I still prefer to hang out with little kids lol. They are so much more fun and less emotionally draining for me lol.

I know very well about childhood emotional neglect, first hand, thank you. And I also know first hand about cps and courts not recognizing the abuse that it is and the lifelong problems it causes. You aren't the only one here who had a crappy childhood. My point was that a spoiled child with doting, over indulging parents could be not abused in any way (physically, verbally, emotionally, financially and any other way you could think of) and still be a bully and abuse others. They aren't copying what has been done to them, they just honestly don't have empathy for others because they have never have to think about anyone but themselves.

Ah I see. Yeah, that's not what I got out of your OP and I even ran it by DH before I wrote my post to make sure I wasn't misinterpreting something and he said he thought the same thing lol. It sounds like we agree though, at least fundamentally. ;-)

I just can't agree with that first blanket statement. Children whose parents refuse to discipline their child can have a child who bullies others. They are abusing others because they have never heard no or suffered consequences for their actions, not because they themselves were abused. You could argue the case that they were neglected by their parents but I don't think you could make abuse allegations stick on the parents. Children who are not adequately supervised at home can mimic behavior they see on tv, in movies, in pop culture, in their friend circles, etc. They may bully or hurt other children without realizing it is not socially acceptable because they don't have an adult around to guide them often enough to make an impact. There are many reasons this could happen and again, you could possibly argue neglect in some cases but if it is a single parent doing the best they can just to keep up, would you still say that this child who has learned to bully by watching others unchecked is the result of abuse from their parents? I just can't agree that 100% of children who aren't abused won't abuse other children. There are many ways that an abuser is cultivated. No one is immune and children should absolutely be supervised at all times, no matter how well you know the parents. Abuse happens more often between an abuser and victim that know each other than a stranger and a victim partially because it is so easy to become complacent around people you feel like you know well.

TSH is reactive, it is a hormone secreted by the pituitary gland in response to overall changes in thyroid hormones. It takes time for your body to see the overall change and adjust accordingly, hence the 6 week waiting period between tests. If you have the money to private pay for the tests, I'm sure you could test it as often as you want. Thyroid hormones (T3, T4) can fluctuate wildly, even within a single day. I had to have it tested several times throughout the day to prove a postpartum thyroid storm I had years ago. Just testing once a day showed normal one day, low another, normal again, then high then low then normal again.... but those tests were at least a week apart and because it was normal sometimes, the doctor was hesitant to treat me. So to get the doctor to connect the dots, I insisted on having 3 - 4 tests in one day. That showed how wildly it would fluctuate and I actually got the treatment I needed. My TSH was normal through all this because my body couldn't tell what the new normal was because the numbers were all over the place.

I disagree. As a teen I loved playing with little kids and would often get them all together to play games and keep them out of the adults hair at a function like the one described in the original post without being asked to do so. My children, regardless of their gender, did the same thing, even as teens, as they were always taught to make sure that every child present should be offered the chance to be included in group games. They knew that little children looked up to them as teenagers and they needed to show them how to include everyone in their games. BUT the biggest rule of all that I taught them, and abided by myself when I was a teen, is that you ALWAYS play with younger children in plain sight of the adults. You don't take them off to a bedroom or secluded area. Even if your intentions are noble, you don't want to create a situation where anyone can question your motives. If someone gets hurt or doesn't understand why you like playing with little children as an older child, you want to make sure that everyone, all adults included, can see for themselves exactly what is going on. It always made me sad having to explain that to them because I would usually have to start explaining it around the age of 10 and they were still so innocent themselves then and couldn't understand why someone would think they wanted to hurt another child or do bad things but assuming the worst is the world we live in sadly. In relation to the OP, I would tell the parents what was heard. But that would be it. Beyond that I don't feel it is my job to tell them what to do with that information. I would make sure that any function I am at, all children stay within sight of adults when this child is around, but I certainly wouldn't avoid him purposely. He will have outbursts, he will make mistakes but he has to learn how to function around other people. He can't do that in isolation. We learn how to act by watching others, no matter what our background is. However, I would have no problem asking the child and foster parents to leave (or leave myself if it isn't my home or social function) if things got out of hand or questionable with the foster child. This child needs grace as he re-learns how to function from hopefully normal people but I wouldn't alienate him until it was clear that he can and would cross a line that shouldn't be crossed. Just my opinion for what it's worth. And I absolutely agree that those foster parent should be reported. They are suppose to be guiding this child into a new better life, not branding him for life with his past. That is beyond cruel and disgusting to me.

Why the negative connotation with "good enough"? What are your long term goals with math? Do you expect to have math majors? Even so, there is nothing wrong with a basic basal math program that teaches them the basics of arithmetic. Sometimes, the "perfect" or best math curriculum isn't the one with the most creative approach or the one that teaches calculus to kindergartners, it's the one that gets done consistently with the fewest tears along the way, from you and your kids. If it teaches them all the basics of arithmetic in elementary school, then it is good enough and that's not a bad thing.

Yup. Right now we have a regular electric pump but the plan is to put the well on a solar pump with a medium to large battery bank. At least then we won't lose water when the power goes out. We're pretty lucky in that even though our area is usually the one of the last to get power back during a wide spread outage, only once in the 5 years we've lived here has the power been out more than a day or two. The area is small enough that they can get power back fairly quick in town and we aren't so remote that it takes weeks to months to get power back. There are some areas around here that have had to wait a month to restore power after a wide spread outage. I thought it was bad when I kept smelling this horrible smell in the car and decided to replace the air filter in the engine to see if that helped. When I took the old filter out, there was a dead field mouse under it in the air intake. Yuck! But removing him fixed the smell lol! Then we had a similar smell one time in the truck. First thing we checked was the air filter compartment but there wasn't anything there. Ended up taking it to the mechanic to find out what the smell was... apparently a large pack rat had climbed into the fan compartment and probably fell asleep and when we started the truck, he was dashed to bits by the fan (we never heard it somehow) and then cooked to the engine parts. We had to get the engine compartment cleaned to get rid of that. Other than those two incidents, we've just become experts at replacing wires. That's normally all they do if a vehicle is driven regularly lol.

Oh and I forget to add... living rurally, electricity isn't a given for us lol. We have alternative non electric heaters in the winter in case the power goes out and most people have a generator because the power going out is a frequent occurrence so you just have to be prepared lol. You just buy the biggest generator you can afford and grill a lot so as not to tax the generator too much lol. Oh and pack rats that live in the woods around our house regularly chew wires in our vehicles. lol

I grew up in a major metropolis (Phoenix) that has already gotten exponentially bigger since I last lived there in the 90's. We moved to an east coast town with barely 30,000 people when I was a teenager. I thought I was in, to quote Lightening McQueen, "Hillbilly Hell" lol Since then I've lived many many places as a young adult, some smaller, some bigger I always thought when I settled down and decided to stay in one place, it would be a metropolis if not back in Phoenix where I grew up. But, I have grown to like where we live now. There are a few places I would consider moving if the opportunity arose but we are happy here even if it isn't where we imagined we would end up. Yes, it is a lot harder to just go and buy this or that and specialty things will always have to be ordered but I learned patience living overseas where if we wanted things that we couldn't get locally it had to be shipped from the states and it was usually a minimum of 2 weeks, usually more, for it to get to us by mail. Waiting a couple of days for something to be UPS'd or Fedex'd to us here is nothing. And waiting isn't always a bad thing for us. Dh and I have both noticed that since we moved her 5 or so years ago, we are a lot more scrupulous with our purchases and we have far fewer impulse purchases even when we do go to the larger cities near us to go shopping. We are working on using our land to become even more self sufficient so we have to go to the store even less lol. I would have laughed myself silly if you had told young adult me that I would settle in a town with less than 5,000 people and probably called you a liar if you told me I would be happy about it but having experienced everything from a large metro area with multi millions of people to a tiny town with only 500 people and everything in between, living on the outskirts of a town of 5,000 feels just about right for us. I do wish sometimes we had a Walmart with actual selection or that I could go to Target or Lowes or Home Depot without it being a day trip but then I remember that if we had those things, we wouldn't likely be able to afford several acres of land and be able to do what we want with it like we are now. Everything is a trade off. :-)

Rural midwest/southern area, where we do in fact have feral hogs and they are mean and destructive but I would never eat one, yuck, lol, but the nearest town is 10 -15 minutes away from our house there are exactly two choices for groceries The mom and pop grocery store and wally world. And even wally world in town doesn't have everything you could want. I was just telling dh earlier that we are going to have to make a grocery/library run to the nearest larger city 90 minutes away because last time I went shopping at wally world here there were even more products that we buy regularly that they decided aren't worth carrying anymore. Sigh. And they don't have grocery pickup or delivery and trying to order things site to store is hit or miss with them. I don't think I've seen a Costco since lived in the desert southwest and I've never been to a Trader Joe's. The nearest one is 5 hours away in the nearest metropolis.

My suggestion is don't let perfect be the enemy of good enough. I've used or tried almost everything out there looking for the "perfect" curriculum and I've come to the conclusion that it doesn't exist. The closest for us was Math On The Level but I had to make, plan and execute everything on my own with just some guidance from MOTL. I don't have the time or brain power to do that anymore. lol So we are using MEP (which is scripted but I don't use the script) and some Beast Academy here and there. It's not a perfect match because ds is flying through the lessons right saying, "I like this, it's easy!" so we may do a week's worth of lessons in a day when his attention span will allow it. But I know eventually, we will come to lessons that are more challenging for him. It's ok for them to not be challenged with every lesson. If they understand the lesson well enough to cut you off in the script with the answer, let them just work the worksheet/workbook and only do lessons on concepts they don't understand. Just my 2 cents.

Yeah here you have to watch those big packs of pork chops sold at the big box store because they hide the ones in the middle that are more bone, fat and gristle than meat. It's more common here to ask the meat department of the small family owned grocery store to cut a pork roast for you into chops and you can tell them how thick you want it or how many you want out of the roast.

Huh, interesting. I normally find myself trimming some fat so they aren't super greasy. And I'm only about a day's drive from where you are... I wonder why they cut them so lean there.

Really? I've never had that problem with pork. We usually have some form of left over pork in the fridge for lunches from a pork dinner made within the past week. It is a favorite leftover around here.

Did they get warm at all? What was the longest stretch the power was out? If the power was off and on for only 24 hours and the fridge wasn't opened repeatedly or left open during that time, I would have checked to see if they were still reasonably cold when the power came back on for good. If they were, I wouldn't worry about them and just freeze them asap. If you just want to cook them all, throw a bunch in the crockpot and make shredded pork. Yeah you usually make it out of roast but porkchops will work too. You can cool and freeze the shredded pork and use it for BBQ pork sandwiches with some BBQ sauce or add some taco seasonings and make shredded pork tacos. Put a bunch on the grill. Eat a few, cut up the remainder to put on salads or in tortilla wraps. Use it the same way you would use grilled chicken. Honestly, you could saute a bunch as well and use it the same way you would use cooked chicken. Pork fried rice. Pork stirfry. Pork quesadillas...

THIS!!! I can spend plenty of time making sure that everyone is fully engaged in something that DOES NOT involve me and something about the clicking of keyboard keys, no matter if I'm just hanging out on a message board or working on something important that I have a deadline for, it seems to be the universal sound of "Mom (or My wife) needs to know every little obscure and non-sense thought I've had all day today." lol And they wonder why I get up hours before them all to have my "quiet time" :-P

@daijobu Thanks a lot now that song is going to stuck in my head all day and I didn't even watch the video lol :-P Speaking of daijobu, when we lived in Japan one of the first phrases we learned was the many different ways to say Thank you and how to bow when thanking someone. Thank you is pretty easy, "domo arigato". But "domo" or "arigato" by themselves can also be used casually to say something close to "Thanks". "Domo arigato gozaimasu" is roughly equivalent to "Thank you very much" with a deep bow. We had a Japanese family that we quickly became friends with while we lived there and the husband spoke fluent English and of course Japanese. I asked him one day how do you say "You're welcome" and he laughed and said do you really want to know? I was confused and said "um, yeah?..." The Japanese phrase/word for "you're welcome" is "Do itashi mashite" (dough-ee-tah-she-mah-she-tay). lol I had to get him to say it slowly for me several times before I had it down. All that to say, I don't care how someone says thank you or you're welcome. Unless you are a haughty teenager or you act like one, I assume that whatever phrase(s) you use are meant sincerely and it has more to do with the culture you grew up in than the actual meaning of the words. I often use "no worries" but I've never been to Australia. I honestly don't know where I first heard it or how it became a part of my personal venacular. Now, how you apologize is a big deal to me but I know that has a lot to do with my past and it is my hang up. lol

My son found a slap bracelet ruler that he loves. It is even rather masculine, green with dinosaurs on it , in case you have a boy opposed to "girly things". Ds keeps it in his pocket more than on his wrist. What about scented crayons, markers or colored pencils? I saw all of those at back to school sales. I also bought ds a bottle of glitter glue to make slime. His favorite part is getting to dump out an entire bottle of glue and not get in trouble for it lol!

Very true. I don't think they would forage for those things specifically either. I don't think any commercial animal food is going to be perfect because it just can't be. It's just not possible. What if we ate kibble once or twice a day every day? It might have a good mix of ingredients with most or almost all of our daily dietary needs but it would need fillers to stick together in little nuggets. It may need artificial or natural coloring to make it look at least a little appetizing. Then what about people like our dog with corn sensitivity issues or me with anaphylactic tomato allergy? Now there needs to be a different food for people like us who cannot have certain ingredients. And what works to make the kibble appetizing and uniform in appearance for most people might not work as well when you change the ingredients to deal with sensitivities and allergies. I know lots of people who feed their pets the cheapest food they can find because it is what they can afford. The first ingredient in cheap dog or cat food is often corn or some other grain. Yet their animals survive, and even thrive, in spite of the cheap food they eat everyday. Even the Victor brand that we use, that isn't the most expensive but isn't the cheapest either, has sorghum as the #2 or #3 ingredient, I can't remember off the top of my head. It may not be perfect or the best but the dogs eat it without any problem and it solved the issue we had of excessive itchiness in one of our dogs and had pleasant side effects of less stomach upset so even though it isn't perfect and isn't grain free (grain free is what I look for when we have to buy another brand because like I said, grain free is also the most likely to be corn free, at least in my area, but I still double check the ingredients every time), it does afford our animals a healthy and happy existence in our care.

When our mutt was rubbing herself raw from itchiness, the vet suggested we try to avoid corn in her food to see if it helped. It not only cured her itchiness but since we weren't going to buy special food for her and regular food for the other dog, we noticed both of them had less stomach upset symptoms (less stinky dog farts, less "OMG what the heck did you eat?" dog piles around the property, I can't remember the last time one of them barfed in the house, less bloat when they are done eating their food). Our vet recommends avoiding corn for most pets who would not purposely go look for corn specifically in the wild. Our pet rats that we used to have LOVED corn but if we didn't limit it they would make themselves sick on it. It was like candy to them and they would have foraged for corn if they lived in the wild. Many small animal foods mixes have a large amount of corn in them because it is cheap, keeps cost down and most small animals love it but it's not the best ingredient for them. It's not a decision we made lightly, we would spend a lot less on dog food if we bought them Alpo or Purina or some other brand that we don't have to buy at the feed store (since that is the only place that sells Victor around here) but a balance between cost and quality of life for the dogs and those of us who have to clean up their messes and what our vet recommends, going corn free makes sense for us. It's not based on ideals or elitism or anything like that, it is just what in practice has worked best for us and our various animals we've had over the years. I would never dream of telling someone else how to feed their animals unless they specifically asked for suggestions. It's just what works for us.

Yup, I know kibble needs a binder to hold it together. And I also know that cats are obligate carnivores lol. We've just noticed such a positive change in all our dogs, not just the one with sensitivity issues when we got away from food with corn in the ingredients. Do I think potatoes, legumes or grains are preferable to corn? No, but I can't afford to feed all our animals an all raw diet and since, if we do get a cat, it will likely be a house cat as a pet for animal loving ds, not a barn cat so hoping it gets its fill to eat from the abundant wildlife on our property isn't really something I think we can count on with a pet rather than a feral barn cat. If money were no object, I would feed all wet food with as little binders and extra ingredients as possible and raw food and let them hunt for snacks like the dogs do. Since money is a concern (and a big part of the reason we haven't obliged ds's request yet), I would rather keep corn out of any animal's diet who wouldn't purposely forage for corn in the wild. Grain free kibble, regardless of the animal it is intended for, seems to be the best way to guarantee a good chance that there is no corn used as a filler/binder.

We give our dogs Victor as well because it is the cheapest option that doesnt include corn. One of our dogs will scratch her back on the ground until it is raw when she has food with corn as an ingredient. We share a 40 pound bag with dh's grandma who lives next door. We have a catahoula/pitt bull mix (the one with corn issues) and a bassett hound. Grandma has a chihuahua. One bag lasts a little over a month usually. On the odd occaision that we have to buy another brand, we get whatever grain free we can find with no corn. None of the dogs are picky and will eat whatever we give them and ask for more lol. We live out in the country so our two dog, who are allowed the run of our 7 acre property, often catch their own snacks lol. They also get raw meat when I'm cutting up large cuts of meat to freeze. And of course they are always willing to clean up after their 6yo boy, whether it be food he dropped or licking it off his face. Lol Ive been looking into cat food. Ds wants a house cat. Sigh. Im pretty well set on a grain free kibble if we get a cat. And maybe occaisional wet food also grain free. Minus the grain free part thats how we fed the cats we had when I was a kid and they both lived very long happy lives.

I think the reason you aren't finding anything is because part-time homeschooling is rarely something that public schools in any state will allow students to do. I've heard of private schools sometimes allowing a part-time situation but not public school. If she wants to keep her daughter home just this year to homeschool to avoid this teacher, that would be a viable option but I seriously doubt this school is going to allow her to homeschool for just one class. The easier option would be to explain, in writing, to the school administration that due to problems her family has had in the past with this teacher, she is requesting that her daughter not be in this teacher's class. They can still deny the request but at least then you have written proof that you tried to mitigate the problem before it became a problem. Calling the school isn't likely to yield results. Always get these kinds of things in writing and any conferences need to be followed up with a written agreement as to what was discussed and agreed upon. Verbal promises can be easily broken but written agreements can be used to show when one party isn't holding up their end of the deal. Just my two cents FWIW.

My ex-husband loved a meal that his mom makes called Mince and Onions. Basically, you make mashed potatoes (or warm up leftover mashed potatoes), brown some ground beef with onions (dried minced onions work well if you have family members who detest detectable pieces of onion) drain the grease then use brown gravy packets to make gravy in the pan and then add the meat and onions back in. Serve the meat and gravy over the mashed potatoes. I would add peas and carrots or mixed vegetables sometimes and call it upside down shepherd's pie. Otherwise, I usually just made green beans with it. It's pretty quick meal to make if you have mashed potatoes from another meal or don't mind instant mashed potatoes. I also make chicken and noodles by boiling boneless chicken pieces in chicken broth, cut them up into bite size pieces when they are cooked and then add egg noodles. You can also add rice instead of egg noodles for chicken and rice. It's great on a cold night with plenty of pepper on it and cheap too.