@Wishes, if I were to offer you some encouragement---at 6 I thought my kid had a lot more labels than he actually did. A lot of his "attention issues" actually stemmed from him not being able to see well and feeling posturally unstable as a result. He had to keep moving around in order to know where his body was in space, and he was constantly repositioning his head/eyes to try to get an image to resolve. There's some pretty strong anecdotal evidence between functional vision issues and subitization issues. You may find some stuff resolves a bit. My kid still struggles with math, but it's not nearly what it was before we resolved the vision stuff. If I were to add another thing to your windshield of stuff to be looking at, it'd be primitive reflexes. I thought PeterPan was a bit nuts when she brought it up a long time ago, but decided to take a leap of faith--if it worked, great, I'm ok with a placebo pill, iykwim....and if it didn't work, then I was out nothing but a bit of time. Uh, yeah, so I was greatly humbled on that one and I bow to PeterPan and her awesomeness. Do a bit of a search on YouTube about integrating primitive reflexes, take a leap of faith, and see what happens with your kid. Look specifically at ATNR, STNR, and TLR for sure.

I agree with the first link you posted, and it matches my experience. If I were to add more to that opinion, it's that I think that pencil pushups and computer exercises (which we tried first) are insufficient and can often delay access to quality vision therapy that actually helps. My pediatrician and our first ophthalmologist were both not really qualified to understand the issues or what vision therapy is---going to a pediatric ophthalmologist who was qualified finally got us hooked up to a COVD who was qualified to do the therapy work. My ds also had mild exotropia that did resolve with therapy--but more extreme exotropia would have me leaning towards surgery. It really depends on severity and how it's affecting the kid. My dh has exotropia when he is tired or about to be sick---it's not a big enough of an issue to address. He just knows he needs to go to bed. 😉 Our insurance did not cover vision therapy. We stretched sessions out the first time by putting a lot of homework time in between. I'd try to find someone who will give you homework, or use the books I listed above to work on things at home (bal-a-vis-x is what I would recommend you start with, fwiw--you do the brain integration work while they work on saccades or other things that require specialized equipment).

I would give a bit of grace. I know when I visit "home" that I often have several things all crammed into just a few short days....it's difficult to meet with everyone who would like to see me. She could have been in "work mode" and just forgotten all of the social niceties to smooth that over. I know you haven't seen her, but how is your contact otherwise. If it is fine otherwise, I wouldn't worry much. If you haven't heard from her in six months, I'd assume that she has moved on mentally.

One of the other things I think we really have to reconcile, as humanity, is that there isn't going to be a "good" place in the coming decades. Even if you are in the Great Lakes region (often heralded as the safety zone), the amount of temperature change coming from you is still going to result in widespread species loss and change, you're still going to be in the smoke zone from all of the trees burning in Canada, you're still going to have more severe hail and high precipitation events, and you're going to have longer periods of drought. In some ways, areas that are going to be deeply impacted by sea level rise actually have more tools for adaptability available to them than "safer" places because they can draw upon resources to move/adapt/preserve highly valuable ports or industries. So, yes, a lot of residential Miami is going to be ever more super wet soon---but the ports will all be elevated and connections to them preserved as it's one of the largest ports in the US.

This is us too. Where we live, there isn't much danger of our home being burned over. But, if the insurance companies leave the state, we are just as affected. IMO, I think there should be stricter building codes around urban/wildspace interface AND there should be zoning codes where there are simply no-build areas. Many of the smaller cities that have burned over here are small villages that are essentially forest wrapped. Residents of those cities would have had much better chances of not being burned over if they had more defensible space around them, spark guards on their roof ventilation, fiber cement siding, etc. I think we should be working harder to preserve financial feasibility for the insurance industry. We can't do much about the fact that we're going to have more destructive storms (a lot of non-coastal areas have 4" hail), but we can absolutely build out our infrastructure to handle more severe rains and zone housing so that people aren't in areas that we absolutely know are going to flood out or are likely to burn out.

Some states have statutes which really limit what insurance companies are allowed to do—it seems to be pushing some companies out of state altogether rather than allowing them to continue selling in lower risk areas.

Can we talk about this a bit? We’re hitting some tipping points with the number of climate related crises happening and soon to happen. I think at this point that most people are aware that home owner’s insurance companies have been pulling out of high risk areas—Florida (hurricanes) and California (wildfires) often make the news. Louisiana and Texas are probably next on the list (flooding) followed by Colorado (wildfires). Because homeowners are required by their mortgage companies to carry homeowner insurance, where private insurance companies will no longer bear the risk, states step in to act as insurers of last resort. States do not carry enough cash to step in should a major catastrophe hit. In Florida, the state legislature has decided to pass on costs to each resident (last I heard about $65k/person?) if a cat 5 hurricane hits. In California, no decisions have been made as to how to deal with underfunded claims. I’ve been watching the CAT (catastrophe) bond market, following First Street Foundation (risk by street address assessments), and the 5th National climate assessment and we have very good data about what is coming for us in terms of upcoming national disasters….and it is abundantly clear that the cumulative weight of all of those disasters is not something standard insurance companies are not going to take on in high risk areas and that states and the feds arent going to be able to continue to bail areas out. Likewise—USDA with indemnity claims for poultry culls, or crop insurance for crop failures in a world with increasingly unstable weather, and so on. Is this on anyone else’s radar?

There have been about 80 million birds culled in the US in the last couple of years due to avian flu. We’ve gone through several rounds of crazy high egg prices/low availability due to local producer infections. It takes 8-12 weeks for a producer to get back up to close to full capacity. Fwiw, the producers can make indemnity claims to USDA when they have to cull. Our tax dollars have been backing those claims up so far.

Ridgeland shut down their Kansas facility in December due to avian flu, but didnt cull then. I wonder what has changed.

In our current political environment I only see them closing schools if a significant number of kids are dying…meaning at least a couple in every grade. And, I think that is unlikely as well.

Her anxiety is running high. So glad you can find space to laugh.

I am sorry things are so challenging right now, Condessa. That is a lot to deal with.

Youngest outgrew her shoes this morning. Thankfully I had already bought ahead for her next size when I saw her shoes on clearance last fall. She has to wear a certain shoe to accommodate her orthotics and it is $$$. I am glad we arent scrambling for that now, but I am going to start scouting sales to see if I can luck into the next bigger size for her.

Are you a side sleeper? From a PT point of view, try the clamshell exercise. Also look at piriformis syndrome and the relief stretches for that. I dont use a gel pad, it doesnt seem to help me, but the above exercises do.

So no mothers work in your community? Every child in your district has a SAHP because there is no childcare available? That seems….statistically not likely. Childcare affordability is definitely an issue everywhere…but most families ARE two income families…so childcare must exist somewhere.

✅breakfast ✅dishes ✅laundry ✅school with Youngest ✅administrative stuff ✅dr appointment ✅schedule med refills ✅kid thing 1 ✅kid thing 2 ✅kid thing 3

I didnt get plants repotted, but I did a thrift store dropoff and a hardware store return.

It depended on his overall workload for the week. He usually did all of the top half of the assignment, but sometimes we chose to do only some of the prompts/questions.

I have kids in public school, I have a kid I homeschool. Hands down, it is cheaper for me to send them to public school in my current state. We have free buses, free meals, no enrollment or book fees, no technology fees. Our district will even lend you a hotspot if you dont have home internet access. Our district also has before and afterschool care available on a sliding scale fee and meal pantries for families and clothing vouchers. In a previous state, it was cheaper to homeschool only if you had multiple kids all under 8th grade. Lost salary dollars are one thing, but I will also say at my age I regret the lost social security credits. I listened to the propaganda about how expensive childcare is, how much you can save by making your own bread and thrifting clothes, etc. without contemplating seriously that having fewer kids and getting them to age 5 and into school would have freed me up to return to work a lot sooner. Once you are out of the workforce a while it is so much harder to break back in. You can only “save” so much. At some point the hard reality of limited income + rising expenses (rising faster than income) comes to bite you.

Fwiw, the short answer and essay prompts in the workbook mentioned above are stellar. Oldest really mastered short answer and essay writing using those.

In public school my kids write a 3-5 page researched paper per semester, give a couple of slide shows on assigned topics, and do some notebooking activities. With my homeschooled kid, we combined ancient literature with History of the Ancient World by Susan Wise Bauer. We used about 90% of the accompanying workbook. Our ancient lit picks were the usual—Iliad, Odyssey, Aenid, Epic of Gilgamesh, Herotodus, The Republic, etc. If I were to do it again, I’d scale back a bit on the literature. It was overly ambitious and more college level than high school level.

If you want to try something while you wait to get her in with the new dr., start her on fluticasone nasal spray. It should lessen the runny nose and as it is inhaled it might also clear some of the cough. She’ll have to be off of it if you do allergy testing, but it shouldnt affect peak flow readings or spirometry if they do asthma testing.

Growing pains tend to be legs not fingers. For my kids it was primarily hips and knees. I understand the concern. Finger pain + genetic inheritance would have me seeking baseline bloodwork of a crp and sed rate and such….especially if you are seeing bilateral joint involvement, fingers or toe involvement, and morning stiffness that eases. I am sorry.

I’ve been detailing our living room furniture while Youngest works on stuff. We have a leather couch + set of leather chairs due to allergies…and I really love how buttery soft they get after I condition the leather. I have a love/hate relationship with spring cleaning, but sitting down after in a really clean room is so nice. I’ve had to let my daily standards drop a bit with kids, but it’s so nice to finally have all older kids where things don’t get trashed immediately afterwards.

✅breakfast ✅dishes ✅laundry x4 ✅vacuum and dust downstairs ✅water plants ✅school with Youngest ✅touch up ceiling paint in kids' bathroom ✅rehang shower rod + curtain with fresh liner ✅wipe out bathroom drawers (some debris from weekend projects) + mop floors repot tomato seedlings + weed back garden