I am confused about your post about ADD/Aspergers. Do you mean they think he has both because they are not the same at all. ADD or rather ADHD which can be inattetative or hyperactive or both doesn't even qualify anyone on its own for an IED. MOst people with ADHD are not distinguishable by lay people when they are treated. I don't think the same is true at all of Aspergers. FOr the original OP, I wouldn't trust the school to correctly diagnose anything. THey would be doing it by what's easiest or most monetarily beneficial for them.

Kit Kittredge was a good movie that I liked and the girls I was with liked too.

What is HOD?

SO next year will be year 15 for me. I think my problem comes from last year where everything fell apart. Last May, I enrolled both of my girls in a homeschool academy and the younger one in a homeschool co-op for most of their classes and had planned to supplement with math and a community college class for the older. Then in late Aug, the homeschool academy ceased, I had to suddenly find almost all my curriculum in a week, and on top of that, we had a huge tropical storm. We ended up moving in late Dec, we had lots of medical problems, and we are still not done with school. SInce we now live in VA, I hve to start planning since my notification is due in early AUgust. I have applied to one co-op group but I am on a waiting list (#17) and the minister says they usually fill up high school and junior high first and that is what I have. Not only that, he interviews you and I know we don;t agree with a few points of their statement of faith (we are PCA and they are Baptist, we are OE and they are YE), but I figured my girls wouldn't take science there and I wouldn't contradict their teachings while I was there. So now I will have to go much further. I wanted my older to have debate experience since she is deciding between law, politics, and psychology. My younger is into math puzzles, engineering, and science. But she is also a very social person who loves to work for others. This year has been a struggle because I had misinterpreted her desires and thought the main thing she wanted was a strict schedule. She does want that but she wants approval fropm others which is where co-op or academy teaching better fits. And then the awfuk thought in my mind is that we might be moved again in the middle of the year like last year. We were supposed to move in October but dh moved alone in Nov and we followed right before Christmas. I prefer not to do that again but the USAF can be mighty funny at times. It doesn't help that I have bronchitis for the last four days and am very tired.

Prayers for both of them, Bob and Michael.

Where are you, OP?

Very safe in my neighborhood. Moderately safe in the larger community but O just keep aware. We have crime reports here weekly and our neighborhood has one report of stranger crime in the five and a half months we have lived here and that was a GPS unit from an unlocked car. (THe other was an employee or acquaintance theft of money from a house). I also realized this week how much safer even my shopping area is when I had to travel to another area to pick up a prescription that my pharmacy was out of. As my daughters remarked, the illegals hanging out in our area don't bother people and seem to be looking for a job. The illegals in the other area were menacing and not looking for a job but for trouble. I am going to try to arrange things so I don't have to go there anymore.

I would suggest looking at urban wildlife books in the library. Many birds like the city and if you put bird feeders out, they will come. I grew up in apartments and grew up as a nature lover. In the one I lived the longest, there was a wooded lot next door where the very elderly owner let us wander. My parents also took us at least once a year to the mountains, once a year to the ocean, and our vacations were usually to a state park with a lake and woods. THey also would occasionally take me to nature centers where there would be a program. They bought me guides as a showed an interest and although we live in the woods, I am going to be buying individual bird guides for my daughters this summer so they can start their own life-lister list. CHeck out AUdubon society and similar groups because they may have some easy bird hikes to go with them on locally. You learn so much from experienced guides. The kids can get very excited when they spot owls or hawks or whatever type of birds they like.

I have given my daughter books from the library and she reads them but it hasn't helped much. My dd is older and we will be looking for a psychologist soon. I know I need to help her with these anxiety issues before college. (SHe has issues with spiders, space, infinity, etc, etc)

My kids have moved a lot. For the most part, they didn't make friends with neighbors mostly because for the last 10 years, we didn't have neighbors with children. Finally, in this neighborhood, they are meeting some children as a result of being on the community swim and dive team. Other things we have done in the past- community theater, homeschool groups and/or co-ops, youth groups at church, karate, book clubs, Boy or Girl Scouts or 4H, volunteering, etc. They often don't really make friends. I know my older daughter kind of misses having friends since she never made a friend in FL and hasn't made a friend here yet either. On the other hand, I keep them very busy and we try lots of places for friends so they can't say I didn't try. It doesn't always work out.

We were so surprised when our number 2 child kept wetting at night. THat was because neither dh or I had any history of this. But we talked to the doctor and we kept buying pull-ups. We were considering getting alarms when she finally kept dry through the night at about age 10. She was also our only one with night terrors and sleepwalking. We figured that she is just wired a bit differently. She certainly didn't want to have the problem and especially after she was 6 and her younger sister was dry. It was embarassing to her and most definitely not a behavior issue. In terms of food eliminations, we tried those but that wasn't the problem. With her, the problem was sleep related just as the night terrors and sleepwalking.

I got up early this morning and was watching a Bill O'Reilly re-broadcast. He was outraged, as I am, about a judge in OK who gave a man who admitted to raping two sisters repeatedly only a 1 year sentence. Geraldo was interviewing the mother who was distraught. But the man involved was her boyfriend and Geraldo commented that she didn't seem to learn anything since she had moved a new boyfriend in. Statistics show that the most common predator is the boyfriend or stepdad. In this case on O'Reilly, the woman was a poor, overweight, not attractive female. Unfortunately, unless the boyfriend is even poorer and less attractive, there very well may be some other reason he is there. THe problem with the mom in the first post is not that her 5 year old was riding in the parking lot but that she is a drug abuse with very poor judgement in all regards. I wouldn't have let my 5 yo ride thorugh a parking lot like that but that's because I am aware of bike/car accident statistics. Unfortunately, the predators tend to prey on the most vulnerable children which include children of single mothers, children who are unattended, children who are not doing well in school, etc, etc.

Have any of you visited Florida colleges or had your children apply to them? WE are a family with middle income and the unbelievable EFC says we will have to pay 1/3 of our gross income on our second child's college. So one way we may afford to send her is to send her to schools instate. She may be eligible for a bright futures scholarship is she gets high enough on her tests. That would give us a full state tuition scholarship which we could use at a state school or take to a private college instate.

My 15 yo is ADHD, on medication, and slow. As I stated in another post, and thanks Pamela H. I will be getting that reading program), she works very hard but takes a long time. I am on my umpteenth chemistry program with her. I think I may have finallly found the answer which is a text that teaches short oassages which lots of questions right after which have the answers immediately following. THe immediate feedback is helping her. Another recommendation may be to look what you are requiring. I was worried about her history but I realized that it was twice as indepth as the AMerican history I had. I am having her to do it in two years since it is two large books. One book per year. I also decided that getting 80% of her geometry done is enough. We are moving on. In our case, my dd has had major medical problems along with ADHD and that has put her behind. One thing I would not recommend if you can at all help it is putting him in school. For children who are slower, that is the worse option.

I don't drink (medications) and I don't tan and I love cruises. THere is so much to do. I have been on three different cruise lines in two different areas (3 in Caribbean/Bahamas, 1 in Mediterranean) and have never come across anything except PG shows. Now there was some non PG game program on the last cruise we went on but it was well announced what it was and it was not the main entertainment. We spend our money on excursions though at times, we end up renting a car on our own and doing our own excursion.

I said library since I read about a book a day and that would really add up. Furthermore, we move and have weight limits so that is a no go too. I figured the question was about books we read. While we use some books in homeschooling and often buy those, that is a very small proportion of the books coming into our home and most of the homeschooling books, I don't read, I tend to read mysteries with occasional non fiction or thriller.

Maybe we should all realize that we live in different areas with different problems and concerns. Some areas I would be very hesitant to let my 15 yo go out alone. Other areas are totally fine for five year olds to be playing. It all depends where you are, what are the risks there, what your child is like, etc. When we lived in Belgium and my children were 6 and 9, they certainly played outside. We lived on a private street with only four neighbors and no through traffic at all. THen we moved to Fl and although we lived in a nice neighborhood and they were three years older, I restricted my younger a bit more for about a year. Now we live in a very low crime neighborhood on a cul de sac. We have a very active community watch and the neighborhood has no registered sex offenders. My youngest is 12 now and doesn't want to go further than my restrictions since I live in a hilly area. Lots of people have tehir early elementary kids play in the front yars because we live in a forest and the only lawns are normally in the front. I see people directky monitoring pre-school and toddler age children but not the elementary age. However, almost always the elementary age children are out there playing with at least one other child. Now if I moved about 15 miles where people are routinely being shot, I would hardly want to go out.

This killing was so tragic. I am so grateful that the killer was stopped so soon afterwards. He apparently had plans that targeted Jewish synagogues, Baptist Churches, more military recruitment centers, and places like Times Square. They don't really know if he is a lone ranger and so all the places on his list have been notified.

We are playing on a homeschooling league this year. But in the past, in different areas, we played AYSO, the local league, and YMCA. We never had any such problems and this was even with my youngest develping arthritis near the beginning of ther season and not being able to play to her full potential one year and this year, my youngest, having not played since that time, and being the shortest player, and not as good as most of the others, still she has been treated well.

I am sure it is not diagnosed in China. But let me also say, some types of mental illness run in families and are more likely to be in some ethnic groups. The AMish, for example, have an inordinately high rate of manic-depression due to genetics and they intermarry families at a high rate. That being said, anyone who has seen a person with true major depression or true mania could ever mistake it for normal. It is so far from normal. My son had a bout of major depression last year and my sister was bipolar. This is so different from being a little sad or a little hyper. Both my son and my sister (when she was on the depressed side) slept for 18 or more hours per day. They had absolutely no will, no motivation of any kind, their whole body had slowed down to almost zero. When my sister was manic, she didn't sleep, talked a mile a minute, drove like a crazy person, spent moanye she didn't have, went off on wild schemes, etc. Casual meeings with schizophrenics tell me you can't disguse that very well either.

What I don't understand is how anyone can think that having a large family one cannot afford to raise is a good thing. Many of us would have liked to have more children but we needed to be responsible and be able to afford them. I can completely understand if someone has a large family and temporarily loses a job or has a drop in income. Then they need temporary help as anyone might if a catastrophe befalls them be it unemployment, a tornando or a fire. But it seems to me that no one should be having children they can't afford and part of that means getting life insurance on the main breadwinner so that if that person dies, the family is not in financial ruin.

We normally work through the summer. We get off schedule enough (operation, move, tons of doctor visits,) and since they are doing summer activities (swim and dive team, going to concerts and nightwalks, etc), I am not concerned. Since mine are older, I have enough free time as it is. THis year, the older one is behind in Chemistry, American History, and Literature. We are switching what we are doing with Spanish and she will also do SAT math prep. She is going on a week mission trip to Newark, NJ and she also has a four week summer camp (4 hours a day) in Fine Arts. She will continue with her subjects as she can while still competing in diving. Her younger sister has less work and has about 50 more days to go but I combine some school days. They will both have a vacation in mid August of slightly more than a week. They had an 11 day one in mid May. Neither girl likes long breaks.

MY daughter really likes it. She has learned a lot. She is a serious student but has ADHD and still it kept her attention.

Well Blessed Family asked how Annandale is turning out. I was just talking with my dh this morning about how much I love my house and neighborhood, the church is great, the libraries are good (though Florida was better), and the cultural activities are wonderful. The only real complaint I have is homeschooling. We haven't found a group nor a homeschool co-op or enrichment classes and the community college is very expensive. ( I am used to free in Fl for dual enrolled and 60 regular price in CA). WE are on a wait list at the closest homeschooling group and we are 17 in line and they usually don't have many openings for my age group (high school and junior high). We tried another group but everyone was younger and almost all by much younger. SOme of the other groups don't have their schedules up yet and while one may work for one girl, it looks a lot less promising for the other. THe girls are doing homeschooled soccer and I thought I might meet people that way but it hasn't turned out. We ended up in the group far away from our house rather than the team right near us where we could meet local homeschoolers.

IN the house we rented, we now have a freezer and dh has asked for us to get a large amount of beef or maybe pork to put in there. HOw do I find this and does it come as a quarter or half a side and I have to cut it? IN some other areas we lived in, it was common for people to buy and sell large quantities of meat but I am in the DC area and the butchers are selling to different clientele. I also don't live near ranches. How do I start the search?