no problem at all. I have a just turned 19 year old going to college in the fall because I gave him an extra year before high school...it was not an issue in any way whatsoever for college admissions or for anything else.

Hamlet! But then, what ISN'T Hamlet about? But, yeah, my primary reading of Hamlet is all about trying to separate from your parents and your parents' worldview and make your own way.

It's possible that it's just unrealistic to expect LEO to sacrifice more to protect our kids than we as a society are willing to do. Like the model of individuals not being willing to give up anything to protect others while expecting some altruistic class of do gooders to give up everything is flawed somehow (I could make a lot of pandemic analogies here, and a lot of analogies in general, but I think they're fairly obvious). This is not to excuse what appears to have gone down, but the LEO are part of the society that we all collectively built.

I delayed dental appointments for the whole pandemic (for me; the kids went once or twice), and then I got hit with a deep cleaning when I finally went, and have now had to have THREE appointments in 2 1/2 weeks. So that backfired. My dentist sounds like yours; front desk staff all unmasked, but dentists and hygienists wearing them. ETA: I almost broke up with my dentist over covid stuff, but we've been going forever and like everything else about them...and then I had to find a new pediatrician a few weeks ago and didn't have it in me to ALSO look for a new dentist.

My husband is. The second someone expects him to bring a gun to school is the second he stops teaching. And there were people with guns right there in this situation. There was an armed guard at the grocery store in Buffalo. An armed officer at Parkland.

No experience with the WTMA class, but we've found that the free SAT prep on Khan Academy is plenty of prep. I definitely wouldn't ASSUME your kids need more than that without doing some practice tests and seeing how those go.

He's just 9, so we didn't have that on the cusp of 12 dilemma. He got it on Saturday, and it went fine--sore arm the next day but nothing else, which was the same as with the first 2 for him.

Mine already got his. The data on effectiveness for the original two doses was so discouraging that I wasn't even really considering him vaccinated without the booster (I think it was 12% against infection, 48% against hospitalization).

That's where we get them, too (my 9 year old wears the kid size powecom kn95 they sell).

I'm definitely getting one now for my 9 year old. I've been pretty bummed about how ineffective the original 2 doses have been for 5-11s (he has not had covid as far as I know, though--not sure if I'd feel differently if he'd had a recent case)

Thanks--I was just thinking I should check and see what the newest guidelines are. He's finished with school next week, though, so it's likely he'll wait until August so he has it as close to the school year as possible. And then at that point we'll see what the news is about new fall vaccines...

I would also just like to say that I am so flummoxed that anti-vax people can look at data about how much more likely to die of covid the unvaccinated are and feel "vindicated." Like I think the latest data is that the unvaccinated are 5x as likely to die with the new variants as people with 2 doses, with a much starker difference vs. people who are boosted. While I have already made my desire for a magic, perfect vaccine known, that doesn't sound the least bit vindicating to me. I will stubbornly cling to my big pharma-fueled conviction that being less likely to die is way better than being more likely to die.

Yeah, I was mostly thinking if they'd been able to do omicron, which, of course, they couldn't. But the bivalent is the one I want! And intranasal. Or that one the army's working on that would protect against all coronaviruses. Basically, I want someone to come up with a perfect vaccine that fixes everything. Is that really so much to ask?! 😉

The second shot was never a booster, though--it was always a two shot series. It's not at all unusual for a vaccination to initially be a series of several shots...I happen to have just picked up my kids' vaccine records, so I can see right now that my 9 year old had 4 separate DTap shots by the time he was 18 months old, and then another one when he was 5. 4 polio shots by the time he was 4.

I'm 47, so no 4th shot for me yet, but I'd likely be conflicted if I could get one. My husband's on an immunosuppressant and is a high school teacher (no masks required since Feb), so he got his 4th shot as soon as he was eligible. But at this point I might decide to wait for fall even if I were eligible, particularly because summer is when school and kid activities wind down and we're better able to limit exposure. I really want a better, more targeted vaccine in the fall (and I don't know, but I suspect, that if we'd been able to do more targeted boosters last fall/winter, we wouldn't be talking about 4th shots for anyone right now).

I had my booster in the fall, and it's looking like the next one for people under 50/not immunocompromised will probably be this coming fall...I don't know; we'll see what happens, but at this point I don't think there's any reason to assume there will be shots more than once a year, at least for most people.

It's been maddening nearly from the beginning. CDC advisor Matthew Daley quoted in the NYT as saying we should be careful about pushing another vaccine this fall because it might make people distrust existing vaccines. Umm. So a fun repeat from LAST fall when they kept insisting most people didn't need boosters long after it was clear that boosters would, in fact, be incredibly helpful.

If there are graded papers from the gov and history classes, I'd save one from each (particularly if there's a research paper) in case they apply to schools that want a portfolio. When my oldest was asked for those the description of what they wanted was pretty vague...he tried to send in some kind of sample work from each of the 4 core subjects (probably wouldn't have sent math, except he's a mathy kid and had lots of written proof stuff he could send in). Anyway, it doesn't hurt to save a number of good papers so there's plenty to choose from if needed.

I think the only classes I called honors were math classes done at home; I justified it because my husband is a high school math teacher and could look at what they were doing at home and confirm that it was honors level at his school. I feel like some other stuff would certainly be honors level at our local schools (some of our lit classes...like the one we just did where it was an AP class for my 12th grader and my 10th grader did all the same stuff but didn't take the exam this year or the WTM chemistry class my 10th grader took this year), but I don't designate anything honors unless I know I can absolutely justify it if anyone ever asks. I might call that lit class honors after all, now that I think about it. But, yeah, I only call something honors if I feel like I'd be cheating my kids by NOT calling it honors.

I did. I tried to follow more or less what the local school system does, so I added 1 point (so an A was a 5 instead of a 4) for AP and DE, .5 for honors (with a key at the bottom explaining the system)

Correct. The college board says to bring a photo id if you're testing somewhere other than the school where you're enrolled....but I don't think any of my kids have ever been asked for that even.

I have a brother who's two years younger than I am and then assorted half siblings. My half siblings and I didn't really grow up together and are not particularly close (as in: I see them at holidays and follow them on social media but not much else). My brother and I get along very well (as do our spouses); he lives close by and we get together socially pretty regularly. They don't have kids or we'd probably spend more time together; as it is our lives are pretty different. My husband has a great relationship with his sister, too, as do I. She does have kids, close in age to some of ours, but they live across the country so we don't see them as often as we'd like. We chat regularly and travel together pretty often.

My current senior got an "extra" 8th grade year (May birthday, so he'll be 19 right after he graduates); hasn't been a problem at all. It's very common these days for kids to graduate at 19 (when they're in school it's usually because they started kindergarten or 1st grade a year later, but it all comes out the same come college application time).

My kids put the school code by accident on their first exam this year (because they were just following the instructions the proctor gave and didn't realize there was a different code) and the right one for their second exams. I don't THINK it will make a difference except that the scores from that first exam will get bundled with the school's scores (so hope they did okay!). My husband is an AP calc teacher and he's had random scores from non-students show up with his scores in the past, so I gather it happens pretty frequently.

huh. wonder if that would explain why breastfed babies are at lower risk.