We've seen a couple of colleges (State Us, not SLACs) that list a credit of fine arts as part of the 'students who attend usually have taken' course list. Most likely this is because many states require a credit to graduate. For one of my kids, this will be easy since kid takes instrument lessons. I was dreading it for my STEM kid, but it turned out to be pretty cool. We did it by hours (our umbrella says 130 hours/credit). Kid did a music theory class at co-op for 1/2 credit. This class was a hidden gem for this kid, who learned about all sorts of genres. For the other 1/2 credit, kid did a hodgepodge of things. Kid tried out the youth handbell choir at church and used a couple of books to learn the basics of drawing. It turns out that kid is far better at drawing than music (funny since kid 2 and I both play instruments and perform in church a couple of times a year). Kid also used a co-op ballroom class to finish out the credit hours. It turns out that kid liked ballroom enough that, despite having mostly outgrown the academic classes at co-op, kid will go back to take ballroom for fun as a senior (and will volunteer for an hour and then eat lunch with friends). This may remain a fun activity or kid is debating doing some more drawing and turning it into another 1/2 credit. Never did I imagine that kid would contemplate doing extra fine arts! So, I'd consider looking around for some things that are useful to know. Drawing is useful for some science and engineering fields. Ballroom dance can be used socially. A cooking class would be practical. The 'appreciation' classes can open your eyes to things that you never noticed before (and it mighbe be possible to take this DE and knock out a college requirements).

AP classes at many public schools have always looked to me like work for the sake of saying they did lots of work. My kid (and some others over the years) who took bio or history at co-op and then did well on APs just did the same work for the class that everybody else did. Obviously these are the kids who did the work and learned the material (usually these are the kids with good grades), but they are in co-op or online class with other people who just consider it a normal/honors class. But, my kid has also taken 1 DE class and is taking another over the summer. The classes - psych and ethics (intro level philosophy) - are both online and kid hasn't found them to be overly challenging or time consuming, either. Kid will take calc and phyics with calc and English in the fall and I imagine that the combo will be more challenging, but for a kid used to managing a rigorous schedule I don't know know that these will seem particularly more time consuming.

I have one heading into senior year and another starting 9th grade. I'm expecting to have different answers for each kid, despite comparable academic ability, because they are just different kids. For my older, we decided to do chemistry in 9th grade to help the Science Olympiad team, which was in need of kids who knew chemistry. The co-op class didn't look challenging enough, so I asked if kid wanted to try AP. We loosely followed an AP syllabus that we found to help with pacing and I did some labs with kid. The next year, kid chose to loosely follow my bio class, but self-paced at home, and also took a co-op US History class with friends. Both of those naturally align with the AP exam, so kid used the prep videos to review and took those 2. This year, kid decided to take AP Engl Lang and Calc BC. Kid self-studied some but mostly just did the work (co-op English class, self-directed calc at home using several resources). Still waiting on scores for this year, but those will determine kid's placement for DE. We've looked at the course of study at the colleges that kid is applying to, looked at what APs will do, and looked for courses that will transfer from DE. Kid will take whatever English and math is appropriate based on AP scores (second semester comp or 200 English, either calc 2 or 3), and physics with calc. Kid is currently taking an ethics class DE, which transfers, and took one DE class jr year. Kid is doing at-home classes to - a second probability, and interest-led coding and possibly another history class. Our philosophy for high school has been something like...if it's interest-led, let's explore what you are interested in. If you are just taking a class because you need it, let's see if it aligns with AP. If it does, take the test. If it doesn't, that's fine. For some classes, like chem and physics, kid has said that they aren't interesting enough to want to take twice so making them go away is great. Even with engineering sequencing, with one summer of classes kid should be able to graduate in 3 years, or double major, or co-op, or work towards a masters, based on the credits that will transfer. We didn't load up on APs and only took ones that were an easy fit with content that we planned to cover or would specifically help kid skip a college class. We focused on 'dead end' classes - kid's major required 1 semester of chem, so skipping it is great. If kid wanted to be a biochem major, I'd say to take it again at college. I'll also add that tests aren't a big deal for this kid - we joke that science olympiad kids take tests for fun. So, APs didn't add the stress that they sometimes do. For younger, I don't know if we'll do any APs at all. Even though kid is taking my bio class and I know that it would prep kid for the AP, I don't know that kid will be ready to take that kind of test this year since the class doesn't have any test prep - it's just a solid regular class that covers the content so a motivated student could do well with some review. I do imagine that this kid will do some DE. Kid doesn't like school but most jobs that kid is interested in require a a degree. Kid could choose something that just needs an associates (OT assistant) or may continue with thoughts of teaching and earn credits that will transfer. Time will tell, but at this point I'm seeing a different pathway.

With issues that petty I don't think that it will help, but maybe 'Will be provided opportunity and encouraged to attend Catholic mass as expected by the Church'. I wouldn't commit to a number, or to ensuring that they go because life is unpredictable. I don't think your custody agreement should be less flexible than the Church itself. I understand wanting to limit church participation requirement to mass, since most people that I know of all denominations think of youth group and other extras as great when it works (schedule and socially) but not actual requirements. But, by the time that he's trying to manage how you word things, I think that it indicates that he'll just keep looking for things to complain about. My parents have been married for 50+ years and my mom sometimes refers to my dad as 'your dad'. I can't remember the last time that I referred to spouse as 'my husband' to real people - I either say his name or, if in reference to something with the kids, may say 'Their dad will do...'. The only time I say 'my spouse' is online in forums where I don't want to use a name.

My concern is that she'd have to justify a decision. Kid stayed home with an injury? They could have gone on crutches...but they were up all night in the ER in pain and needed to sleep...but they could sleep in the afternoon. Miss to watch kids for neighbor who had and emergency and needed to take spouse to the ER? The kids could have gone too...but I couldn't manage 3 random kids in church...but our kids went to church...but our kids were used to it, and I didn't have car seats...but you could have planned better... It just feels like it opens everything for debate, but life decisions have to be made in the moment and no decision is perfect. It seems like it could just as easily wind them up in court because he doesn't feel like the reasons are valid.

A couple of thoughts...some colleges want to see bio, chem, and physics but don't really care what the other class is, so Earth Science would be fine for just being a 4th science. If you think that your student might be interested in a STEM field, you might choose to start on one of the 3 'main' sciences so that they can take AP or DE or a more advanced science in their senior year. But, if your student isn't trying to track for more advanced science later and is looking for 4 science classes in high school, Earth Science is a reasonable choice for one of them. If you want to save bio for a time when you can be more creative, you could also consider physical science, which is often an 8th or 9th grade class. Or you could switch the order of the other classes - maybe conceptual physics, or chemistry if your student has the math background.

I know that we're at least 5 years into the 'new family contact' people at co-op saying that they'll do a tour and have families ask 'So if we do this once/week we're good for school?' and they have to explain that an elementary schooler coming to a class where they learn about animals, a PE class, an art class, and a 'read a book and do a craft' class once/week is fun enrichment, not a week's worth of school. Or they know that we offer enrichment for younger kids but ask where they go to get their curriculum for 7th grade (not asking about resources - asking about going to pick it up, like maybe the county hands it out in a bag). There's nothing wrong with people who want 'school in a box' - it's not my preference, but it can be OK - but I can't imagine having done so little research that I thought I could just swing by the county school office and pick it up, rather than understanding that I needed to look for a resource to buy it from. Our long-time people at co-op have talked about different shifts over time. In the beginning (before my time) it was mostly people homeschooling because schools were a bad fit, or religious homeschoolers, or philosophical homeschoolers. As I was starting they got a wave of academic homeschoolers, which changed the co-op offerings a bit because they were fine with fun classes for youngers, but if they were going to have their older kid take an outsourced class they wanted it to be rigorous. At this point, I would say that most of our middle/high academic classes are at or well above the level of local schools, and several of the private school umbrellas automatically grant honors credit to them. But, now we are having a different group. Some of our new families are still wanting solid academics, but a lot are just looking for easy classes. We're having a bit of a struggle, because having worked hard to get good teachers and having gotten positive feedback from our college kids who say that they felt very well prepared, we don't want to back off. Many of us already grade differently - I know which kids are struggling 'C for graduation' kids and which are looking for honors/AP level, and I interact with their work accordingly to give them what they need. But, we don't know what to do with 'we just don't want to work' families.

I completely understand wanting to be specific to avoid future conflict. One caution that I have is that things can get wacky during the teen years, in unforseeable ways. Our church is Methodist, not Catholic, although we have Catholic friends and I know that there are differences. But, we are also people who have traditionally been our church more than 45 Sundays, probably more like 48, most years. But, both kids play sports (in different seasons). Some years we seem to have mostly afternoon games on Sunday, but occasionally we hit a stretch where our team seems to have every 9 am game. Twice over the years we have been at national science competitions, with the team traveling back on Sunday or Monday. I just saw one of the youth at church have to miss several Sundays over the course of her senior year for college visits/admitted student weekends. Spouse has missed some Sundays doing caregiving for parents, and it's unpredictable when caregiving will be needed for anybody in a family or community (I once missed due to having been up all night because a weird situation caused CPS involvement for a friend, and I agreed to take her kids for the short term until it could get worked out, and another Sunday my kids went with my parents to a different church while spouse and I drove 3 hours to be at the funeral for a long-time friend's father - as important as worship is, I think we did the right thing in both cases). However much you may intend to be at the service every week, and even if you don't participate in extracurriculars that cause you to miss, I would be very hesitant to be legally tied in to attending a certain percentage of Sundays. Maybe 'raise children in accordance with guidelines/expectations of the Catholic Church' or something like that? Would that be enough? Since the expectation is that you will attend but use your good judgement about when to miss, that would give you some space. You can't plan for everything - nobody would expect you to step over your neighbor having a heart attack to get to church, but you can't list that or any of the other hundreds of things that could happen as reasonable exceptions even though they would be understood by most people.

Some of my goals for my kids are directly academic. I wanted them to be fluent in the things that they know, not just have enough surface understanding to 'pass the class', whatever that looks like (do well on an assessment, write a paper, etc), and then forget the material. I wanted learning to be enjoyable. I don't feel obligated to make it entertaining - they aren't passive recipients - but pleasant, using interesting materials, providing a nice environment in which to work, working with their preferences as I learned them (one would happily read about anything, the other liked hands-on in K-2), planning interesting field trips, etc. I wanted to respect their time, which didn't mean looking for quick material but did mean that we didn't do busywork. Once they could do something, we moved on. It was my job to figure out when practice was needed and when practice was just filling in pages. I want them to have the opportunity to progress as far as their abilities and interests took them. I wanted them to have a solid foundation in basic academics. In my volunteer work, I had seen so many kids who couldn't do something because they lacked foundational skills, so I wanted to make sure those were strong. I also had non-academic goals that weren't necessarily about homeschooling, but because the kids were at home they were heavily influenced by our family. It was important that we be involved in a church and that we not just be 'consumers'. The kids have seen me volunteer, and at times have worked with me or volunteered on their own. We have more schedule flexibility to do this than most people. I've taught them bits of cultural knowledge that are useful in our context. For us, that includes the rules to common sports, bits about genres of music and various instruments, etc. I've also encouraged them to choose activities that they love and talked some about how to make them lifelong if they want to continue once they age out of the youth level (coaching or umping, adult leagues, scout leader, church performer, etc). We also explicitly talk about code switching and how you can be yourself while interacting with people in all sorts of different contexts. My older often talks in Shakespearean English with the academic competition friends, but you can't talk that way at the ball field. It's not about snobbery, it's about it being hard to interpret words that you aren't expecting to hear (just like I'd have to stop an process the different phrasings from my Scottish and Indian colleagues when I worked). Since communication is important, we teach this explicitly, especially to my kid who is less likely to naturally mirror others. One of our homeschooling goals was that our kids be able to interact with a variety of people, and while it isn't necessarily their natures to be huge extroverts, the nature of activities for homeschoolers, where you have occasionally overlapping but different groups for everything that you do, has helped with this.

I think that the pros and cons of various formats will be highly individualized to each student's preferences. I know several students who struggle with fully online classes - they do better with more interaction. On the other hand, my older likes online asynchronous classes. This kid isn't an extrovert, but does have several extracurriculars that occur throughout the week that involve a lot of interaction with long-time friends and teammates. While happy to meet new people, kid isn't particularly looking for new friends. Kid doesn't want the stress of dealing with potential schedule conflicts. With asynchronous, kid's scholar's bowl, sport, scout project work, science olympiad practice, etc, can all be accommodated. Taking a synchronous class would potentially cause kid to need to miss part of an activity that kid likes. It also freed up kid's schedule so that, despite having moved past the level of classes offered at co-op, kid is planning to swing by every week to do a ballroom dance class, be a teacher's helper for an hour, and then eat lunch with friends. But, this also works because kid is very good at managing a schedule...which is great since kid graduates in a year and will need to be able to do that! Both of my kids have done a mix of home-done, asynchronous, and co-op classes, and they interact with them differently.

I wouldn't choose a location based on severe weather, but, having grown up in the southeast where there are hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, and ice storms - I was shocked during our decade in Albuquerque. There really isn't severe weather. They do have drought, but there isn't anything that causes extended power outages or requires you to stock up on flashlights and batteries. During the entire 10 years that we were there, there was one 2-3 day stint where ice didn't melt so the roads weren't great and things were canceled because parking lots were icy. But, any other events were over in 1/2 of a day - a snowy morning, an afternoon thunderstorm that overwhelmed the roads temporarily. They get 300+ days of sun.

What I found interesting about Singapore is that it came back to topics while teaching new information. It did multiplication every year, for instance, but the first year was just 2s, 3s, and 5s (I think, it's been a while). The next year added 4s and 6s, etc. So, it avoided having kids memorize everything from the zeros to the 12s at once, keeping the memorization small. And it was consistent - you learn to multiply by 2, 3, and 5, then divide by 2, 3, and 5, then tell time (needing to count by 5s to do the minute hand), convert yards to feet, and maybe fractions of halves and thirds, too, When students do multiplying by 10s and 100s, they then learn metric conversions. This seems far better than what I see with the kids that I volunteer with, where they just do some multiplication that they never learn every year. With this, done well, kids master a small set of facts and a few concepts and then use them. The next year they revisit the concepts and learn new facts. I hadn't realized how systematic it was at first.

I once heard an elementary school teacher say something along the lines of 'If a kid doesn't understand something, that's Ok - just trust the spiral and they'll get it eventually'. That meaning of spiral seemed nuts to me. We teach to mastery. But, there have been times when we take a break from something and come back. There isn't any 'hoping that they get it next time' - it's a decision to stop going down an nonproductive path, and we then intentionally come back to the material and do it to mastery. But, with that, we do review. Most kids can't be adept at something that they don't do for months at a time. This meant that when my older did geometry, we did some algebra review because I didn't trust that kid would remember it all. For us, Singapore Math was a good combo -- we worked to mastery, but there was end-of-unit review and we could revisit anything that was forgotten. Other programs likely have a different balance, so you'll have to find what works for your family.

If mine wanted hers done when I did mine, I would. Nobody ever said anything. But, I live in a pretty live-and-let-live area. And, it being in the south, nail polish is right up there big hair bows - not everybody does it, but when people do it's usually considered cute.

My girl will take driving lessons at the same place that my boy did. The instructors are a mix of male and female - I think in 5 sessions he had 4 different instructors. I wouldn't think twice about sending my girl alone. I'm thinking that they will be in a car being driven by somebody who can't drive very well. The instructors spend most of their time trying to keep the kid calm as they take novice drivers on busy streets (or, alternately, trying to rein in overly confident drivers). I'd expect that they'd be afraid to do anything that might rattle their inexperienced driver - if nothing else, they don't want to cause an accident. They meet with the parent after each session, so I talked to all of them. They ranged from 20s to 60s. The only complaint I've ever heard is that some of the girls are intimidated by some of the older guys, who can be a bit gruff. But, the kids seem to learn to drive safely, so I'm OK with gruff. 🙂

With the edit, it sounds like a lack of orchestra isn't the reason that you are saying no. One of mine also wants to do everything. I set a number of activities (or a number of hours/week, or an amount of money for lessons, whatever works for your situation) and tell kid that they are welcome to add something but they have to choose what to drop. I've also been known to have kid wait a month and see if an activity is still interesting. Our usual approach is something like: We're already signed up for X. Let's wait (a week, a month, or until after X if it's short-term) and see if you want to stop doing something and add Y. Or 'We already have a plan for fall semester. If you want to make a change for spring semester, we can talk about it towards the end of fall.' I'd have no problem saying that, having already made a deposit, we will do those classes/activities in the fall and revisit the options for spring semester. When my violin player started, I rented month-to-month for the first 3-6 months, and I did the same with martial arts. After the first 6 months, I started paying for 6 months at a time, and eventually moved to yearly (there are discounts). So, semester-by-semester plans seem reasonable,

My sibling went to a college that required a certain amount of chapel attendance each semester. It was not more that weekly, and I think it was likely less. I don't remember ever hearing about religion being a focus in non-religious classes. I'd imagine it's somewhat like our co-op, where everybody is welcome and the classes cover the expected content. Religion mostly comes up when ethics or morality are part of the topic. I've got a friend who has taught A&P at a community college, a state U, and at a religiously affiliated college. I can't imagine that there's much difference in what is taught in these classes, since college bio classes are often taught with an eye towards preparing students for health fields.

It's fine to say not to an extracurricular. We, or people that we know, say no for reasons of time, schedule, commitment, or money all the time. But, I'm not clear on how availability of an orchestra fits. My kid has taken violin for 8 years and over the past few years has started playing in church 3-4 times a year. Although there is a youth orchestra, kid has never done it, preferring to do other activities. The violin teacher does have the kids play some group pieces at the recital and sometimes they play in nursing homes so there is occasional playing in small groups (maybe 10-12 students). Some church playing is a duet with the teacher, but other pieces are solos with piano. It's great when an instrument becomes a major activity - I loved my years of marching and concert band = but it's also OK to just take lessons and learn to play, in the same way that kids taking piano lessons do.

i was fine with my usual level of spice. Onions and garlic were fine, too. But, I had to avoid broccoli and cabbage with one of my babies for as long as milk was their main food. Once they started eating real food and nursed less often, I was fine with anything.

The high deductible plans are still insurance and ours still has decent coverage in the case of major illness, comparable to any other plan - it's just the everyday expenses that you have to cover because you don't meet deductible. But, if we had a catastrophic illness we might tap into our HSA. Most people in that situation use any savings that they have, and this is just one other account. Likewise, I could imagine that somebody paying $600/month for long term care insurance might not be able to continue paying that if faced with a catastrophic illness. i know that my relative, whose spouse died of cancer around age 50, had stopped paying all non-essential expenses for a couple of years (my parents and I helped to buy appliances that relative couldn't afford to replace when they broke). A long-term care policy would have likely lapsed because it wasn't essential. In that sense, we wouldn't be any worse off from tapping in to our HSA, except that if somebody developed an illness we could use that money for their treatment or making them more comfortable instead of it being committed to long term care that they ultimately don't need because of the catastrophic illness. Unless you are in a situation where assets are being evaluated to determine whether you qualify for government assistance, I'm not sure that it matters whether you have chosen to spend the $200,000 on long term care insurance or have banked it in a HSA (except that, if invested, the HSA might be worth more than what you put in to it). But, either way, I don't think that you're obligated to use it when illness occurs, but it is an option that is available. When (as in my relative's case) given a cancer diagnosis for which 10 years is a wildly optimistic prognosis, spending the money on treatment or care knowing that you weren't likely to live to need long term care as an older person could make sense. For a non--terminal issue (horrible accident, maybe?) then spending other assets while leaving that money intact for long term care might make sense, but spending HSA money while not having to pay penalties to get to other assets, which could continue to grow, might also be the right choice. I think at that point it's all highly dependent on family situation, income, other assets, taxes, etc, and not something that anybody can plan for completely.

Years ago there was a forum called Etiquettehell that I used to read...I was still working in labs and it was something to read while I waited on experiments, so it was 20 years ago. They used this expression all the time, so it's definitely used outside of homeschool circles.

This is what we do. If we had to deal with catastrophic illness it would be different, but for normal sorts of things - glasses, sports physicals, etc - we pay out of pocket. Spouse is also in tech...maybe this is more widely known in that industry for some reason?

I don't remember the details. We've checked on it twice, in 2 states about 10 years apart, different insurance agents. We have investments and savings in different types of accounts and also consider the tax implications of the different approaches. The HSA is not our only savings that could/would be used for long term care. But, looking at the amount that the policy available to us would pay, what the restrictions on its use were, considering the cost of paying premiums for many years, and considering that we intended to put the maximum in our HSA anyway, we realized that it would function as the same type of 'forced savings' that somebody mentioned in another post. But, it would give us the flexibility to use the money for anything from part-time in-home help to a nursing home without a lot of restrictions. HSA money can also be invested (https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertfarrington/2021/02/15/how-to-invest-the-money-in-your-health-savings-account-hsa/?sh=119cf2453a08). Again, I'm not advocating this approach for everybody - I'm just saying that in our particular situation this seemed to be a reasonable option. I'm sure that some of this is also influenced by seeing our older relatives and what they've needed. In-home help, even part time, has kept some relatives from needing long-term care, or has delayed it for years, but the long-term care insurance doesn't cover it. We are also seeing new options for elder care that may decrease some people's need for long term assisted living. It's hard to predict what will be needed or available in the future, or what it will cost.

We looked at what was available to us when we got our first real jobs after grad school (in our late 20s). For full coverage, it was going to be $300/month/person. It would be a huge help if somebody started needing long term care at a relatively young age, but if we were needing a more typical amount we wouldn't see a benefit relative to just saving the money, and of course as with any sort of insurance there's always the possibility that you don't need it at all. We decided to instead put as much money as possible in a health spending account and then not use the account for anything else. The HSA is acting as savings for long term care if needed but has the benefit of being available if there is another major medical need. But, all of this is part of an overall insurance strategy - we are fortunate that nobody has chronic high medical costs, so we have chosen a high deductible health care plan. That's what allows us to have the HSA. So, this plan may not work for a family for a lot of different reasons but I wanted to post in case it would work for somebody else.