to a church with a MCS accomaditions but we haven't had any problems at all. My dd and I bought get migraines from many perfumes and smells and people here just don't wear them. It is a large very tall sanctuary so that probably helps a lot too.

Actually videotaped projects is one thing I hate about one of my daughter's homeschool coop classes. She keeps coming home with group projects, many of which involve videotaping. We don't own a video camera so it always means driving her somewhere else. Not what I thought the class was going to be. SHe finally wised up and for the classes festival day, she only chose activities that can be done with no additional work for me. SHe will be cooking with a classmate who lives in our neighborhood and she can walk to her house.

One of my friends had two kids eleven months apart and she not only exclusively bfed, but she was also naturally very skinny and into eating natural foods and that kind of thing. Her abusive husband was not pleased and forced her to have a sterilization after that child was born. I would never recommend anyone use BF as a method of bc since it isn't reliable at all.

Yes, she was in OM this year but she and one other girl were the only ones interested in engineering. They compromised and did a part engineering/part drama project and they won the spontaneous problem in the age group with a mechanical problem. The only thing is next year I think she has to go up in a group and the older group is full already and doing great (going to int comp) by doing drama. DD is very social and somewhat influenced by others. While I am still very open to OM, I am looking for other things so I have options if that turns out to be out like I think it might. The bridge building is right up her alley. That was her spontaneous problem at OM and they got everything on the bridge. I will have to look for that locally. Robotics might be an option too if I can find an open group. She is doing that in co-op now and likes it but wishes she had a more serious partner. I have been explaining to her that probably she needs to be making friends with boys since there aren't many girls who are interested in what she is. SHe is starting to realize that since she is getting very frustrated over and over again with the girls she is friends with. I am not telling her to stop having them as friends but to expand her friendships to include some boys who are interested in the same things she is.

I Can add to Tex-Mex post about singing strange songs. In fifth grade, we did a poetry unit and that would have been okay. The fact that we used song lyrics to demonstrate poetry could have been fine too. It wasn't. The song lyrics we got were things like Spiders and Snakes (look it up on you tube or the lyrics) and 59th St Bridge Song ( Feeling Groovy). We had an older teacher and I guess she was trying to be relevant but it just was weird.

Open classrooms was a trend started in the 70's where they knocked out classroom walls and made like three classroom into one giant room but still with three classes and three teachers. I have no idea what the point was. My school was supposed to have this. I went to a summer school with it. I hated it and got my parents to agree to send me to Catholic school so I wouldn't be subjected to the insanity. Let me explain that if you have even mildly distractable kids, this is torture. I was an undiagnosed mildly ADHD kid but I knew instinctively that such a situation would be bad for me.

Actually my twaddle secret (not guilt) is the music I often listen to like right now. Even though I am a 47 conservative Christian homeschooling Mom I love to listen to Party Channel on the tv or put on dance music on the computer or on the dvd. Since I got all my kids hooked on it, its one reason they won't be going to any college that is anti-dancing or strict with music.

I mostly read mysteries. I read light authors and heavier authors. I don't read badly written mysteries. They have to have interesting plots and interesting characters. Since like Mrs. Mungo, I read a number of books a week, I do go through authors. Then I search for new ones. I do have misses but I seem to be getting more hits now than misses. Some of this is because I tend to use things like Novelist to find similar authors to what I like but not all since I recently found a somewhat steamy mystery author who is quite enjoyable by browsing the library bookshelves and the titles catching my eye. Oh and I don't read Twilight since I don't like romances and I don't like vampire books.

I started school in the late 60's and went through school in progressive districts in the 70;s. So let's start discussing bad educational trends: Here are a few of mine: open classrooms free writing IPI math= a moronic system where I spent most of the time waiting in lines to get my work checked or my next work assigned Anyone else?

My kids never wanted to delay learning. They would have wanted to delay ( or skip altogether) some of what goes on in schools in early grades like writing a paragraph using all the spelling words but I digress. We did lots of book work, some math, and little writing. I don't consider what we did delayed academics but do know that I delayed writing more than is standard in schools. As it has turned out, all are good writers and one is particularly gifted. But the fact that I didn't force this on them i think helped them a lot. None have the strong dislike of writing that I have that comes from being forced at a young age to write paragraphs about nothing or page after page of stream of conciousness. There were a lot of dumb educational ideas that came out in the 60's and permeated the 70's when I was in school.

We;ve done some longer commutes and some shorter ones. We now choose to do half hour max commutes. My dh travels and travels a lot. It isn't fun for him. He traveled this week, will travel next week, and the following week after that. He then works normally 11 hour days at the office. He doesn't want a long commute and we don't either. Oh and we don't live in the country but managed to find a house in the woods with 3/4 acre and a 20-30 minute commute to the Pentagon.

Okay I have heard about science fairs, math competitions, Latin exams, speech and debate tournaments and speech contests, but other than Odyssey of the Mind, what other engineering competitions are there?

My kids are involved in a lot but mostly not stuff I have to do or drive to. In our previous home, I had kids do a lot in the local community where walking or riding a bike was key and then they had two activities I drove to. Again over here, I keep my driving down to two activities a week. Swim and dive is five houses down, and dd drives to Honor society and choir and will be walking to a lit class next year in our neighborhood. I may increase outside activities that I drive to for the year my youngest doesn't have a DL and the middle has left for college since she needs the most social outlets and also I have to find the right types of competitions for her.

I had some very good experiences in school, some very good teachers but I think much has changed and my children aren't me. There were crazy things going on too including the math program we had in elementary school. I also found that one of the reasons I had a good education was that teachers let me read in class. Even though my education was good for institutional education, my kids have gotten better. No, not because I am the world;s best teacher but my kids get education year round, without waiting for others or being pushed ahead even though they need more time on something. They have had wonderful opportunities do to homeschooling, too. We have more time for outside activities particularly in high school. We don't do busy work so kids learn but don't have to do worksheets in every subject every day just so the teacher can tell learning is going on. I get that information from discussion.

Hormonal changes can definitely play a big part. My dd always had sleeping problems but about two years after starting her cycles, the insomnia became very bad. We went on for a while with panic attacks starting, extreme irritability, fogginess, etc, etc, and she was finally diagnosed as PMDD. NOw she is on Lexapro 20 mg for 2 weeks a month (she is on 10 mg every day for migraine prevention) and it has made a giant difference. I know your daughter is younger but I am just telling my story if in a few years, everything gets a lot worse all of a sudden. I just think some people are more sensitive to hormone levels. That dd is amazed that her mom (me) didn't have any type of PMS problems until very recently with perimenopause. She isn't so lucky.

Unfortunately, welcome to the world of very rare disorders. I have one with a condition that has been identified in 196 cases worldwide. At least we really hope that is the case with her since it would meant that she will soon be free of the disorder since it goes away with puberty and she is 13. On the other hand, it was very hard to find a specialist. I completely agree with a previous poster to find someone who knows. We went through much anxiety and wasted time with people who dismissed our concerns and had no knowledge. Good luck.

On her badly spaced out days, we tend not to do mathy things since it won't stick. She can do something like watch a science lecture with me since I will stop and reinforce all the time. She can still read and write but doesn't work as fast as normal. We actually have more off days for her physical ailments= severe menstrual cramping and also migraine. She has been on medications for those and normally can now work through them to some degree. On the other hand, I have to teach her not to be so tenacious. She was playing soccer yesterday, felt like she was going to collapse a few times, sat out for a while, went back in, and then ended up with heat exhaustion and an ER visit. She was drinking a lot of water but not enough or maybe she needed salt but we will see after a visit to her adolescent med doctor.

Okay how do you tell severe adhd with social anxiety problems and panic attack problems from Aspergers? I have one that I consider different but not that much so. She doesn't like small talk, girly things, but there is absolutely no way I would consider her anything like a female Bill Gates. She has very good taste in clothing and generally looks fabulous. Someone was describing her Aspergers son and he sounded nothing like her. But when I was writing a letter to a summer program about her need for a single room, I couldn;t help thinking that maybe there is something else here too. So if anyone here has a severe ADHD child and another with Asperger's, could you tell me what the differences are? Maybe point me to some websites?