I had cars in mind in this case, but at times when using this process and deciding whether to let my kids participate in something, I have chosen various activities to compare to. When my husband expressed concerns about the safety of letting the kids participate in certain sports, I looked up actual numbers and types of injuries within various sports, and we found that sports we perceived to be more dangerous weren't necessarily the ones that were more likely to result in injury. My dh's family is very risk averse, and when the olders were little, I used this process to help dh lighten up on them doing basic kid things that his family never allowed, like climbing a tree. Stats on child deaths and injuries from car accidents are good for comparing to many things like this. I really wish we had better information on a lot of things around covid, though. Long-haul cases, not just hospitalizations, and especially for my own decision-making process, I wish my area had been tracking what percentage of the population has had confirmed COVID and been vaccinated. We know what portion of the population has had it, and what portion has been vaccinated, but not how much overlap there is. Because there is such a high rate of vaccine refusal in my area, I don't know if we will ever get the vaccination rates that we should like. I would like to know what portion of our population likely has some form of immunity, either natural or from vaccination, to help base our decisions of if/when our family needs to lock down again to isolate my ds7.

There are indeed, but extremely few compared to the number of non high-risk kids who have had covid. I think that, despite our natural tendency to make decisions about what risks to take based on our fears, it makes more sense to try to base those decisions on actual mathematical probabilities. We don't have enough info to be exact, but we do have enough for rough estimates. If actual risk to my kids is less than that for other activities that I would find acceptable, does it make sense for me to rule it out based on a higher perception of risk? This is my logic process. I've got no issue with others using different criteria in their own decisions, but she asked for our opinions. My general rule of thumb for myself is that if riding in a car is significantly more likely to result in my child's death or injury than another potential risk, it is probably silly of me to greatly fear that risk while driving around with my kids in the back seat.

-School in the morning (particularly work on dd12 catching up from getting a few days behind in her math class) -Pack away the sorted hand-me-downs for older ds to grow into -Finish the last of the kids’ laundry so we are ready to do the sorting tomorrow for what we do and don’t need to buy for fall -Find a babysitter for Tuesday -talk to neighbor kid about checking on/feeding the goats and rabbits while we’re out of town -Make vet appointment for the dog -Drop older three kids off with babysitter -Drive through the horrible construction traffic to ds7’s appointment for the fitting for his new leg brace (I expect this 45 minute appt to take ~4 hours with travel time. Ugh.) -Social get-together with the ladies at church, for the first time in more than 1.5 years

If you are vaccinated and not immune compromised, you don’t have immune compromised household members, and your unvaccinated children are not high risk, I don’t see the problem. The statistical chance of you bringing home delta and someone in your family being severely affected by it is very low.

Thank you.

So we've settled on life science, going reading-heavy with some documentaries, reports, and projects added in. I'm building a long list of books and other resources to work with. I think this format will really work well for fitting around the weeks when I am spending tons of time on medical stuff. Rather than having the youngers do their own thing, I am going to have ds 9 (4th) do this with his big sisters, albeit with lighter writing assignments, and just let ds7 tag along when he feels up to it and let that be enough for his science. Thank you all for your help.

https://minivoyager.com/travel-kits/ has great options by age. They are aimed at traveling with kids, but also just have good ideas for busy little people.

Here are my updated plans: dd12 (7th) Online: One more month of AOPS Intro to Algebra A, then she is going to do Intro to Counting & Probability during the Fall. In the Spring, we will probably do Intro to Algebra B. This year she will also be taking CLRC Online Intermediate Literature & Composition, CLRC Online Intro to the Renaissance and Early Modern World, and CLRC Middle School Latin II. Semi-Independent: The Thinking Toolbox & maybe some of Think With Socrates, reading-heavy homemade Biology with lots of books, some documentaries, and some projects thrown in. Independent: Xtramath, Spelling by Sound and Structure finishing 5 and then 6, Spencerian Handwriting In-Person: Piano Lessons, Youth Group, maybe Judo dd10 (5th) Online: CLRC Online Beginning Drawing in the Spring Instruction: Math-U-See Prealgebra/maybe into Algebra, depending on how quickly we move, AAS 4, MCT Voyage minus the vocab Semi-Independent: OUP Medieval and Early Modern World books for history, reading-heavy homemade Biology with lots of books, some documentaries, and some projects thrown in. Independent: Xtramath, Spencerian Handwriting, Orbiting With Logic In-Person: Dance class, Youth Group in the Spring Maybe???: German tutoring on LanguageConvo.com. Still not sure about this. dd10 really does not learn well with an online format, and made extremely slow progress when doing this before. Unfortunately, I do not have the time to teach her German myself in a satisfactory way and I have been unable to find any in-person options here, so I am not sure what else we could do right now. ds9 (4th): Online: Finishing up the last of BA Online, then AOPS Prealgebra self-paced, Spanish tutoring on LanguageConvo.com Instruction: SOTW 3, MCT Voyage level (combined w/ dd10) minus vocab and poetry, Music of the Hemispheres Semi-Independent: Reading-heavy homemade Biology with lots of books, some documentaries, and some projects thrown in. Independent: Spelling by Sound and Structure 4, Pictures in Cursive, Logic Liftoff In-Person: Cello Lessons, maybe Judo ds7 (2nd): Online: BA Online 4 Instruction: OPG for phonics, Music of the Hemispheres (w/ds9), Treasured Conversations, either AAS or Spelling by Sound & Structure Independent: Pictures in Cursive, Xtramath Maybe: Japanese tutoring on LanguageConvo.com. He loves this, but we really need to lighten his load, and we don't know from day to day how much he will have the energy for, so there would probably be lots of lessons paid for but not used. Tagging along when he's up for it: SOTW 3, homemade Biology In-Person: maybe soccer ds -3.5 months due in November

We have made some good progress since this post. Dd10 still has bad days, but they are getting to be less and less frequent. I started Music of the Hemispheres with my boys and Building Poems with dd10, and so far it is going well. (I’m very pleased that keeping the boys together for MotH is working. I had my doubts about ds7 being ready for it, but he is doing great, and being able to combine them for poetry will save me a lot of time in the long run.) I found a cello teacher for ds who teaches one day a week in the town next to ours, and will have a spot available in a few weeks when one of her students heads to college. I didn’t expect to find someone so close, so that is nice. I am letting the kids sign up for some small-group activities, knowing that if ds7’s blood counts drop I will have to pull them. They’ve been missing everything for so long. Ds7 really wants to play soccer again. His doctor says he’s okay to try, if it is outdoors and his blood tests are coming back okay. At the same time, he is falling while walking around the house and is nervous of going up the stairs, and struggling to make it through an hour of physical therapy before he is too fatigued. We have ordered a new leg brace for him that will hopefully be better. I am really anxious about this, but feel like I need to let him try. We will talk to the coach about having him do short bursts of time with long rests in between. I’m preparing for the school year and second guessing myself on my oldest’s work this year. We are outsourcing a lot of her schoolwork in the interest of both lightening my load and not having her academics fall off when my teaching is interrupted by medical concerns. And individually I think she is fine to handle all the work. Even together, I think she will be okay with the class load. (It’s only one more class than she was doing at the end of last school year). I guess I could just use some reassurance that having her work at her ability level is the right choice, even if we don’t know anyone here who’s kids do work on this level. ETA: She’s doing what I would consider high-school level work in several areas, but it is well beyond the challenge level of the academics offered at our local (really bad) high schools.

Thank you very much. I’m tentatively thinking biology, but I’ll talk to them and see what they are wanting to learn.

This one doesn't really sound like our style. The "make a booklet" and "make a poster" type projects drove me crazy when I was in school. Thank you for the idea, though.

I'll look into these more.

I love the idea of doing gardening/horticulture with a journaling component, especially for my dd10 who loves her plants and art. This might be a wonderful option in the spring that could be pretty independent.

This sounds like a good option, but we can't afford to add another online class this year. (In either our time or money budget. Oldest is taking a number of online classes this year.)

I would be okay with a primarily-reading approach w/ documentaries added in, but feel like we need more of a plan/structure than last year to make this approach work well for us. I will look into Beautiful Feet science, I am not familiar with those. 8, do you have any recommendations for which books and documentaries you would recommend?

Do you have any recommendations for a science that can be done without intensive teacher involvement by 10-12 year olds, that is actually worth the time? We have done Dr. Nebel's books in the past, and loved them, but recently I am maxed out. This past year the olders did some of Ellen McHenry's The Elements independently, we did a few MEL science kits, and memorized the periodic table song. For the entire year. And that was okay, for crisis mode, but I don't want my kids' science education to stay in crisis mode long term. I think I will enroll my youngers in a fun online class from AAA, but I need something that doesn't involve a lot of teaching time for my olders. (My 7-year-old is on chemo and I am having a baby this Fall.) Is there anything like this that they will actually learn from? I know it's a long shot to find anything that is largely independent and still quality academics, but I don't want to bother if it is just going to be fluff. This is for 5th & 7th grades.

Maybe things are different in your state, but this is definitely not true here. An easement does not mean it is public property. We have an easement for our neighbors to access their property. There is a specified part of our back yard that we legally cannot impede access through for foot or vehicle traffic, but it is absolutely our personal property. We just have limits on what we can do with it. (I am very curious whether the law is different in your location or if the cop was just wrong. Unfortunately, policemen are often not given sufficient education on the legalities. My dh used to give training sessions to the local police departments on the legal side of things.)

My BIL and SIL and their kids all have covid right now. Both adults were vaccinated a month or two ago, one with Moderna and one with Pfeizer. SIL said it has been about like a bad head cold for them, but with the addition of loss of her senses of taste and smell for a day or two, but they are already back now. BIL has also had some fatigue and so has been sleeping several hours longer each morning than he normally does. Mostly they're just trying to figure out how to entertain the bored, disappointed kids that are quarantined at home instead of having their planned visit with Grandma before the school year starts back up.

Once dh is retired and the kids are grown, I can envision that life and look forward to it. While we are still healthy enough, I think we will have many adventures together. I used to worry about the in-between years, though. My “career” is motherhood, and I did not like the idea of trying to figure out what to do with myself while I am “retired” and dh is still working. But then, I was looking forward at launching my youngest when I am 46 and dh is 51, and likely a long space of time between then and retirement for dh. Now I know that I will have a ten-year-old then, and a ds18 who may still need a great deal of parental help with managing his medical care and could possibly have his launch into adult independence delayed by medical necessity. I do fully intend, though, that once my son is independent and his health stable, we are going to travel and have some adventures together if we can in any way manage it. The baby can just be the lucky youngest who gets taken along on all kinds of things we couldn’t do with the olders.

I don’t doubt this is a real problem, but I don’t think this is the issue with the people my dad works with. They have significant assets and affording care as they age isn’t a concern. But with no financial incentives to remarry, most of the women do not and most of the men do. Maybe it’s related to natural human tendencies in relationships across various societies through history towards either monogamy or polygamy, but hardly ever has their been a society that regularly engaged in polyandry. There seem to be many women on this thread in loving, committed relationships saying they wouldn’t marry again. Not because they are unhappy with marriage in general, but they have already done that, already committed to one relationship, and have no inclination to repeat that process. Is there a generally stronger tendency among human males to form multiple attachments/relationships in their lifetimes, and a generally stronger tendency among females to form only one?

His experience is specifically with the demographic that is in need of very specialized high-end estate planning. There are many women outside the same demographic/widowed group to draw from.

I think it is often younger women, not older widows.

My dad is in estate law. According to him, most people think they will not remarry. Women usually don’t. Men usually do.

I'm feeling obtuse. I never realized that a flu shot only lasts 5-6 months. I mean, I knew you have to get a new one each year, and I guess my brain just assumed that meant it lasted something close to that. I've always tried to take the kids to get theirs at the beginning of September when they become available, and assumed if they later caught the flu anyways that it was a different variety. Wow, now I feel dumb. Makes me anxious about when to get my kids' shots this year. My youngest will still be getting his with everyone else, but the likelihood of his actually working is extremely reduced because of the chemo med he is on. And the likelihood of him catching the flu (and of it being bad) is worsened by the same med. And if he does get really sick, we have to worry not just about the sickness itself but about the consequences of potentially interrupting his treatment. Argh!

I wonder if this difference is partly connected to the more likely life choices of women with very little sex drive. I know someone like this who speaks openly on this topic with me. She rarely has any desire for sex. She always wanted to marry, to be a mom, to have a life partner to form her own family unit with. Most of the time, when they have sex, it is because she is "meeting him halfway", and not for her own satisfaction. I wonder if many women similar to her may be unlikely to seek out any sexual partners in general (of any orientation), but may be likely to seek (heterosexual) marriage for similar reasons to hers.