I'm not sure what non-Americans are envisioning when they talk about plenty of waiting room space. I've been in hospitals with family in 3 areas (cities in NC and NM, and a suburb in TN) and all of them have waiting rooms. Overflow into halls can happen during flu season or something like that but isn't typical. Waiting rooms are like doctors office waiting rooms, so enough space with chairs and a TV playing something, but not luxurious. When a relative had surgery to fix a broken knee, there were probably 4 each prep-op and post-op bays and the waiting room had seats for maybe 30 people. There was a cafeteria on-site that served the same type of food that was served upstairs plus sandwiches and such. So, plenty of seats in the waiting room for a couple of people per patient if every bay was in use, which isn't always the case, and then if one party had a bunch of people they could have congregated in the lobby or cafeteria, where there was seating, if needed. If they had wanted to convert the waiting room to patient care, there would have been space for maybe 2-3 beds, so it's not as if it would have converted to much more treatment space. Here there is somewhat of an expectation that, if possible, patients have at least somebody with them much of the time. When I had my first C-section, my husband changed the sheets on my bed when they became blood-soaked. If I missed a pain med dose while running back and forth to the NICU (which was on another floor) to nurse the baby or deliver pumped milk, my husband or mom would have to go find a nurse to give it to me.

I think that people have really different preferences and comfort levels with anything medical. I actually am fine with having visitors and with looking like a mess - I get bored easily and usually like having people to talk to. My first was born by C-section after a long labor, was in the NICU, we both had complications, etc. I had a friend from across the country who happened to be driving through town and he came to visit me in the hospital. It let my mom and husband both go rest. But, this friend had trained as a doctor before changing jobs. He was fine with wheeling me to the NICU while I had a catheter, and washed the breast pump stuff since I could barely get out of bed. He is gay and got a kick out of the nurses thinking that he was the dad helping out. 🙂 This is not the sort of thing that just anybody can and will be a part of, since lots of friends would not be comfortable with this kind of interaction. And, in that situation, I would probably have been more comfortable with this particular friend than other people that I was closer to just because I know that this friend wouldn't be freaked out by all of the crazy things that were going on. But, husband was absolutely frazzled, I was a mess, and baby was unavailable because it was in the NICU. Second kid was a more normal C-section and anybody could have come, but if I had been a mom who wasn't up to visitors there would have been no way to visit my husband and baby separately because we were all in the same room all the time. He couldn't easily step out because I was in the room unable to get out of bed on my own to get to the baby. In terms of whether a family is 'everybody gather at the hospital' or 'everybody stay out of the way', I have family groups in both camps so I try to respect their preferences. As somebody who can go either way, I want the people most involved to have what they need, whether it be peace or a vocal show of support. When I am the person most involved, I still want people to do what makes them comfortable since I am usually OK either way.

From what I've read, even though football is the sport that scares people concussions are more common in soccer. From my student pool, over the years I've had 3 soccer concussions, 2 cheerleading concussions, and 1 horseback riding concussion. I did once talk to a mom whose kid had gotten concussions doing flag and they were thinking that switching to tackle with helmets would be safer. I've also known of 2 concussions on the homeschool volleyball team over the past 2 years, and mild ones seem to occur a couple of times each year at my kid's martial arts school.

My mom always called her parents Mother and Daddy, and that's still what she calls them when talking about them. They reflect the relative formality of their personalities, not my mom's maturity level. My dad and his siblings always referred to their parents and Mama and Daddy. I don't know that I ever said Mommy - it was Mama and then Mom, although it was Daddy and then Dad. I agree with the poster above who said that these become their proper name. Various relatives are forever stuck with the name that some baby could say. My grandmother wanted to be called Grandmother, but all that the first grandkid could get out was Gran-Gran, so that's what she was for 40 years. It did not in any way mean that a bunch of adults in their 30s were stuck in childhood. We have many more since apparently my family is amused by what kids say and once you get tagged by a kid, it's for life. 🙂 Even as these adults reached the point that they were being taken care of, they were still called by these 'immature' names. You'd hear somebody say 'I've got to run help GranGran with her car' or 'We've got to go help Mama because Daddy is up wandering around at night'.

A paperwhite can't be used to record other people, so it's electronic but avoids the liability issues. I love mine because I can make the font huge for my old eyes. But, it doesn't help with not being able to click around unless the newer ones are faster at that than my old one.

I'm not sure it's 'kids are bad' as much as 'the adults are responsible for their behavior. If an adult gropes another adult, or shows them porn, or records somebody's tearful prayer request and posts it to social media, the person who will be blamed (and prosecuted if appropriate for the act) is the adult who did the bad thing. If a kid does something like that, the people who are blamed and liable are the adults who were supervising. Most of our kids are great and the worst that they would ever do is gossip (which isn't good, but isn't unusual). But, we have kids that we don't know. We have a few kids who have been in police-involved situations. We have 2-deep unrelated people covering every event to protect the adults from accusations by the kids, since we know that it in the range of possibilities for at least one of our kids. Communication is through group text/apps like GroupMe and not private. I do the same with my teaching and communicate through Canvas. I only have the numbers to text a handful of teens that aren't my own, and they are kids from families that we have done co-op and science competitions with for years. I would be willing to get involved in a situation if I thought a kid was at risk in some way, but as 'best practices' we are in the habit of keeping communication with kids in a public-ish forum like slack (for science competition team events that we coach) that parents can see if they look at the kid's account and that we tell parents we will be using.

I think that disability ministry can be challenging because it is so labor-intensive, and in many cases requires almost a 1:1 volunteer/participant ratio. At one church, we had a former preschool teacher who was a buddy for kids with special needs. She would check with parents and come to be a buddy at any event that the kid was at, and as kids moved on from needing her she would start with new ones. She had a real passion for what she did and was amazing with the kids, but not everybody knows how to do that, just like not everybody knows how to get a group of 4 year olds to sit in a circle and listen to a story, or play the violin during the service. We can't just conjure up more of these people any more than we can summon more musicians if there's a need. We have also seen times when enough adults are being pulled from their classes to help in other places that it causes there to not be enough to have a good crowd for adult classes, which are also important. Right now, our church uses a few youth to help with the elementary classes. On one hand, I love that the kids are volunteering. On the other, they aren't always getting the learning opportunities that they need to grow. That's also a concern if a youth is a buddy for another youth if they do it all the time instead of at a subset of activities. As somebody who spent my first 2 years of elementary school sitting next to troubled or special needs kids to keep them on track...kids put in that situation learn adult skills at a young age but don't get to experience the activity as other kids do. But, there are things that improve with age. The youth that I described who mostly draws during lessons was a real challenge last year as a 5th grader in children's programming. Elementary kids struggled with the idea of other kids 'getting to draw' while they were supposed to be doing something else. Youth Sunday school is sitting in a discussion, not doing a series of activities, and the kids are mature enough to understand what is going on so one kid drawing is a non-issue. Likewise, a non-knife fidget that was unobtrusive would probably be fine and not distracting for teens. There have also been times that older teens have moved to adult classes, especially if there is a young adult class, because it's a better fit. There are also likely to always be activities that are a challenge for somebody. When I worked with middle school, we started every lesson with a 'Bible verse unscramble' where the words were written on cards and the kids tried to unscramble into a verse, and then we'd look it up and see who got the closest. I had planned it as a one-off, but it turned out to be popular so we did it every week, boys vs girls (their choice), and the winning team got tootsie rolls. Any kid could just move to the side of the room with their team and watch so not sitting on the floor unscrambling wouldn't be a problem, or even noticed, and sometimes a kid chose to do that and it was fine. It sounds like this sort of activity would be hard for your kid, so it might be helpful to coach your kid if you can see what the group does each week and also tell the leader so that they could direct your student into something that wasn't a problem - just a 'Sit here and cheer them on' role, or being the one to fetch the Bibles that were handed to each team after they thought they had it unscrambled, for instance, would let them participate while not forcing them into the activity. It's the kind of thing that easily becomes a routine - kids divide to do the puzzle, your kid goes to fetch the Bibles off the shelf, and everybody is participating - if the person in charge knows that it would be a good solution. Our church has a very large recover ministry so does a lot of outreach through that. It's brought a lot of people into our church, and also an influx of kids who have a lot of needs. At one set of activities, we have a child who runs and hides so they have to have 1:1 supervision. The parent is supposed to help, but doesn't, so they periodically have to lock down the church and post people at doors until the kid is found. I'm not involved in that particular ministry/activity, but apparently it's only another year or 2 before they move to youth so we'll see how that goes.

I think cell phones as an accommodation are different, and if that's what he needs then it's worth trying to figure it out. If something else will work, then I'd go that route but if not then the phones would be OK at many churches. There are so many potential issues with groups and phones. Kids recording and posting what others think they are saying in confidence. We had a social event and kids were making tik toks dancing. That's fine if their parents are OK with it (these kids post them all the time). But other parents or teens may not want to be in the video. In this situation the kids were good about it only being their little group of 3, but if an adult hadn't been there they might not have been as careful. At one point they were making pics in the mirror in the bathroom and we had to tell them no phones in the bathroom because no phones where we can't see what is being recorded. Most of our phone management comes from dealing with distractions, but when I think about things I've had to work with after I started volunteering with the youth a year ago, there are a lot of different scenarios to think about. A lot of parents have very strong reactions around their kids not having their phone on their person at all times, but I'm not sure that they've been in the position of having the responsibility to make sure that nobody is recording unsuspecting other kids in the bathroom. I love teens, but they do dumb and impulsive stuff that they can't see the consequences for. Again, in our church an accommodation would definitely be made for an autistic or dyslexic kid who needs a phone to do things, but this isn't just an 'adults being mean' situation when the starting assumption is 'no phones'.

Teaching language, symbolism, and metaphor in the Bible would actually be a great class for youth in general. A lot of our youth didn't grow up in the church and don't recognize the allusions. They don't do a lot of complex literature in school so thinking in metaphor isn't common. You might suggest that as a study that they could do for everybody at some point. I led Sunday night middle school youth last spring for a semester and found that I had to start each lesson with 'We'll look at a verse from Matthew, which is in the New Testament. That means it's during Jesus' life or afterwards'. One other thing that was interesting is that different groups have really different personalities. My kid has visited other groups with friends and the vibe is really different. At our church, in the context of the kids coming from nearby schools, we've done a lot about how to treat each other. One girl actually said 'We are mean to each other. I don't know why'. So, in that sense, they aren't picking on anybody, but they are often not nice at that school. Our church is working to change that, but it's going to be a challenge in the meantime.

I'll say that this is likely worse, but isn't just a problem for non-neurotypical kids. In our particular church, there are times when kids who don't go to the closest middle school struggle to fit in. My kid has said that 'Girl C' is really awesome and tired of the girl nonsense but worries that if she doesn't hang with her middle school friends when at church then they'll exclude her at school. Not being confident is common in youth, and it takes a certain personality to not fear being judged and excluded. My older, who is quirky, tends to get along with an unusual assortment in part because kid could not care less what other people think. My younger is very welcoming to the shy but wouldn't know what to do with anybody who has unusual behavior - kid would be kind, but would find it disconcerting while older, who is usually seen as 'less social', just takes people as they come and avoids anybody who is obnoxious. Just a reminder that neurotypical kids have strengths and weakness in their skill set and often find that activities push them out of their comfort zone, too.

Most churches that we have been in or know about have struggled with how to include everybody, especially in youth. Adult classes tend to sort themselves out not just by age, but by temperament or lifestyle or something, while all youth are lumped together. We have discussed having 'intro' and 'advanced' Bible classes because we have some kids who want serious Bible study and others, especially the neighborhood kids who just wander in, want fun games and a quick lesson. We've been through some changes and don't have the numbers to accommodate that right now, but that's the goal. Lots of youth stuff is really chaotic and loud, so that's also something that you might want to watch for and ask about. In our situation, Sunday school is a quiet lesson and discussion. There is a table and also a circle of chairs. One of the autistic girls sits at the table and is calm if she colors. Sometimes she has an ipad and draws on it, but she is happy with paper so we give her that and colored pencils when we can just to avoid devices if we don't need them. We really are happy to make any accommodation but we can't know what a kid needs without being told, so the policies in place change but are based on the kids and behaviors that we see in the kids that we have. Wednesday night activities are often heavy on middle schoolers who like getting really loud with the icebreaker games, so I know that they are simultaneously trying to teach them that fun does not have to equal screaming while trying not to chase off the older or quieter kids who find this to either be nonsense or sensory overload. My older, who finds it to be both, manages it by arriving late, after the icebreaker is over. 🙂 I'm sure that our youth director would be happy to tell a parent what the planned lesson topic, Bible verse, or schedule for a meeting would be. At least in our church, there are many discussions around how to help kids without making them feel singled out, but we can only do it once we know what the issues are.

If they are yanking the phone out of the hands of an agitated kid and telling him that he is bad (words from previous posts) then the problem is much bigger than whatever they do with phones. We use paper Bibles and tell the kids to put away phones (and the high schoolers, when they lead, use the baskets) because the kids are completely unable to focus otherwise. They are not using phone Bibles, they are watching tik tok or youtube and randomly bursting into giggles and nudging their neighbor to show them something and it is impossible to get through any lesson or discussion. If somebody shares that their grandmother died and somebody across the room giggles because they are watching a video, that is also uncomfortable and hurtful and is the kind of problem that we run in to. We have several kids with various challenges, including at least 2 with autism diagnoses. We sometimes help one of our kids find the right place in the Bible, and sometimes she colors as she listens. She also randomly interrupts the group to share her drawings, and we just redirect. The other girl on the spectrum, who is welcome and treated well, struggles with interpersonal interactions and called my kid a bitch. Others, who go to private schools where being rude is cool, told my kid and others to 'STFU'. On one hand, our group is very welcoming, but on the other it is hard to manage some of the behaviors. I'm not sharing this to complain, but sharing to say that in our church, between one kid having an issue as an elementary kid and my other kid having some issues now, my 'good, neurotypical' kids have both struggled and had years-long stretches of not attending certain activities because they have been treated poorly by other kids and the decision has been made that we don't want to exclude anybody...which I think is probably correct, although it's caused my own kids and some others to self-exclude because they aren't comfortable with being cursed at. Of course all adults in charge deal with anything that they see, but they can't hear every interaction between every kid everywhere, and we often don't hear about incidents until somebody asks why a kid hasn't wanted to come. Back to the original question, if we had a kid who had reason to have their phone and we were told about it, they'd be allowed to have it with the response to kids questioning it being 'they need it'. A Bible on something like a paperwhite would be ideal, although they respond slowly to clicking around. I don't know what having a phone Bible does to help with the dyslexia and other things that you were saying were a problem, so I don't know what the best accommodation for that would be but we'd work around it if we knew.

We have been using paper Bibles in Sunday School for a while to eliminate the need to have phones out. During small group, which is a 30 minute discussion that divides into 4 groups, middle and high boys and girls, putting phones in a basket for each group was initiated by the high schoolers.

Our old fridge started breaking - everywhere that there was plastic (the door shelves, the drawers in the freezer), the plastic became brittle. So, we had to get a new one back in May. We got the LG, 2 doors to the fridge on top, 2 drawers for the freezer on bottom. We love it. There is a water dispenser, but the ice maker is in the top freezer drawer. The shelves in the fridge doors are really big, so they accommodate the insane number of condiments that we have easily. Having 2 freezer drawers that open separately seems to work better - stuff doesn't fall out the back of them so that I have to crawl around trying to fetch it out of the bottom of the freezer. They were having a really good sale when we got it - I think it was Memorial Day weekend.

My kids participate in several activities that are homeschool kids- homeschool karate, Science Olympiad and quiz bowl teams, etc. Most of the kids also have other activities that meet after school, so practices are during the day to accommodate everybody's different schedule. They have also had things like speech therapy or music lessons that had massive waiting lists for the afterschool times but they could be scheduled immediately if we took daytime slots. The way that we made this work was to have days that were at-home days and then on other days work to keep either the morning or afternoon at home. We were also particular about what work we planned on what days. Some things, like a grammar review or vocabulary workbooks or handwriting practice or reading for literature, were easy to pack and take with us. Other things, like math with manipulatives or writing assignments, were likely to take longer and were difficult to pack. On at-home days, the kids worked in whatever order they wanted. On activity days, they did certain subjects at home and packed the others to do while waiting on a sibling. With the personalities of my kids, with one being very demanding of attention, this schedule was actually really helpful because it ensured that my quieter child had time with me while the sibling was occupied with their activity. I had some fantastic discussions with my quieter kid while younger child had practices. Once my kids got old enough to stay home alone, this all changed because I would sometimes take one child to an activity while the other was working at home. The age at which this works varies by kid, since some kids need direct instruction or supervision more than others. How well this works probably depends on how far you have to drive and the temperament of the kids. One of my kids developed an 'I can work anywhere and am good at using small gaps in my schedule' mentality that has been useful as kid has gotten older. I would have probably preferred schooling in a calmer at-home environment, but with the specific kids that I have it is actually more challenging to try to work with them both home than to have one on one car school and park picnic table school and all of the other things that we did to accommodate their activities.

My homework was never checked in high school or college. We could check our own odd problems in the back of the book, which was enough to tell us if we understood or if we needed help. If you didn't do the homework, you tended to fail the tests. One kid did algebra at co-op and the homework was corrected by a TA (former student) but they got credit if it was mostly done. Student is now taking a Derek Owens class, where both homework and tests are graded and points are taken off for wrong answers. There are more homework problems assigned than what is in the graded homework, but there is definitely enough graded to tell how you are doing. Older is taking an online DE Calc 3 class, and homework autogrades on the platform so you have to do it all. Kid thinks it's well done - you get 3 tries at each problem. If you do it correctly you can move on, but there is a pop--up video about how to do hte problem that you can watch if you don't know how or if you miss it the first time. These videos seem to be instead of lecture. Kid likes that you can skip lecture about things you know and get specific help, or watch more than once, if you are unsure about something.

My kids have only taken oral antibiotics a single-digit number of times, but strep is one that I'll get them tested for and treat. We aren't a family that passes stuff around - it's very rare for one person to get sick and then the rest of us catch it - so I wouldn't necessarily expect others to need antibiotics. But, the few times that I or other relatives have had strep as adults it's miserable. Very painful, and the antibiotics don't work in 24 hours like I remember kids being told in my childhood. It usually seemed to be 2-3 days before the fever and pain subsided to something that wasn't disruptive once the person started in antibiotics. And, when one relative had surgery for a heart problem as an older adult, they found heart damage that they said was likely from untreated strep as a youth. Strep is one of those things that can do damage even if you don't know that you're sick, so we treat it when we know about it.

I tend to think that if things are too busy in seasons, that's life, and if things are too busy all the time, that's a me problem. Too busy is defined by the individual, so if it's working and all are happy then it's not too busy. Likewise, it's possible and probably good to build in enough margin to handle something being off. But, there really isn't enough margin to handle multiple things going wrong all at once for most people. And, how you define 'going wrong' also varies. I know families where the whole group almost shuts down if somebody gets a minor illness, while others are like 'mom's in a boot, kid 1 has a broken arm, kid 2 has the flu, and dad's out of town for the week' and they truck along like nothing is wrong. It's not about right and wrong, but about how conditions fit with you and your family. For us, a big deal is having some blocks of time when we don't have to be anywhere. With kids in sports and other extracurriculars it can be challenging, and weekends are often worse than during the week, but when I see those blocks of time I nail them down and don't let something else take over the space, For us that means that I don't tend to say 'practice got canceled and we're all home...let's X instead' - it's 'we are all home...let's rest or build some margin into overbooked tomorrow by getting something done at home'. For other families, that will definitely look different. There have also been times when I told the kids 'There is one of me (or the adults are sick, or whatever) and if this is going to work then we are all going to have to work as a family to make it happen. If you need a clean uniform, then you need to do a load of darks. If you need help with a project for co-op, come to me before dinnertime tonight because we have a game afterwards and I'm going to bed as soon as we get home.'

It really depends on the person. For some, being busy is stress-inducing. For others, doing having long stretches of alone-time causes angst. Some kids work quickly through school, and others need time because they learn more slowly or are taking especially challenging classes. My family has always left it mostly up to the kids if it works financially/logistically, and I do the same. My older wound up overloaded during freshman year when we hadn't realized that 2 sports schedules overlapped by months instead of weeks once you get to high school, and after that year kid dropped a sport. But, kid learned to be very efficient if needed and figured out that dropping a sport was preferable to dropping other activities that kid likes more. Younger wants to do everything but school work, so when this kid wants to add something I ask where it would fit on the schedule. We also set the rule that we need evidence of school work being done well and drama-free with the current schedule before considering adding anything else. If things routinely aren't getting done, I'd talk to kid about what needs to change - working on weekends, dropping an activity, working at the library to avoid tempting distractions - but if things are working and kid is happy then I'm fine with whatever they choose.

At this point, we tend to pay for things that we don't know how to do or don't enjoy. We invest large amounts of time in our garden and fruit trees, so we DIY food things that most people buy at the grocery store. I've made gallons of marinara and tomato sauce, frozen 50 quarts of green beans, shelled peas, and am in the process of dealing with 9 bushels of apples that we've picked. It's a significant time investment, but we like having good home-grown food and are good at fitting it around other things. When coupled with the kids' extracurriculars, spouse's job, homeschooling, my teaching gig, and volunteer work, we'd have to make the decision to give something up to find time to start doing our own roof work or any other task that we aren't already good at. But, spouse spent his teen years helping a family member do electrical work so he does all of that unless he doesn't have an expensive tool. My dad did roofing as a teen, so he always did his own roofing projects but paid for electrical work and plumbing. Years ago when I was working in a lab there was a particular technique that was really tedious to learn and took forever to do until you got good at it. A colleague used it all the time, and I needed to use it one time before finishing grad school I offered a trade - I'd bake a pie in exchange for friend taking care of my samples. Both of us put in an hour of work at something we were good at. Had I done it myself, it probably would have taken 6 hours. It was win-win. We take a similar approach to home projects. We learn to do things that need to be done often or that we want to know how to do. We pay for others, with the realization that we can make more money by doing our paying jobs well than we can save by not paying somebody and doing a job that we aren't good at ourselves.

If you take dual enrollment courses, that is part of your transcript and has to be submitted to colleges. But, there is nothing saying that she can't retake classes if she chooses. Although at this point a lot of students start college with some DE and AP so there will be plenty of freshmen who aren't taking freshman composition or the first math class in the series. You've gotten a lot of good suggestions, but after reading the later posts I guess I'm curious about how most things that a student would do during a gap year would address your main concerns, which seem to be innocence and lack of exposure to peer pressure. My own kids have had fairly little exposure to peer pressure, but even growing up when and where I did, there wasn't a lot of it. I mean, I remember working on a group project where some kids raided the liquor cabinet so it's not like I wasn't exposed to stuff, but there was no actual pressure to participate. Socially, my friends wouldn't have pressured me to do anything that I didn't want to, even if they sometimes did things without me because they knew I wouldn't participate. A gap year will give her another year of maturity, but unless she starts hanging out with a different crowd it won't necessarily change some of the issues that worry you. I know that the kids now live in a different world than we did, but in both cases it seems like people sort themselves into groups with similar lifestyles and have a 'you do you' attitude about differences. I have some of the same concerns about my kids, but I've realized that some of it isn't lack of exposure, but their choice to not spend a lot of time with people and situations that might put them in a bad spot, which is a decision that they'll hopefully keep making.

That stinks. Once everybody is settled, maybe you can figure out a schedule for when she and her kids are elsewhere? It won't be impromptu, but maybe could be part of an established routine once she is set in her routine? And I agree that they can sometimes come to your house. This may not be permanent, either - perhaps she reconciles, or decides that she'd rather move in with a roommate. But I hate that you're dealing with this, too.

You can buy packs of cookies at Sams or at some grocery stores- a box of packs with 6 oreos each or nutter butters or pouches of teddy grahams or mini chips ahoy. Fruit leather, instant soup packets or 'cup of soup' type meals, packets of hot chocolate, apple cider. Microwave popcorn.

I've seen family interactions go a couple of different ways. I have a relative who broke up with a guy for reasons, and it was a real challenge for her when he kept hanging around her family. She'd go over to see them, and there he was. She felt like her parents chose him, and she didn't feel like she could tell them the reason that she ended things, but she definitely did not want to be around him. I had a similar relationship at one point, and I would have felt the same way. On the other hand, I dated a guy in high school. We ended things when I went off to college, but we were on friendly, if initially sad, terms. He called every few weeks to chat and update me on stuff from our friends. By second semester we had both moved on but remained friendly. He would occasionally stop by and talk to my parents - our house had been one of the 2 hangout houses for our friend group and everybody had talked to my parents at one time or another. When he ran in to some struggles in premarital counseling with his future wife while I was still at school, he came to my parents for advice because they weren't emotionally involved in the situation like his parents. My mom went to his wedding and sent pictures. It was fine with me - I was glad that he had them to talk to. I'm facebook friends with him and his wife (who I knew) and we occasionally post back and forth about our kids, some of whom play the same sport. Personally, it would depend on the kid and situation. I wouldn't get sucked in to any drama or discussion about the relationship, but I don't think I'd have a problem with being an adult acquaintance unless my own kid would be awkward with it. I wouldn't be getting together with them weekly or anything, but a few emails or a phone call would be OK with me. Even though I don't live in a small town, spouse and I both grew up in them and probably have more of that mentality.

As to the original topic, we are seeing more 'we want traditional classes but we don't really care about academics' people showing up at our co-op. This isn't everybody - we have some very excited new families, too. And, among this year's seniors are some homeschoolers who have known each other for years (some since elementary) and who come from families that are highly invested in their kids' academic success. Like us, the kids have done a mix of home-taught classes (our co-op is only enrichment until middle or high school, depending on the subject, so everybody did home-taught classes for years) and various types of outsourcing. Some families do some AP, some a lot of DE, some do many co-op classes, and some do more enrichment at the co-op even in high school. The kids do varying amounts of work and extracurriculars. I talk in many situations about how things seem more bifurcated, with everybody moving to an extreme, and it feels like that is the case here. On one hand, there are people who are all in with some version of 'homeschooling', whether it involves a lot of DE and their kid working while pursuing an expensive, time-consuming extracurricular, or whether they are having their kid take some cool electives at co-op and doing advanced academics at home along with academic competition and athletics, or whether they are helping their student with learning difficulties navigate high school with a mix of co-op and online classes while preparing for a vo-tech program. This may not all be traditional homeschooling, but it's education tailored to the needs of their student. Their students are learning and preparing to have productive lives. Then there are students who seem 1 step short of truant. However they are supposed to be learning the material, they aren't doing the work and nobody is checking up on them on a regular basis. They don't just have a few late assignments - they aren't turning in anything. I have had students who didn't even participate in labs that we did in class. There have always been some students like this, but the number seems to be increasing. Historically, many of these students had mental health challenges, so it's possible that we are just seeing more of that and it isn't anything specific to homeschooling.