I have not read all the posts, most though.... I graduated High school a year early, was engaged at 17 and married at 17 and a half. My dh had just turned 22. I usually have to follow up this part with "No, we were not pregnant." In fact, we waited until we were married and neither of us had 'prior experience.' We were not what I would call financially stable, but dh had full time job, apartment, and health insurance. I had a part time job and went to college full time. We did just fine. We have been married 12.5 years. I believe that it really has less to do with age and more to do with maturity, personalities, and rather or not there are any ulterior reasons that coerce marriage. This may have been suggested already, so forgive me if so...but what about a brief pre-marriage seminar or counseling to ease the parent's minds? Dh and I went through pre-marriage counseling with our pastor. I believe that it was quite beneficial.

:iagree: It is weird how those extra letters help!

ok, I can't believe that I am admitting this. Hopefully no one is going to attack me or anything but....my 7 yr old dd has recently developed a passion for shooting. She has joined a jr rifle team at a local gun club that my father (former police officer) is a member of. It is actually a very bizarre story that maybe I will post one day soon. It turns out that she is a pretty good shot naturally.:001_smile: She says she wants to compete and wants to do it forever. She also wants her own rifle with a pink lizard on it. :001_huh:

I had a similar experience last March. I took the eye exam and my prescription changed ever so slightly, but when I picked up my new glasses I was stunned at the difference. I went back to the dr. 2 days later because it was hurting my eyes and making me dizzy. They double checked the glasses against the prescription and they matched. They told me to allow more time. I thought "no way, something must be wrong, I've never had this before..." Sure enough, I adjusted. As long as they have checked to make sure that your new glasses actually match the prescription, give it time. As frustrating as it sounds, it took me like a week and a half to fully adjust. I think I made it worse because I kept taking them off. :001_smile:

It could be something like Tapestry of Grace. They start at the beginning and do a 4 yr cycle and include reading. Other popular history/reading combos are Sonlight, Winters Promise, My Father's World.

I am seeing that TOG seems to be one of those "you love it or hate it" types. I love it. We started this year and dd loves it. You have a lot of options with it but, I don't feel guilty if I leave something out because I know that I will be coming back to it 3 more times before my dd is done. I feel very empowered with it. I can prep just enough to get her through what we are doing now or I can go deeper by looking through the prep. for the older ages for my own learning. If we want a week of nothing but "hands-on" learning we can do that. If I want a week with all book learning, we can do that too. If you like choices, this program is great. If you are intimidated by choices, this would not be for you.

I know, right! We don't even have a chandelier! Just kidding...it is better to be creative anyway.

Thank you so much. I feel much less unusual now!

How do you feel about your children in your bed? Do you tolerate your children coming into your bed in the night if they desire? Do you take a hardline at a certain age. Does anyone here do the "family bed" thing. I'll admit, I don't know much about the family bed thing. I only have the one dd. She has always been one to like getting in our bed. Both my dh and I are very tolerant of it. She just had surgery last thurs. and has since been in a separate bed in our room (we have a very large bedroom). DH and I still manage to find "our time" so it does not interfere with our marriage in any way. However, my friend is quite anti-kid-in-the bed. So, I'm just curious if there is any support for this sort of behavior or reasons why it is bad.

After jumping through hoops for 3.5 yrs just to get pregnant, I was so thrilled to be pregnant. I even told my irl best friend that if I so much as whimpered to slap me.:001_smile: I actually loved being pregnant. I remember remarking how awesome it was that I could feel my hips seperating. It was so cool, but people thought I was crazy. I did have heartburn and nausea the whole time but I got used to it. Labor would have been tolerable if I had been allowed to walk more. I walked for the first few hrs (my husband had the nerve to complain that his feet hurt from walking, can you believe that?!) Anyway, a bunch of stuff went wrong. I had to have pitocin which made the contractions sooo much worse and after 15 hrs of labor I ended up with a c-section. Needless to say, I wasn't expecting that!

I have tried to make a school room work. The house we rent has 2 extra rooms downstairs. One of them is like a bedroom and the other is like a den/office. The one like a bedroom, we use as an "art room." It was set up as a school room, but we never used it. Dd even has a nice desk in there. We mostly use the dining room, living room and whatever floor space we can find:001_smile:. I, like other posters, have a hard time focusing if the house is a mess. We end up schooling in the later part of the afternoon so that I can straighten up in the morning.

I know this is a little off the point but...I would say that many people hate the image of their body but that is not quite the same as hating the body itself. And, there are many other mental factors that way in as well. In the same way, individuals who suffer from self mutilation do not hate their bodies. It is often an expression of emotional pain and the feeling of lacking control in one's life.

It is such a shame that you have had an experience like this. Speaking as a southern baptist and a science lover (majored in biology), I have never felt that anyone should "check their brain at the door." Perhaps sitting down with your/a pastor would help. It could also be your specific church. I hope that you won't abandon an entire faith because of this experience. I don't mean to be out of line here in any way, but I will pray that you will find resolution for these problems.

I have home schooled from the beginning. I started because I felt that God called me to it. That is not to say that I believe God wants every parent to do so. I continue to home school, in part, because I do believe that I can handle my dd's education better. I do not think that all public school teachers are idiots or anything like that. I do think, however, that my dd would probably be labeled ADHD within the first hour if we sent her to school:tongue_smilie:. A standard elem. classroom (around here) is about 23 students and my dd would not get the same quality of instruction that I can give her one on one. They also would not teach her the things that I want her to learn.

This is our first year with TOG. We are on YR 1, Unit 1. We will be using SOTW as scheduled in the "alternative" section. I have only one, 7r old, dd and she is LG. We chose the "other start" as outlined. We started in wk 4 instead of 1. So, we will go through wk 4, 5, 6, 1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 9. This is in-order of history instead of the order the Bible was written. When we repeat in D stage we will go in the original order.

When dd was younger and on a mid line, I practically had a knock-down fight with a nurse. DD had been on a pic line and that was removed and 2 wks later she was put on a mid line (which goes from arm to about shoulder as opposed to the heart). Because we had done a line before, I knew what was normal behavior for my dd in relation to the line (she was 2yr old). Well, dd started screaming every time we had to flush the line or put the meds in and I saw seepage around the line. I knew something was wrong and I was 99% sure that the line was broke somewhere. We went back to the hospital and the nurse kept saying that the line was fine. This went on for an hr and I refused to leave until it was fixed. Finally, she did a full flush and sure enough dd's little arm bulged and then blood ran out from around the line. The nurse apologized but I was still furious! If I had tucked tail and gone home, my poor little 2 yr old would of been in needless pain for I don't know how much longer. By the way its 1:43am here and I can't sleep because dd has surgery in 7 hrs. 6th surgery and I still become a wreck each time! Reading about ignorant doctors probably isn't best right now, huh? :glare:.

Personally I find her lawnmower example a little strange. If my dd took apart the lawnmower, my response would not be "put that down so we can do math" nor would it be "awe, look at my cute girl "learning" on her own." My response would be more like "you have thirty minutes to put that lawnmower back together or you'll be cutting the grass with a pair of scissors! Next time take apart something that belongs to you." Besides you learn a great deal more putting something back together then taking it apart.:001_smile:

I have never tried MFW but, I did try sonlight. The K program was ok, we were very laid back with it. Last year we tried core 1. I bought the whole kit'n kaboodle! I really only did the first 11 weeks. It felt disjointed to me. For example: we spent a whole 5 min. reading about early people groups and then read a chapter of Charlotte's Web and then a mother goose rhyme. It was weird to me. I have been told that the read a louds start to correlate to what you learning in history when you get to core 3. It seemed awkward to me. DD and myself both like to immerse ourselves (as much as a 7yr old can of course:001_smile:) into what we are learning not 5 min unrelated chunks. Plus, my daughter is a huge hands on, artsy crafty girl and SL just didn't do it for her. We started TOG this yr and it has been awesome! The weird thing is that everyone keeps saying how much prep there is to it and I can't figure out why/where. It was so funny when I told 2 ladies at my home school group that we started TOG, they looked at me and there expression read like "you mean, on purpose?" "why would you do that?":glare: My irl bf is a sonlighter so she doesn't quite get it either.:001_smile:

I wanted to add...that our church technically "loses" a lot of money on our AWANA program but we don't look at it that way if you know what I mean. Because, like I said, most of our kids come from homes where they can't afford it and some come from homes where the parent doesn't care and is happy as long as we are the babysitter for a few hours. Our church serves dinner and kids are only charged $1.00 to eat so parents can drop off their kids at 5pm to eat and then pick them back up at 7:30pm after AWANA. In these type of situations we, the church, have bought all their materials and uniform and the kids have to leave it all at the church because if it goes home it never returns. I sometimes wonder if we are the only church that goes through this sort of things. I'll admit that I am a bit of a softie when it comes to this sort of thing. I refuse to watch a child go without in our program and I know we, the church, gets taken advantage of on occasion because of this. Our volunteers shoulder the financial burden of the program. I don't know what we would do without them.

I am the AWANA Commander of our church's AWANA program. We charge a registration fee that covers the cost of the book, uniform, and awards. This varies slightly depending on the child's placement (i.e. cubbies, sparkies etc.) but its about $28.00. If you already have the uniform then the fee is about $11.00ish less. We charge dues of .25 for cubbies, .50 for sparkies, .75 for T&T and 1.00 for both trek and Journey. The dues help cover parties and our AWANA store. Only half of our kids ever pay anything. We offer payment plans and scholarships. Just yesterday we threw this huge children's festival and gave out "coupons" to everyone from the community that will allow them to pay $1.00 for the uniform and $1.00 for their materials if their children join our AWANA program! We had over 300 people attend our event. We have stepped way out on faith here, because we are on the smaller side as far as our church attendance goes. But I felt that God wanted us to do this. I can't wait to see what happens.

I appreciate that. My offense is for all the moms (especially new ones) that have to endure broad sweeping conclusions that do not take in to account that all babies are unique as is their circumstances.

My responses in red.

Don't be so sure. I can guarantee that no child was held more then our dd. In fact, I endured much *crap* from some people because, in their opinion, we were "babying" our baby too much. We carried her around a lot and held her much, but she had special issues and it was our right to do as we felt right. So, I ignored the people who were NOT given my child to raise and I held her every time I darn well wanted to or when I thought she needed me too. Our dd was a high maintenance baby, surgery at a day old, severe GERD, multiple ear infections, a MRSA infection, all leading us to her 6th surgery coming up and she's 7 now. I digress, due to my defenses being raised, I will admit. My point: don't be so quick to come to such sweeping conclusions. Especially ones so offensive.

My dd had to sleep in a carrier, as ordered by her Dr. She had severe GERD. We slept with the carrier in our bed in the middle, between our pillows. My irl friends thought this to be very strange, but it worked for us. She developed the flat spot and we had to see a specialist. We had to do these weird head turning exercises with her too. So, tummy sleeping was never really an option, in fact she hated tummy time with a passion! Nothing with our dd was normal, lol.

And, by the way, I am totally suffering from insomnia and you people aren't helping.:001_smile: