This is a small child that I still help bathe. I've been checking the kid at bath time. Occasionally, my husband and I would both check at night while he slept, so we could discuss it. At first, my husband could not feel what I felt, and then, as it got worse, we couldn't agree on what we felt.

As far as I know, it was based solely on checking this kid, so I believe she misdiagnosed me

Please don't quote I see a therapist who, among other things, diagnosed me with anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder because I kept checking a certain child, convinced that something was wrong with this child after taking this kid to his doctor and a specialist. She referred me to a psychiatrist for medication and told me that if I didn't stop checking, she would recommend hospitalization. I took him back to the doctor again anyway, and that thing I kept checking and couldn't let go? It apparently wasn't all in my head. There is something wrong: no matter what my kid will need surgery and there's testing to see if it's something even more serious. With so many questions about my kid's health still, I am still really struggling with anxiety and would really like help. I am not sure, though, whether I should continue to see this therapist: I oscillate between thinking there's no way this therapist could have known there was something actually wrong on one hand and with how glad I am that I didn't let this go on the other. I have not seen the therapist again since the most recent doctor visit. So... should I fire my therapist?

I have, but not this year.

In theory, closed. In reality, I have a kid who gets up most nights and joins me in bed, leaving his door and mine open.

How old is the kid? I feel very differently if the kid is a young six versus a kid who is already seven. If the kid is already seven, I would have vision checked and if his vision tests fine, I would probably talk to my pediatrician

It depends. Core subjects we just finish. Generally, if we wrap up a content subject, we take a break.

To put it in perspective, I imagine that if shaved my kid's head, it might be bumpy like David Beckham's head.

Clarifying: Both the preschooler and the baby have bumpy heads. I've asked the pediatrician to look at both of their heads again. I started worrying about the older kid's bumpy head mostly after I started worrying about the baby's bumpy head, but I think the preschooler's top of the skull shape is more unusual. The preschooler was screened for craniosynostosis (and flat head syndrome) by a cranial/facial surgeon, but the surgeon did not think he showed any signs of it and didn't recommend any testing. However, years later, this kid still has a bumpy head. I worry that I let my concerns about his head shape go too easily, and maybe there is something wrong despite what the surgeon said. (He didn't take x-rays or MRIs or anything beyond a very brief physical exam.) Or maybe lots of preschoolers have bumpy heads, and I don't notice because I don't touch other people's kids on the top of their heads. So...how common is a bumpy head in the preschool years?

Way too much Tween - piano, choir, nature club, skating, science olympiad, church school-aged kid - violin, nature club, lacrosse, church preschooler - violin, nature club, soccer, church

It might increase the chance of hemorrhage if she miscarries or delivers early

Like the top of their head, is it smooth? Backstory: One of my kids was born with a hemotoma and narrow face. We talked to his pediatrician, who assured us it would become normal. We talked to a cranial-facial surgeon, who didn't even recommend an x-ray or MRI. Eventually, I forgot about it - no one ever said anything to me at his well-checks; his head was growing fine; he was hitting his developmental milestones; he grew a lot of hair - until I had another baby, and now my worry about his less smooth than his siblings skull has returned as I fret about the baby's head. I called the nurse who brushed it off and said the doctor would look at it in a few weeks when I bring the baby in for his well-check. But I wonder: is it normal to be able to feel where the bones joined in the head? If his hair is wet and plastered to his head, I think I might be able to see it, but my husband says he can't.

She has a tricky word list, and I make her study those every day. She does do regular review of the words/rules/sounds/etc.. We didn't move onto the next book until she could recite all the rules, spell all the words, etc... for that level. It's retention from stuff from previous levels that's the struggle, especially things without clear rules. AAS does talk about how "or" can say "er" in unaccented syllables, and it encourages developing a visual memory using a word bank, but this kid does not have a great visual memory: wrong words don't look wrong to her. Or she applies words wrong. We talked about suffixes so much, but then she tried applying the double the consonant to protect the short vowel to protect the short I in disagree...

My daughter is about to finish All About Spelling. It really did help improve her spelling: I can now always figure out what she's trying to spell, when at first it seemed like she would just sort of give up and start putting random letters after the first few letters when she spelled. However, she's still not a strong speller. She still forgets rules. It's not even 10AM here, and today she misspelled disagree, journal, switch, tractor, and realize. When she misspells something like disagree, I have her use her tiles, and then she then remembers. Things that are really a visual memory thing like tractor just don't stick. I had planned to move onto vocabulary after we finished All About Spelling, but now I wonder if she needs more reinforcement before moving on. Should we continue waiting on vocabulary and do more spelling? If so, what should we do at this point?

Personally, no, but you do you. For me to count something as a school day, I expect some of our LA bookwork and some of our math bookwork done at the very least. If that doesn't happen, I personally don't count it.

We tried Beast Academy 2A. He likes it. I like that it's much more independent. However, he is not his older sibling: he doesn't have the ability to whip through it in a few weeks. I feel like two whole math programs are too much. He started with Rightstart and it's working for him. He's more than halfway through RS C. I can't decide which program to drop. Help?

I need a metronome recommendation. I have small kids in the house who frequently drop these or let them get banged up in music bags. Do they make metronomes that will survive this?

Regular quiet time after lunch. If the six year old is reading, this is mandatory free reading time. 3.5 year old can listen to audiobooks.

We are doing Elemental Science Earth Science for the Logic Stage plus studying for Science Olympiad. There are programs that we've tried that if I could implement, I'd like better, but this is actually getting done, at least now before Science Olympiad really gears up, and I'm happy about that.

So, I definitely homeschool the way I do in part because I want my neurotypical kids to stay roughly where their peers are in core, skill-based subjects. We definitely know delayed academic types and unschoolers who don't share that goal, and so kids not reading at eight or nine years old, or not having their math facts memorized in middle school seem more normal to my kids than to me. I, personally, am not comfortable with that, and I don't know how to communicate to my daughter that while that's fine in other homes, that I'm just not comfortable with that, that I have certain goals I need to reach for me to feel comfortable to homeschool, regardless of whether her friends' parents share those goals, without sounding like I think that their parents should share those goals.

We are a religious minority, and as a result, we fit best with secular homeschoolers. There are a lot of unschoolers in our local secular homeschooler community. My tween has been asking a lot why she has to do school, when many of her friends don't. Pretty much any answer I can think of sounds pretty judgmental (and maybe I need to work on that), and that's certainly not what I want to pass onto my kids. So, if you homeschool in a structured way, how do you explain to your older child why you school differently than some of their friends?

Did anyone's kid have a metopic ridge without craniosynostasis? His pediatrician says he will likely outgrow it, and even if he doesn't, it's purely cosmetic. It's mild, palpable but only visible from the right angle. His pediatrician says this is common, but I don't know any other parents who have gone through this.

We just got ours today, so my seven year old has just finished the first few sections. I've read the guide and paged through the practice book. My seven year old is about halfway through Rightstart C, so he isn't especially gifted at math. A lot of it is review. Some of the stuff covered I prefer the methods Rightstart teaches. However, so far the books really excite him - he whined to do more than one section today, and I welcome the break from really such a parent-intensive program as Rightstart. (I also think he welcomes the break from geometric drawing, ha!)

It depends on the kid. I literally bought my daughter the books. She'd read and do the problems. I would correct them. We would discuss anything she got wrong and she'd have a second try. She did well this way. She was playing on Alcumus and Mathcounts trainer a lot while we waited for books. We did a little extra fractions and exponents work on Khan when we hit a few sections that she had more trouble with. I really appreciate that it's a pretty hands-off program and that it has low repetition (as for many mathy kids a lot of review is unnecessary). It's easy for me to pull a supplement for the occasional topic where she could use a little extra review or practice than it is for a lot to be built in and then I have to decide what she should do and what to weed out. My second kid is less mathy, though, so maybe it won't work as well with him.

It's a full program. I did 3-5 with my oldest and then headed straight to pre-algebra. I plan to use the second level as a supplement, though, just because of the publishing schedule. If they publish on schedule, 2D still won't be out until my kid is already in third grade, so my plan is pretty much to wrap up his second grade curriculum (Rightstart) while doing any of the second level that come out while he does that and then switch him to the third level as soon as he finishes RS C.