We do not do grades at our house, we just plug away til it's learned. So it is difficult for me to do a transcript. Unfortunately, the school is requiring one for my daughter to do dual enrollment. Do you think this will do? They are all marked P (for Pass) except for the one she has not yet finished. I am also wondering about the last paragraph...

Oh, Doran, thank you so much. That was exactly what I needed to know. (I forgot to get netting when we went to town: next year I will get it really early!)

Thanks so much, Ginger :) The problem is I messed up by not getting netting on it in time and living in a humid place and having bugs all over them... :( That's why I was hoping for advice.

I thought the article was kind of odd. 1. Notice that most new inventions come from the US and are then adapted in Asia and re-sold to us. 2. All that new stuff in China wouldn't be there if it weren't for the Olympics (China has that face thing), and it will be old pretty quickly, like when they let the people and the pollution back in. 3. I'm sure that China's rural landscape looks a lot different from ours. For example, we have electricity throughout our rural areas and have had for some time now; I don't think that's true in China.

OK, for the first time in my entire life, I grew sunflowers, not little ones but the Very Largest Ones. They came out beautifully :) But then they started looking very buggy; there was brownish stuff all over the seeds and definitely some bugs in the heads. I had tasted a seed several days ago and it was all right then, the backs were yellow and the heads had been all bent over for a couple of weeks, perhaps. So now I have these buggy, brown-stuff–covered sunflower heads and the seeds won't come out !!!!!!! And I don't know what to do as we live in a very humid area at the best of times but right now it is particularly humid. We do not have any unused space in our house to put them in... So, as you can see, I would really really really appreciate some advice :D I think I have about 15 or more heads.

I am going to make a list of chores I don't want to do. Nya ha ha!

I just imagine that the person is having a bad day, is feeling overwhelmed, etc. So, maybe you could imagine that these people are terrifically overworked at the school, and then go home and have to do everything there, so they are all exhausted. Try and be as nice as possible to them.

First, I want to thank everyone :) What an incredible variety! I guess we're doing ok then, because my children have all reached this level ;) Oh, I was talking about hands, only up to the wrist. You can tell him my father used to go for our elbows with the knife handle when we were careless enough to put our elbows on the table (gasp!), but I don't think he ever "caught" any of us (and he was kinda slooowww about it, which leads me to suspect that he wasn't really trying ;) ) So if he tries that, definitely dock him for disrespect!!!! A couple of other people mentioned this too, vice versa for left-handed! My father's a leftie, so he just naturally did what our mother had to work hard to instill in us, which was not to put the knife down and switch hands... (I seriously don't get that!!!) And I used to read at the table too, until they noticed I had a book in my lap :( Thanks to everyone! I guess I will just not worry too much about it all, then, if y'all aren't!

I was raised that you keep your left hand on the table when using your right hand for your fork, but I think this is a European rather than American custom. It drives me crazy to see my children slouching lower and lower to the left when their hands on on their laps. What do you all do? Thanks :)

I am actually even less together in real life than I am on here!!!!!! (and I don't use so many !!!! irl, either!)

For what it's worth, what I have seen is that ultimately it all depends on the relationship between the children and the parents. I've seen hsing families where the relationship was not so great, and ps families where the realtionship was very close, and the latter had happier outcomes than the former. So, hang in there and stay close to your children. And you know, I'm going to be a little contrarian here. Just let you husband know about all the hard parts about the school issue, put at least part of the burden on him with the work, or let him "suffer" a bit, but all with an extremely nice attitude, cheerfully long-suffering. Keep your relationship with him good, too, and then if he comes to the decision that he has made a mistake, it will be much easier for him to come to you and tell you that he has made a mistake.

I have found that usually one decision is more irrevocable than the other. So, taking someone else's example: selling one's house. If we sell, it's sold and there's no going back. If we stay, well, we can always sell the house later if we decide to. If I can't decide, I stick with the revocable choice. Another thing I think of is something a friend of mine said when I had found a Really Great Bargain—I knew it was a dumb thing for me to buy at that time, but... It was Such a Great Bargain!!!!! So I told my friend all about it, and she kept saying, Sounds great, sounds great, and I finally said, You're supposed to be talking me out of this! And she said, Oh, a great deal like this will come up again another time.

I feel clearer now... I guess what I'm trying to say is, should she learn to learn in the way it is usually taught, which it seems people used to be expected to do and which they managed to do, or should accomodations be made? I don't think this child will go far in math, but i know that now, a lot of math is required, certainly more than what was required when I was in school (o, those many years ago!). On the one hand, I hate to "torture" her, on the other, if she's going to end up being taught math in the regular way, I don't want her to be in a position where that doesn't work at all for her, iyswim. (Are there required math courses in college?)

I am just puzzled by the fact that they used to teach in huge classes and teach a lot more, and so presumably they did not individualize teaching! but now we are looking into learning styles and all that and our education doesn't really seem to be improving.... So I am just not sure if I should be considering learning styles wrt my children or just pushing through. I have one daughter who is having a huge amount of trouble with one topic (and others who have had problems before)—is this something to stick out through or make accomodations for, or what? Has anyone looked into this and figured it out? Or maybe, has anyone made changes for learning styles and had huge improvements? I'm just not quite sure what to do, esp as I have a tendency to be really "nice" about stuff and I regret that (because we fell behind in some areas) so I actually tend to be more disciplined with my younger children. I'm so confused! Thanks!

Don't have time to read the other posts, but I didn't walk til I was 18 month old (and I heard about it for decades!!!!) and now I walk just fine :wink: ;)

Wow, 27 pages!!!!!! My jaw is down to the floor!!!!! I didn't read all the posts.... but just wanted to say I am looking forward to it :) Altho I suspect it will take a few days!!!!! I think it must have been the generous application of chocolate which kept everything peaceable!

Thanks Pam, I'm going to use that line on my son... And thanks to you, too, Pamela, and how did you learn all these different exercises? Are they in a book, or did you just figure them out? That sounds interesting; it's something I heard about but not very much. PS Sorry it took so long to thank you but I just now figured out how to run a search for my posts instead of looking through the pages one at a time (and periodically missing the one I'm looking for!!!).

Thanks, Michelle and Beth. That will be very helpful :)

Thanks everyone for the great suggestions :)

I fit the list of symptoms for ADD but have resisted getting anything done about it. But reading the thread with all those mothers talking about how they were helped by the meds made me wonder, how do you get diagnosed? And how do you find out which is the best medication for you? Thanks!

I have 4 children, and after a few years of dealing with this, I have figured out that if I am teaching them together, we fall behand because they take turns getting sick. I absolutely cannot teach them all everything separately, but I also cannot keep them all together because that is how we get behind. I am Totally Stuck!!!! While they each have subjects they do independently, one is too young to do very much on his own (and he is extremely extroverted and has trouble [but is improving] just playing on his own); and there are several subjects that if we are going to progress on, I need to teach, not let them do it on their own. So, what do you all do when this happens? Mine usually go through colds one at a time (overlapping only on the weekends), once every tow or three months, so it's not a minor or infrequent occurence. (My oldest actually doesn't have colds all that often, but she does have Other Problems, iykwim) Thanks very much!!!!

It's better to investigate it enough to rule it out or diagnose it, one way or the other.—Yes, that's kind of what I need to get a handle on. I'm just planning to take them in more often until we all learn enough about it to judge on our own how they're doing. Right now, I feel like I thought they had colds that kind of wiped them out, but now I'm thinking that they could have at least been helped to feel more comfortable if they were indeed having more trouble as a result of the cold than I thought. (Gee I hope that made some sort of sense!) If they have an idea of how they feel and how the meds help them, and I do too, then we can react better to whatever is going on. Thanks very to you, and also to all the others, who helped me understand all this better.

Oh, that sounds awful! Thanks so much for letting me know. My children have all been coughing a lot because there was a fire near us, and it took a while to put it out. We got a fair amount of exposure to smoke :( so I just put it down to that, but I think I am now glad that it's time to take them in anyway... I appreciate your telling me about what happened with your son, thanks.

Mrs Mungo, I am sorry that happened to you. Do you mind if I ask how bad your son's asthma was? (Maybe I should do more about this!)

Well, I finally actually talked with the NP. Boy, is my face red!!!! Apparently wheezing and asthma are the same "number" so any wheezing is considered asthma, but unless they have repeated problems with it, it's not considered a problematic sort of asthma. I don't exactly got it, but to me it's like using the same word for two different things, so I'll just go along with that. But it's not like when I was young and if you had asthma, you were Stuck for Life—now they assume most cases (considering how they are doing this sort of dual dx) will be grown out of. I had the same concerns about insurance and things like military, where having been dxed will cause problems, but apparently that's only a problem if you have wheezing as an older teen or adult, not for children. So, I've had to totally eat crow on this one... but this is one of those weeks which is to teach me humility, kwim? Anyway, thanks everyone, for all your help :) I have a much better understanding of the whole thing now.