This kid was born with a hematoma and a lot of ridging. The doctor and cranial facial specialist said his head was fine, so I just focused keeping him out of bounce hairs, swings, car seats, etc..., having him nap while I wore him, making sure he got lots of tummy time, etc... and as his head started to round out, I stopped worrying. I noticed his head feeling bumpy in the last half year. I asked his pediatrician again, who thinks it's fine. I asked the cranial facial surgeon again, who thinks he's fine. But I can't seem to let go my fear that it's just too late to do anything about it and that's why they are telling me it's fine, especially after the pediatrician confirmed that yes, his head is asymmetrical. (My husband and mother both don't think it is.) I worry that maybe I should have helmeted, that maybe I should have demanded more aggressive treatment for the hematoma (not sure that this is what caused the asymmetry)... that I should have done something, that I should be doing something now... I'm also feeling a little guilty about caring about his head shape, as of course he's my beautiful kid. I just worry I'm missing something or I did miss something important.

My kids' pediatrician says it's normal for a child to have an asymmetrical top of their head (not the circumference, but the top of the skull). Does anyone else have a kid with an asymmetrical head? I feel guilty!

I have four kids. We've saved a pittance for college for the kids. Due to my husband's work, all the kids will have an opportunity to do a paid apprenticeship in trades that would eventually allow them to support a family, if they are inclined. Our firstborn will be college age when we are 38. Our last will be when we are pushing 48. To keep on track for saving for retirement, it likely means having saved only about 10% of four year tuition for an in-state public school. Should we refocus our money away from retirement savings as we will have more than a decade after they are out of undergraduate to save and focus more on the college fund? What percentage of college tuition should parents fund?

Not this year (other than ours)

Has anyone had a very young child have a biopsy? I'm pretty much freaking out about the procedure, and I'd love to hear other's experiences.

Not a huge fan of Day of the Dead being lumped in with Halloween...

Two of my kids cannot have some of their candy due to medical reasons. The switch witch takes the candy and replaces it with a small present.

For those of you who do a Switch Witch, what are your kids getting?

Catching up with the neighbors, the beautiful leaves, my kids' excitement and their cute costumes, looking for teal pumpkin houses

I convinced him to see a chiro. He said it really hurt, and his back feels even worse. :( He's seeing an orthopedic doctor on Monday, but in the meantime, any suggestions for getting through the weekend? I feel pretty guilty.

Chipotle. Salad for me. Kids meal quesadillas for the kids.

I have four living children. We are finished having children. I've gone through multiple miscarriages and had a stillbirth, but we've never found a reason why other than I have the more common, less serious MTFHR mutation. I can't go through it again.

If you ordered directly through the Well-Trained Mind website, do you already have all your books? I am feeling really frustrated with Amazon. I still don't have a delivery date for the student books, and the instructor text won't be here for another week. I've pre-ordered materials previously from Amazon, and I've never had things arrive so far after the release date. Did I make a mistake placing the order with Amazon instead?

I have never read the high school section, as I have much younger kids. However, I read the relevant to my kids sections each year. I have no desire to teach Latin, but we're on our second four year history rotation and my second kid going through SotW. I have my second kid going through WWE and FLL. I have one kid in WWS and will start the new grammar program as soon as Amazon ships it to us.

My poor spouse can't walk the pain is so bad. He has tried two different muscle relaxers. He has had it a couple months. I am scared. Any advice?

Is Spouse B relatively confident or constantly bemoaning their weight? Is the weight gain caused by or causing medical issues that affect Spouse B's mood and personality? Because weight changes in our household often strongly impacted baseline mood, and that was a lot harder to overlook than the weight.

Settlers of Catan will not play well with two players. There is Rivals of Catan, which I like, but I don't tend to think of as a good couple's game, but then again, I don't think of Risk as a good couple's game...

Well, I expect my kids to have some holes. I think no matter how well you are educated, holes will always exist. I've used different curricula with different kids, and I'm okay that we covered different content. Even with more straightforward progams like math, my oldest learned her multiplication facts up to 12. My second didn't, but he spent a lot of time learning geometric drawing at that age and she did none. Do either of them have holes? Perhaps. I think there's an art, though, to seeing the overall development, of seeing in general how a child is progressing, and sometimes I'd like the opinion of someone who has seen thousands of kids this age.

I pretty much fear exactly this. At least with math, it's pretty straight forward, comparatively. I think a lot of other subjects is more difficult to decipher

Writing is something I struggle with evaluating as well. My oldest scores well enough on standardized tests that test spelling, capitalization, etc... but I don't think that really shows if she's really learning to write.

Lost Cities, Hogwarts Battle, Pandemic

I live in a state where I don't even need to declare ourselves as homeschoolers. There's no testing or profiles. Nothing. Probably related, I know a lot of unschoolers. As antithetical as it sounds, I hear about homeschoolers who submit profiles, and I feel a little jealous: I would love the kind of outside perspective. So, if you live in a low regulation state, how do you get outside perspective? My kids do activities outside of the house, of course, but so far, I teach all core subjects. The doctor asks a little about homeschooling, but the older kids only see him for like fifteen minutes once a year for well-checks.

If the kids can agree on a family theme

I am required to teach language arts by law. I am not required to follow common core standards by law. I don't think a lot of those standards for lower elementary school are appropriate. My oldest attended public kindergarten, so I have also seen what kind of work those kids produced while the teacher tried to implement those standards, and so I feel okay that I don't try. Perhaps my kids are behind. They are literate. They are at grade level or above at math. I have my own standards for their writing that they are meeting, and my kid who has taken standardized tests scored above average in language arts despite my disregard. We know a lot of unschoolers. As a minority faith family, we run with a lot of secular homeschoolers, and that skews pretty hard towards unschooling. I did meet an unschooling family who later put her kids in school and they were all placed a year behind in school even in a more low performing school district, but there was a lot going on in that family (poverty, divorce, two working parents). Most people i know who later put their kids in school, even if they were die hard unschoolers, did fine.

My therapist told me that checking my child and taking him to doctors to check him hurts him, teaching him to believe there is something wrong with himself. I think that's where the risk of harm came in.