But there is always universal agreement when the minder is being paid to do so, or has been explicitly delegated the responsibility of having charge of someone. (The charge need not even be a minor.) Then there seems to be way less excuse to run off for 1 or 2 hours while your charge was napping or applying what one calls urban survival skills. So, one mom might think it's ok to happen to empower herself to have dinner with friends while leaving her kids to watch TV, but would get super ticked if her room sitter or hotel creche staff (or even the hotel's baby listening service -- some hotels outside of the US have this [a hotel operator keeps a tel line to the room open and listens in constantly while you're away]) -- took the same 2 hr break. So parenthood seems to be a case where the minder may temporarily suspend duties associated with custodial care whereas babysitterhood had better not no matter how the sitter "feels." I have no real point to this, except I think it does not pay to glorify what are crafted situations of convenience beyond just that . No need to invoke lofty concepts of self-reliance, transcendentalism, etc. Most of the time it turns out ok. In cases like Leiby Kletzy, even a genuine, well-rehearsed, practical attempt at teaching life skills goes horribly wrong.

Thank you all for helping me understand. Can you imagine a small sketch of the photo, composed of dots, accompanying a dictionary entry of homeshooler? To me, a denim jumper correlates tightly with "uniform for trustworthy saleswoman of maple syrup and maple products." And now that I understand, it looks fine (if it's clean). True I wouldn't want one, but the canonical denim is better than a tight, 2 sizes too small, shredded Spandex jumper with no shirt underneath. (ala "Homeschoolers of Walmart"-wear)

The teaching of writing is not any where rigorous enough, and only the very best natural writers can excel. The amount of rigor I have seen in all but a few curricula is designed to make you feel good about buying pretty sheets of paper with small cartoons and straight blank lines printed on them. For example, if you were teaching music composition (a fairly tough subject), you would first need to make sure all the students knew the basics: how to read music (reading), could play music exactly as they have learned it (recitation), could play well-known pieces of music that everyone recognizes as good (modeling & imitation), definitely knew all their scales (grammar), could transcript music by ear (dictation), could write variations on well known pieces (interpretation or imitation), could tailor music to suit a particular audience (rhetoric). It would be dumb to throw a blank piece of paper at a kid and say, "Write me some good music." and call that teaching. It would be dumber to expect this method to work for 99% of the non-Mozartian music students. But is easy for the teacher to execute and easy to blame the student.

I kind of skimmed the other thread but truthfully am still not clear what a jumper is. It's not a sweater. Are they overalls?

Ok, (meekly) -- me either. I really don't like my kids showing up anywhere too slovenly or greasy looking either. Most of all -- no outgrown flood pants (or worse, flood sweatpants!) for them.

No matter how I look, I dislike ever being late and refuse to join this crowd. By extension, I do not like it when others show up late. Reliable and Unrepentant Tardiness seems to be a hallmark of homeschoolers in my area, and it is unattractive.

I think we all know the sort of mom who leaves her kids alone not because of some careful analysis of their maturity level or need for autonomy but because she herself cannot be bothered to think and/or plan ahead. The sort of person who views leaving the kids alone as some sort of smart phone app to be used whenever one feels like using it. I know a person who has left her very immature, under 8yo kids asleep alone in the middle of the night at pick up her husband from the airport. (There is a thing called taxis ...) I am not too interested in leaving my kids this sort of woman's "care" for playdates or sleepovers because I have no confidence she or anyone else will actually stay there.

Your head has not spun fully from gross misapplication of phonics until you have seen tattoos of names using kanji or hanzi characters in a gibberish Asian font apparently popular at Western tattoo shops. http://hanzismatter.blogspot.com/?m=0

Most of you all are way more obliging than I could be. I do not value or could not maintain close relationships with dyads involving 13yos. So something like this would get old real quick for me.

I like this blog called http://www.itsnotaboutnutrition.com. I think she would warn against high stakes eating. My father died of cancer when I was a kid and there was a lot of questioning all around. Now, some people think that obesity, visceral "white" (vs "brown") fat cause a constant state of inflammation within the body which promotes cancer. This tack may put impressionable young people on another anti cancer path by purely restricting calories and starving themselves. I would read over Dina Rose's stuff and play up more fresh fruits and vegetables if only because they taste good and look pretty. I'm glad the kids' father, your husband, has a good prognosis!

I think the disease model for cytokine storm, like other autoimmune disorders, is complex and multi-stage. For bad respiratory infections, it is not clear when some people's lung sepsis critically spills over and they go systemic. However, I do like this paper called "Into the Eye of the Cytokine Storm" and it definitely qualifies as a good explanation. It is complicated and does not give a feel-good answer as to how one can prevent a cytokine storm. The gist was: In simple terms, it is likely that during a severe acute infection, certain elements of the immune response need enhancing at times and need suppressing at other times. What is required of the immune system early in the infection, when the pathogen is dividing rapidly and reaching high infectious loads, may be very different from what is needed later, possibly only a few hours later, when either the pathogen is at steady state or the pathogen load is falling due to either the effects of appropriate antimicrobial therapy or the clearance of the pathogen by the immune response. Treating patients with the “right†immunomodulating drug but at the “wrong†time could worsen the clinical outcome. So even if elderberry syrup does what the above says it does, the exact stage of infection of when it is given matters and there is an appropriate time to stop. This I believe.

In the Dallas and SF areas there are shortages of flu vax reported. http://www.dallasnews.com/news/metro/20140111-flu-vaccine-hard-to-find-as-demand-surges-amid-record-hospitalizations.ece http://www.mercurynews.com/health/ci_24886922/state-health-officials-worried-about-rapid-rise-flu Canada seems worried. http://knlive.ctvnews.ca/canada-finds-half-a-million-new-flu-vaccines-may-not-be-enough-1.1634140 I do not remember a shortage of flu vax in recent history. Anyway I have tried to moderate our risk with flu vax months ago, an ample supply of handgel, and an unwillingness to visit hospitals or doctors offices right now. 9% of all visits are for flu (umm ... yuck!). I have not broken out the facemasks yet but it would not be unthinkable (I am just not sure they are effective is all) A lot of people have died of H1N1 this year. I read several stories on flutrackers. These people did not exactly crawl into a hole and die. A daunting number of them had family who loved them and took them to the hospital and clinic. They rec'd meds and were sent home. It's just that they were either misdiagnosed or the clinically proven therapies were ineffective. So for those people, a strange number of them young and seemingly healthy, their number was up once they contracted H1N1.

I agreed with the sentiment of letting the parents and kids take the lead over "differences" no matter what the reason. Most of the time they are just nice people and the GPS address of where they exited the womb is not a terribly interesting piece of information about them. I have an adult friend who is adopted who I suspected was adopted, but I never asked her about it for years until she brought it up. And I wouldn't have unless she brought it up. Reason? Well, she was obviously comfortable with our friendship without substantiating her early history and did not see being adopted as a defining aspect of her persona.

I went out and bought something called Almay CC Luminous Primer this morning. I have no idea what CC means, but this thing is my new best friend.

BB is, I think, a class of foundation makeup that serves a number of functions. It is a moisturizer, concealer, foundation, sunscreen and usually provides a matte finish. I have one by Sarah McNamara called Skin Miracle Transformer but it seems too drying in winter. Other favs people want to suggest? Let me know what you like about your BB!

I don't find it rude. I know it bothers some, but it's not necessarily judgmental to ask. I think it's far easier in general to stick one's foot in one's mouth speculating about the relationship between any two people. If I had to search for anything rude in such a question, it would be the objectification of a human as property in the question "Is he yours?" (==> "No, there are two owners on his certificate of title.")

I have personally gotten flu vaxed only once in the last ten years. The kids received their 2-shot course in the year they were born but never again. No major calamities at all in this decade. And then for some strange reason on a beautiful 72 degree day this past Sept, I developed an ill-fated feeling about flu epidemic this year and took all the kids and me to get vaxed b/c my unsettling feeling told me it had to be done THAT DAY, which it was. It's so weird because I'm not a premonitiony kind of person and the kids were wondering why are we sitting in a clinic when it's gorgeous out and we're not even sick. DH finally got his done on 12/30 after his mama developed flu. We were supposed to visit at Christmas but she warned us she had flu and it was bad. Of the 21 people who've died of flu where she lives only 2 were flu vaxed. Only 1 was over age 65. While the flu vax doesn't make you bulletproof, I will take such odds any day. Sometimes the cytokine storm resulting from one's "strong" immune system, typical of the young and healthy, is one's great undoing.

Seaworld has a number of parks in the areas your going, so a combo pass might be good idea. For example, Aquatica (a nice waterpark) is right across the street from Seaworld. Not far away in Tampa is Busch Gardens (amusement park) and visible from BG is another watermark in the Seaworld. Family. I forgot what that the waterpark is called.

A sleepover before even meeting, really??! Honestly, I would be wondering if this were really a female with a child writing at all or what other adults are involved.

But if you really are a racist, it is better to give open voice to your opinions and have others be able to identify you for reform (or ostracization) than to deny being a closet racist yet have people constantly wonder why you're such pill to select groups of people.

Does anyone's child have asthma that needs to be managed by medicine and peanut allergy? I want to understand if those with actively managed asthma stand a greater chance of anaphylaxis with peanut ingestion or exposure, or whatever a susceptible pathway is. I don't have a firm grip on actively managed asthma in general. Do you always carry a rescue inhaler in case it's needed? Does it usually have a foreseeable trigger, or can it strike at any time?

Given that her parents are Filipino or grew up in the Philippines, I am not sure that she even falls into her own top echelon races. Seriously, I didn't know it was possible to have strong opinions about a book that isn't even published yet. At least Miley actually twerked on camera for all to see; we didn't react to hearsay of someone describing a photograph of her obscene gestures.

The friend, if she is a normal person, would feel weird about wearing something new with tags on it. I think your 16yo orchestrated this stunt on purpose. Get your clothes back immediately. Let the chips fall where they may ... over and over again until Tuesday if necessary. Let it rain chips. But do not scream. If anyone is to appear unreasonable, it has to be the 16yo.

Too many homeschoolers show up way late to everything, expect accommodation, and act like it's no big deal.

No I don't worry about it. Getting cut loose at any time by any person is the risk you take when you act like a jackass (or worse) and never try to apologize or make up for it. The first lesson is to recognize bad news when you see it.