If she can stand a little pain (and it doesn't hurt that much anyway), waxing is probably the best option. Shaving, on the long run, only makes the things worse for most girls (their hair starts to grow more, quicker and more solid), and those chemical products are not really something I'd play with. My girls (11 and 12) get waxing treatments, I never supported them to shave and as soon as they expressed their desire to remove hair from their legs, it was waxing from the beginning, they got used to it and like the effects. The hair doesn't have to grow full again before you can rewax (it's better if it does though - but it's really not like you have to spend long weeks being hairy, just wait a little bit more than you'd wait for the other hair removal techniques); also, the effects last much longer, and the pain is generally overrated. If you regularly use body peeling (esp. before waxing) and take care of your legs after waxing (e.g. with baby powder to calm the skin, and there also special lotions for after waxing), there are also far lesser chances to irritate the skin than with other hair removal techniques. And with time, if you regularly wax, the hair grows less. So waxing is a win-win situation for most women.

Children should read their first language with fluency before that age. It's probably not a curriculum-related issue, but it might be some kind of learning disorder (albeit probably a minor one, if it's the only thing he has a problem with). I'd suggest you to take him to a doctor and/or a psychologist to see what's the problem... ... But first, may I suggest a possibility that you simply didn't insist enough? You say yourself that, seeing he had a problem with reading, you kind of "let it come" rather than insisted on mastering it when he should have. You don't specify how much time you dedicate to reading and what methods are you using, but is there a possibility that you've simply been too lenient with him? If he can't read, how have you been studying the other subjects so far? If you haven't been insisting on working with the text and written instructions, maybe he's simply not accustomed to it to an extent he should be. My daughters thankfully both learned to read basically on their own at early age, but I in my childhood had similar problems with reading Hebrew (not my first language though) - it wasn't that I wasn't able to read, it was that I wasn't accustomed to read (because nobody insisted enough, thinking it would come naturally), so I struggled through the words just like your son. Then one day they decided they've been too lenient with me and decided to push it - they made me write down tons of text every day (literally copying from some book, and then later through numerous dictations), and continuous writing actually helped me the most with reading. I read Hebrew as fluently as a child my age should have in a matter of weeks after they took such an approach (though they went on with it for a few months) and decided to force it every day until I'm fully comfortable with it, regardless of how I feel about it (I wasn't really thrilled about it, of course, but later I was glad). Another thing I'd suggest is reading silently. That helped me a whole lot with Hebrew too. When one is forced to read aloud, one can be under stress and perform worse than they actually can. And if your child reads only aloud, that can overall hinder the process. So another thing they did with me was giving me a text and as much time as I wanted to go through it on my own, and then talking about the text, occasionally asking me to support my claims showing them parts of the text I was mentioning. I think such a practice is much better than reading aloud individual words/sentences, as it connects those in an overall meaning. The next thing which may be the cause of problems is - phonics. Now, I'm not saying anything against the phonics, it's an approach which works for many, but the thing is, the more rules you know, the less intuitively you grasp certain material, if you can't get the rules out of your mind (some children can't, which is why we don't teach them rules first, but allow them to get the regularities on their own). Ideally, you would learn through the rules and then get them out of your mind to function naturally - but not all children function that way. I mention this because you mentioned your son "knows all the rules" yet can't read fluently. Maybe the phonics approach simply doesn't work for you and your son? Maybe he can't read because he obsesses the rules while trying to read, so it doesn't come naturally (I know what I'm talking about - the same thing was my Hebrew in childhood... I was blocked when I had to read because I was obsessing the rules about the vowels and dagesh and whatnot)? I'm just throwing random suggestions, obviously, as a mother I never faced that problem, but I'd consider these possibilities before thinking it's a learning disorder, cause honestly, if it were some of the common ones (e.g. dyslexia), you probably would have recognized it by the "symptoms" in his writing. But yet, do seek medical and professional advice, they can probably help you more than we can. Good luck.

That's the first holocaust-themed film we showed to our daughters (also because it's Italian and they can relate to it more personally), though when they were young (8-9 I think). I think it's a good one to start with.

Mine are 11 months and a week apart (crazy, I know). They have always been studying separately, except for Math. The older one told me, not once, when I tried to introduce even a minimal pair work, that if "you don't think I'm special enough to have my own grade, and would like me to study with my sister for your comfort, please do me a favor and send me to a boarding school". She has a point, in my opinion (though she is oversensitive about those things). They interact enough and learn from each other in other areas of life and then again, one's knowledge is, in my opinion, a private possessing to be shared if wanted, but not upon request. So that means more work for me, but they work better independently anyway and don't distract each other. They even study in separate rooms most of the time. They "want to be sisters, not classmates". :D

When my daughters were little, even before school, I realized this would eventually become a problem. They're less than a full year apart, both gifted, yet the older one is a very sensitive child. And the younger one, naturally, has always been more or less at the level with the older one. Now, DD11 (the younger one) is one of those children who are naturally good at everything, but in addition to that, she has a couple of specific talents - mostly Math and then Science in general, she just intuitively understands even very complex Math problems and is great at applying that mathematical logic to sciences. And, as it usually goes with children with that kind of reasoning, she's an excellent chess player and she's naturally inclined towards music (not so much producing music, as musical theory, solfeggio/harmony in particular). DD12, in the other hand, does not have a single outstanding talent in which she would be genial, but is one of those kids who are not good, but brilliant at pretty much anything. So on the whole, she's probably more gifted than her sister, but she doesn't have her own area of "geniality" as her sister does, since she jumps from an interest to an interest, and she's pretty sensitive. They hardly do any work together because of DD12 and her sensitivity - only Math (they mostly do 8th grade level Math together, and DD11 does more on her own and with father, some high school material). So I needed to entirely separate their curricula, and let them each study independently, since DD12 just sinks down if she sees the younger sister is as good as she is or, God forbid, better. She's also very insecure, while DD11 is a more straightforward, self-confident child so she can be intimidating and seem to know more than she actually does. How did I deal with it? I spoke to them, to the each one alone. I was honest with them, and told them that each of them is an individual and needs to be treated and respected as such, that I don't compare them and that I wouldn't like any kind of rivalry to destroy their great sibling relations. I told them they have to be very careful one with another, and never forget that they're family, that it's not about competing. Sure, in the real world, it's all about competing, and I never cuddled them into thinking it's not, but they're family, and they have to support each other and stick together on a personal level, not an academic one. I also let them know I love them for the totality of each of them, not just the academic component. I did the opposite of what many do - I never forced them to share, anything, from their material possessings to their knowledge. I encouraged it, especially if shared with a family member, but never made it a must. I wanted them to realize they're special and their knowledge belongs to them only, and they have a right to decide how and when to use it.

I voted for the second option. Personally, I have no problem with it, as long as it's discreet (not necessarily covered up, just discreet enough that it goes unnoticed if people don't stare - which is then their problem, not yours), though I didn't practice that myself while I was nursing my daughters. I do think, however, that some places are more and some less adequate for public nursing - but then again, the places I don't consider adequate for public nursing are the places I don't consider adequate for mothers with young children in the first place.

I let my 11 and 12 year old daughters see it. I told them in advance it would be a harsh film, but they have to know these things. We've been talking about the holocaust, reading books about it, and watching some documentaries/films. That's a part of their heritage I can't and won't hide from them, and the younger they learn to live with it (and with antisemitism in general), the better, in my opinion. I think they're too young to fully understand a lot of these things, but I don't think the early exposure is bad. They'll go back to that and understand it better later, but I'm not delaying giving them the first encounters with it. Of course, we talk it through later and they can ask questions and talk about what disturbed them.

Well, technically speaking, English is their second language (Italian being their first one), but we don't consider it a "foreign language" and they have been rather balanced bilinguals since they were little. Their first "second" language, i.e. first foreign language, was Hebrew - and even that was not very "foreign" as they grew up somewhat exposed to the language as well (trips to Israel every year at least once, Israeli music and TV, family friends and even some DH's relatives and business partners are Israelis, DH and I sometimes speak Hebrew to each other and we always have family Hebrew time for shabbat when we all speak it together, etc...), so it was more of a "background" language than a truly foreign one. I can't even say when we "introduced" it, it's more like it's always been somewhere in the air. They learned to read it at about 5 years old, but even when they learned to read they understood fairly well what they were reading, and we somehow stressed more learning Hebrew "by osmosis", through using it, than academically (I started teaching them formal grammar, binyanim and such, when they were 4th-5th grade, before that it was simply reading, various stories, speaking, acquiring vocabulary, and lots of passive exposure to the language). We have been playing with Latin and Greek since kindergarten age, but started studying them more seriously in 3rd-4th grade. I wanted them to have a firm grasp of English and especially Italian before delving into the complex analytical study of Latin (and Greek too), but till that point they basically knew, both in Latin and Greek, indicatives of all the basic tenses, declensions, and were able to read simple adapted texts, and get a gist of simpler original texts, so in 3rd-4th grade when we "started" grammar (first Latin, then we added Greek) it wasn't really starting either, it was more of a continuation. They're 11 and 12 now and, in my eyes, three modern languages and two classical ones (or even three classical ones, if you keep in mind that they work with the Biblical text too, though we never specifically taught them Biblical Hebrew) are a pretty decent background so I won't insist on anything more - I'd prefer the quality to the quantity, so now we are focusing on making them trilingual (they're only bilingual so far, with a decent knowledge of Hebrew, but they can't be told trilingual yet as they lack the age-appropriate academic competence in Hebrew) and learning classics really well. :) They both have an interest in languages, though, especially the older one (who wants to learn French, that's her newest fit :D), so I guess they'll learn an additional language or two during or after their schooling.

We also have lighter Fridays, but we school 6 days a week (Sunday through Friday, Saturday is the day off). We never really "finish" a week on Friday, we've always had a policy that we finish a week with starting something new too, though we do revise the most important subjects and what we learned that week. We used to set Hebrew aside for Fridays (they did use it during the week - TV, films, chats with their friends from Israel, along with homeworks etc. - but we used to do the "formal study" on Fridays), but the next year we'll give it more importance and do it few days a week too, so we'll no longer have a subject that is reserved for the lighter day.

It might go easily. ;) I have been systematically exposing my daughters to "that kind" of English (and Italian :D) since they were very little, so they hardly felt the transition from passages, poems and monologues to the "full" works (I did Romeo and Juliet first with the older one when she was 9, and with the younger one when she was 10, none of them had problems, and then we moved onto other works too). We also used Shakespeare as a vocabulary builder in English, and it worked wonderfully. None of my daughters seemed to have an issue with the language any more than any other anglophone child would have had (in fact, they probably had less of an issue, especially the older one who really reads way beyond her grade level). However, I took the "little by little" approach, rather than "all at once". I simply incorporated some Shakespeare in our English curriculum, every year, but I didn't organize our English curriculum around Shakespeare, fearing not to overwhelm them.

Currently re-reading D'Annunzio's opus (right now L'Innocente), watching many film classics I missed out on (film and film history is currently in my self-education focus, right now I'm doing French cinema), and reading Rambam.

What are you trying to do? Do you want to make her fully bilingual (including academics-wise), or "just" teach her that another language?

I taught them all three pronunciations (classical, ecclesiastical, "Italian"). The rule in our house is that the "Italian" pronunciation can be applied to any text, the classical one is for the classical Roman canon, and the ecclesiastical one for Mediaeval/Neo-Latin. They mostly alterate between classical and "Italian" as we don't really do texts which would require ecclesiastical.

My daughters are less than a full year apart and the only subject they do together - and even that not 100% - is Math, only because they both get it so they do advanced material, and the younger one is very interested in it (so she does some more on her own or with dad). Other than that, they hardly ever do anything together, and the older one is very sensitive about the sole idea (meaning that she wants her "own" learning rather than having to "share" - which I believe to be a legitimate request so I respect that). They read completely different books both for Italian and English, they do different Science, they do very similar Hebrew and classics, but again each separately... basically, each one has her own process of learning. Sometimes they will discuss things, but not "upon request" - it will either happen naturally, either won't. They're two very different girls (not only academically and regarding their interests, but also as persons), so I respect the distance they wish to keep. Sure, my life would be much easier if they wanted to study together, but I feel I don't have the right to ask that of them just for the sake of my comfort, as this seems to be the way of learning that suits them the most.

Yes. Mine will be formally 6th and 7th grade, and we've been doing it basically from the beginning (though for the first few years not very seriously), so we will simply continue.

The list for my older daughter, a rising 7th grader: Ernest Hemingway - The Old Man and the Sea Henry James - The Turn of the Screw Henry James - The Beast in the Jungle Isaac Bashevis Singer - The Slave various Isaac Bashevis Singer's short stories William Golding - The Lord of the Flies George Orwell - 1984 Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird Charles Dickens - A Tale of Two Cities Charlotte Bronte - Jane Eyre Gunter Grass - Peeling the Onion Elie Wiesel - Night Chaim Potok - The Chosen Chaim Potok - My Name is Asher Lev John Steinbeck - Of Mice and Men Ephraim Kishon's satires, not sure yet which exactly (reading alternatively in English and Hebrew) E. A. Poe - Tales of Mystery and Imagination William Shakespeare - A Midsummer Night's Dream William Shakespeare - King Lear Oscar Wilde - The Importance of Being Earnest Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray Henrik Ibsen - A Doll's House John Milton - Paradise Lost (in excerpts only, not the whole work) She has a whole other set of required readings in Italian, which I won't go into here, but this is more-less what she'll do in English (we used to combine curricula, but now she wants to do only the Italian curriculum for all subjects, and I allowed that, under the condition that she still continues reading in English, so we compiled the list above together, trying to make it be mostly English classics, with a few foreign works she wishes to read and a few Jewish-themed books).

Until I moved here, I didn't know what phonics was - without exaggeration. I first encountered the concept here, and it was totally foreign to me. But then again, it was significantly easier for me to learn to read my language first (which is a very phonetic one) and then just "transfer" the logic of reading to English than it is for primarily anglophone children to learn to read English first. With my daughters, I decided I would use phonics if needed. I also decided I would postpone teaching them to read in English in order for them to have a decent grounding in Italian first. So we actively worked on Italian - reading and writing - and passively they were getting accustomed to the English orthography because it was all around, and I also used to read aloud English books to them too. So they grew accustomed to written English even before I decided to formally introduce it, and when I did introduce it, they basically knew how to read already because they had figured it out on their own. With some practice, they became great spellers, even though I never did any phonics with them. However, had it been necessary to use phonics, I would have used it. I don't think it's a bad method - it was unnecessary in my and the case of my daughters, but had it been necessary, we would have employed it too.

We stopped when they were about 7-8, because at that point they grew to prefer reading on their own and were very confident readers already. That doesn't mean that we never did it since, but we no longer did it as a regular practice.

Officially, no - they take their yearly exams grade-appropriate. Unofficially, though, we basically do the stuff beyond their grade level, combined with some grade level they have less interest in so aren't so advanced with, and combined with the extras. I see no point in holding them back, but I do make sure they know what they "should" know too (another reason why we take exams), even if they aren't as interested in it, since I don't want them to be behind either (especially given that they're probably off to school for high school). They have big discrepancies though, it's sometimes worrying me - for example in one subject they're grade level, in another one three grades above. And they don't "match", so my younger one (they're less than a full year apart) understands and loves more advanced math and science than the older one (who is about a year ahead "only"), while the younger one is grade level English/Italian and the older one few years ahead, and so on. I can get quite messy at times. However, I never purposely accelerated them - they were just very quick learners so it came naturally. Still, I insist they take exams with their generation. :)

I recognize the concept - just think that it's not applicable in this case, since I don't consider an abortion a murder. I don't mean visually - I meant formed to a point where it can continue to develop independently, in sense of a lack of physical dependence on another body. How independent? When it can live on its own and function as a body on its own. Of course that it will have to be fed, clothed, etc... but it will be a body unrelated essentially to another body. I'll trust you on the ants - never dealt with that. Are you sure it's proper slavery, not labor division? About life beginning out of the womb, of course it can. However, there's a slight difference there - out of the womb, it always exists intentionally, you consciously provoked its existence with a specific goal. When it's intentional, I do believe you have a kind of moral obligation towards it. Which is, again, why I said I don't ethically approve abortion in some cases which can fall into the "intentional" category, even if the pregnancy wasn't exactly planned. I don't see myself being proven right. Contrasted with a different opinion, sure. But we still don't agree on the premises, let alone about the conclusion. It might not become at all. I had in mind miscarriages, various potential complications, etc. I do allow the possibility that I'm somewhere fundamentally wrong with the terminology, having undergone 90% of my total education (and 100% of my scientific education, not counting the science things I homeschooled bilingually) elsewhere and having acquired English as a de facto foreign language. In the case of which I offer my apology for creating unnecessary confusion. I do, however, think that we're simply speaking of different things and therefore using different terminology in accordance with what we speak of. The comment I made is not based on the lack of difference between the two cells (there is a difference), but on the way they can both be perceived as a kind of "parasites" to a body. You have a point here.I should have been more clear and specify I had in mind the "completion" which comes at the point where an organism can live independently as an organism and naturally begins to (not in the terms of independence as we use it). And again - if that process is happening inside of and in dependence of another person's body, I think that that other person should have the legal right to choose. I used the term "a little before it's born" having in mind the "dependence" and a child born prematurely who may not have been born at the point where they'd normally start to function on their own outside of their mother's body, but still manage to. And yes - it's still a "parasite". Partial birth abortion is an interesting question, though - it didn't cross my mind even as I had in mind only the standard abortion techniques, done only in the legally allowed period.

I actually made a clear difference between physical dependence on another body to be alive and other types of dependence. Please read my post, don't read into it things which aren't written - it's not about "general impression", which of course isn't nice due to the need to employ such terminology and due to the fact that I generally write in more "harsh" and less "sugarcoating" manner, but it's about what's actually written. Parasite, a lack of any better term. Medically, though, it explains the situation of pregnancy - the problem is that we're trying to euphemize things to sound nicer. Medically speaking (using my aunt's words - she's a doctor actually), pregnancy is not a "regular" state of a body and IS comparable to a pathological state, i.e. to illness. It doesn't mean it's "bad", but it is a deviation from the "normal" state. And again, medically speaking, my two beautiful daughters did start their lives parasiting on my body, feeding off it, basing all of their functioning on me and my energy. Does me openly saying that means that I don't love them? No, it just means that I'm able to separate the reason and the heart and that I won't deny the facts to make it sound "nicer". Most of the pro-life argumentation I've heard was more ethnically-based than medically-based; and was based on vague concepts of "a person" or "a human being" (yes, those cells are human cells, just as any isolated human cell unable to function on its own is a human cell - but they're not yet a human body in the full sense of the word). I don't agree with those, from the very terminology I don't agree. That being said - how to emphasize this enough?! - I don't think abortion is a good thing. As a matter of fact, I don't even think it's morally irrelevant. I just want to allow legal space for people to be in control of their bodies. I don't think a law should force anyone to undergo pregnancy, and making abortion illegal is fundamentally wrong in my opinion, especially in the cases I've already mentioned as the potentially problematic ones. I don't always like it as a choice, but I think it must remain a choice. Personally I didn't do it, but I know women who did, one even among my family members. I wouldn't do the same in each individual situation, but then again, their bodies - their choice. I neither condemn it neither think they did an awesome thing. I think it's hardly ever a good thing (though sometimes the least of all evils), but I think it's a legitimite choice. I love kids, by the way. :) Would have made sure not to have them if I didn't love them. Maybe it's a cultural difference, but I just don't understand what did I say that caused some of you to react as if I said a profoundly wrong and offensive thing? All the comparisons I made are based on something; you may not like them aesthetically, but show me the logical mistake if you found one.

She didn't, but I visited a class (on the whole, they weren't any better), had a chat with the professor, and so on. And then I went to my old school. What a difference - incomparable. About the grammatical signalling - not really. In the first two years, maybe, but later the reading fluency comes with experience. Just like the metrics does - it's not that you're constantly thinking "this syllabe is long and this one is short"; you have to think that way at the beginning, but with time it becomes natural. Of course, but from what I've personally seen (and that's the only experience I can talk about ;)), when contrasted to children who do it "traditionally", their skills are poorer and it takes them more time to reach the same material. Grammar-oriented learning speeds up the process, even if it doesn't give you instantly that kind of "intuitive familiarity" with the language and you have to learn to develop it. The ones I know of have never even approached the width of the curriculum we had. I'm not saying they never had any original text in front of them - sure they had - but they addressed the whole issue of reading in Latin... differently. They weren't so serious and "scholarly" (in lack of better expression) about it as we were; they lacked structure too. Okay, I do admit that my school was a little bit... extreme. One of the few "old school" ones (even though they constantly complained that they're being too lenient with us), the rest of the classical schools I've seen weren't nearly as "serious", so the difference wasn't that huge. The strong contrast I experienced is probably due to the fact my school was an exception, they basically treated us as classical philology majors (and we were often better than those, when they'd come to visit and do their teacher practice). :D I'm not saying that the new methods can't produce good results. After all, even the little niece has a "feel" for Latin. What I'm saying is that I haven't seen new methods producing exceptional results - and I saw plenty of those in my school (not with my own self :D). I've seen exceptional results - not familiarity with Latin, but a fully fluent reading and mastery of the grammatical structure - only with the students taught by the traditional methods. Many taught that way were bad or average, few were exceptional. But my problem is that I've never met a single exceptional with the "modern" ones, their exceptional ones would fit in the average in my old class, from what I've seen. It's only a personal experience, though. But I can judge only by that, till some research is done. ;) Sure, but let's not banalize it, okay? Students today are not in the situation Mediaeval scholars were in. They don't have a body of literature available exclusively in Latin which also happens to be the only source of knowledge, and lingua franca of the academic communities today is English (maybe a few other big European languages - French or Russian - in some other specific fields too). I recognize the importance of Latin for the European heritage, but I just think the learning needs to be in touch with the time and place it takes. Nobody studies Latin today to effectively communicate with other people as their primary goal (not even in the Catholic Church, actually - the role of Latin today is somewhat overrated, and I tell you that not as a tourist, but as somebody who spent most of her life in Italy, surrounded by Catholic culture, though, being from a Jewish family, not belonging to it - their practical lingua franca is largely Italian, even though they formally kept Latin for traditional reasons - Italian is probably "the" Catholic language today). Why focus learning on that, then? It's not that I never had a lesson in Latin. I sure did, though extremely rarely as it wasn't encouraged. It wasn't innatural or incomprehensible, actually. But there was no point in doing it. It's not a big deal if it's added here and there, but they were clear where the focus lies - and that wasn't oral communication. Every language is a code. ;) What makes Latin different is that it's largely not applicable to our times without becoming a conlang - see all the "new vocabulary" and all, there is no natural Latin culture it spreads from, half of it is aritificial, even syntax has undergone considerable changes by those who actually speak Latin. They end up speaking not Latin, but a kind of conlang, lexically, dependent on Latin, morphologically. And that's the problem I have with it - it's innatural. It's forcing things. "Currus electricus" is not Latin. Latin was a language of a specific culture, later perserved in other cultures as an academic language, but it's not applicable as a "fully-fledged" usable language today in our time and place. Because Latin was lingua franca. One could not academically advance without Latin. Today, English has that position in the scientific community, and computer literacy has taken place of the old-style literacy. Those are the facts of the time and place we live in. We live in one different world, and I don't think it's wise to overlook their fact romanticizing some other times (I'm not implying you're doing that, just speaking generally). The only successful revival of a language as a "full" language that I know of is Hebrew - and even that, if we're to be honest, is largely by making it half-conlang (they were literally inventing vocabulary items, so you have stuff like machshev, "the thinking thing", for the computer and alike), and there was a big national and political idea behind that. It just had a unique strength which is not likely to happen in the case of Latin, since it's not a "national" language. So why force it? If it's because it works to help somebody learn better, okay - different things work for different people who have different goals. I'm just speaking from my perspective. :)

A potential human who is at the present point a bunk of cells parasting inside of you, and who'd have a miserable life if you were to borne him into an extreme poverty - absolutely. Basic human rights also include the freedom of choice regarding your body. As long as it's inside of you, and especially while it's not formed yet but is only a bunk of cells, it's as any other parasite.It does live - but dependently on you. Nice if you let him live on you for 9 months, but you don't have to. That's my point - not that abortion is "good", but that nobody should be able to legally force you to allow anyone or potential anyone to parasite on you for 9 months. By the way - ever read Judith Jarvis Thomson's A Defense of Abortion? It's short and available online, basically I agree with it on most points. The problem is not in them being ALIVE.The problem is in them being alive PARASITING ON YOU. The only reason why they're alive is because you're alive too - which is not the case of a young child, which may be dependent upon you in some other ways, but not in the fundamental way as being a parasite on your body. Sure, you can help them become a full independent life for themselves - but you don't have to. And that's my point - nobody can oblige you to do that. EXACTLY.But it sure well parasites on you. See the answer above. Because it's killing a certain independent individual life, not a possible one parasiting inside of you. A very different situation. That's the problem. Language is arbitrary, how we "mark" things doesn't matter, essentially, you're making a logical mistake by connecting two things which may not be necessarily related one to another due to the language we use. You're comparing two incomparable things.(Slavery, by the way, is Biblically allowed, for all of you who use religion as an argument against abortion.) It's not geography - it's a fundamental condition that can't be avoided by any means (while slavery can by restructuring the society). A life necessarily begins in a parasiting way; there is no necessity involved in slavery. Slavery is not a "natural" state of things, it's socially imposed. Don't go into ad hominems, or read into when there's nothing to read into in the first place.It's killing a bunch of cells which would most likely be going to become a human had you not done that. But when you did that, it was a bunch of parasiting cells which were starting to form a fetus. It's not a child, it's human cells with a potential to become a child. If something is in the early stages of development, it's not "complete" yet. It's complete when it can live independetnly, not parasiting on another body. And that's basically a little before it's born, definitely not in the first few months. Again, I consider a fetus only potentially a child and a person.I don't approve aborting it morally in all cases, but in some I do. Legally, I think the option should always exist because the law shouldn't interfere with what you can do to your own body. Or should we be tolerant of cancer also because it's a poor living cells which just want to spread?

I learned Latin (and Greek) the "traditional way" at school, we read many original texts and all of us gained pretty high reading fluency. A little niece does the "experimental program" with Latin at her school. After 5 years of that, she can construct with no problems sentences about Roman everyday life... simple sentences, sometimes even more complex ones ("complex" meaning that she can put an odd subjuncitve in). Give her Cicero and she trembles, she can't even go through Caesar with any reasonable "reading fluency" (which is usually something you start with when you're done with grammar and syntax, after 2-3 years), not to even mention Virgil, Ovid, metrics in general... No way, it just won't go. She can technically "kinda speak it", but she can't do that which is the basic reason why she studies Latin - diachronic understanding, communication with the original text. We didn't do funny dialogues, we didn't speak Latin, had recorded texts, sang songs or wrote about Roman houses in Latin. Yet, regarding the primary motive why we studied Latin in the first place (and that was certainly not an imaginary communication which shall never take place in real life), we did a great job (and were far, far advanced when compared to what the little niece does) and went through all kinds of texts. Classics are studied out of different reasons that modern foreign languages, and therefore require different methodology, in my opinion. I think the analytical method works wonders for classics, just as the intuitive/immersion approach works more wonders for the languages you can apply it to naturally and then reflect upon their structure later. So I teach my daughters Latin and Greek analytically. With Latin it's easier, they have Italian as their native language so at least lexically "it's all familiar", and the inflections also aren't as killing as I feared they would be. With Greek it's harder, but they handle it fine. Hebrew, on the other hand, I totally don't do analytically. It's only when they had a decent background in spoken and written language, as well as general understanding, that I touched upon the issue of binyanim (they never thought about them analytically before) and the structure of the language - but that's because it's a modern language which requires different methods, so I let them learn it in the same way they acquired English and Italian.

It depends on how sensitive are your children, particularly the one you're "slowing down" with to study together with a younger sibling. Two years is not a big difference, but the older one's ego might be a bit hurt, he might feel less special or smart and take it negatively. At the same time, the younger one might feel pressured to do things above her grade level, and feel bad if she fails at understanding something quickly. My daughters are less than a full year apart (which gets crazy every year in that small period, less than a month, in which they're same age), which is a really small difference, but yet I feel it's important for the older one to know that she's a grade above (even though we don't strictly stick to the grade level materials, and they're both technically a year or two ahead). Math is the only subject they really fully do together, but that's because they both get it perfectly and have no problems with it, and the younger one has an extreme interest in math and wants to do stuff beyond her grade level, while the older one doesn't care about it, so they do it together (plus the younger one does some extra stuff for her own joy and with dad). For everything else, they never do stuff fully together, because the older one's ego can't stand it. They're okay with discussing stuff and casual chats, but not with going through the identical materials on the same level, even though the younger one could catch up with her sister in most of it, even all of it, if needed. I wouldn't call any of my daughters average - they're both very intelligent, actually, and have always done more, and better, and deeper - but they certainly could do the most together, even the whole curriculum, they could work together with no problems, but I don't want to hurt my older kid's feelings (she's such a sensitive child!) and make her feel "less smart", or to pressure too much the younger one. They sometimes read the same books, but that's the most I'll get. Even if I do the same material with the younger one (esp. in science, my younger daughters seems more science-oriented while my older one is totally humanities-oriented), I can't do it while they're both together, or the older one sinks down (she won't say anything out of politeness while her sister is there, but I totally get she doesn't like it). So we handled it the way that the younger one does extra stuff with her dad, stuff she's specially interested in and more math, and doing stuff with dad somehow doesn't count as "learning" in their eyes, so it's okay and nobody feels hurt. At the same time, I do more literature with the older one one-on-one. So... I don't know. For me, it doesn't work without hurting one child. For some other people, I've seen it working wonderfully and kids enjoy it. In my house it only creates tensions and depression, cause I have one beautiful, smart and soooo sensitive and insecure child so I need to be extra careful with her and make her feel special enough to have her own "grade".