She's my hero.

If dad is in the picture, what does he think? This sort of attitude adjustment imo works best coming from a valued male authority figure. Ds (also 10) does his best work for dad.

Hahaha <--- that's an understanding, exhausted/sarcastic sigh/laugh. You can't make this stuff up hey?!

My friend just had her baby today, 9 months of hyperemesis. Not fun. She's half as excited about not being pregnant anymore! Prioritise your rest. If you get exhausted, you get worse. Get checked out medically, make sure you're not dehydrated or low in iron etc. Get some support - mentally and practically. You can only do so much. Take it one hour at a time. You can do this.

My 5th grader just demolished Shakespeare Stealer and Tuck Everlasting, both with high praise. For fun/funny, thin-ish and boy, he loves the Alcatraz series by Sanderson, though they're more free read quality than literature list quality, imo. :) There's also always The Series of Unfortunate Events.

We do the Genevieve Foster books and a literature from the time book as part of morning time. For example, at the moment we're reading The World of Captain John Smith and portions of Spencer's Faire Queen and Perrault's Fairy Tales. My 7th grader does a few paragraph narration from this everyday. She also has individual assigned reading, some Historical Fiction like Henty, some literature from the time like Grimm/Milton, some biographies. Some of those we use in writing assignments. Oh, she's also finishing off mapping the world with art so has a pretty good sense of world geography. I have done map drills in the past which they like. We do have a kind of time line but we're always forgetting to add to it. I'm keeping things simple this year.

You could have a look at Classical Writing Primers. I really like them. Eta link - http://classicalwriting.com/Primer.htm

:lol: *my sides!* I'm totally stealing that! Thanks! <3

Over scheduling, under planning Aka The zero self discipline mad dash towards exhaustion.

Lol!He does have a middle name that he doesn't especially like. He doesn't like sharing his first name with his father either... his youngest sibling doesn't have a middle name and is fine with that. My dh and in laws are just very bluntly practical people, he literally couldn't see the point of giving them another name just because it's the done thing. We actually argued about it with the first child but I filled out the forms and he went 'whatever' Interestingly, his sister felt the same and didn't give her kids middle names! Youngest sibling hasn't had any children yet so I don't know how that will pan out.

I named our daughter, he liked it. We named our first son together, I picked the middle name. He named our second son (he wore me down on a name that I grew to like over a few years!) but I picked the middle name. He named our third son but I liked the name too. I picked the middle name. Dh didn't really want middle names for the kids at all, I did so I picked them. We had great fun naming our babies, I would love the chance to do it again! (Alas..)

Nope. I didn't want my dd especially to get the idea that posting a bazillion selfies online as a teenager is a great idea. So we started by setting the example. No pics of the kids, or us, on the net (except some family who post anyway despite our preference)

We did bits of it during a pre-pre algebra year and enjoyed it. (Basically we meandered through various preA books for a year, as my dd was interested, before starting aops preA this year)

See I remember reading John Marsden and Melina Marchetta, both of which had some awkward teen sexuality scenes but nothing too explicit afai-recall. Neither story was only about the sexual relationship but were about the growth of the characters and the experiences that contributed. I'm actually not opposed to a well written exploration of budding sexual feelings in the context of a respectful, healthy relationship. I would be happy for my daughter to read it, I would much rather the boy-craziness be expressed through idealised literary situations!

I think that they know exactly what they're doing. They make myriad excuses and the not-evil ones probably believe their own excuses. And when they suffer no consequences, they have that behaviour reinforced. Women often don't fight back because part of our female socialisation is learning - rightly - to fear male violence. We know that our best chance is to be nice in the hope that we can get away. Eta- I did fight back when a guy grabbed me off the street. But I was his equal in size and he was a stranger - not someone with economic or social power over me. It was still difficult to override the be nice instinct. I have heard many feminists speak about how helpful specific self-defence training can be.

I was wondering about this, so I looked up the Kevin Spacey timeline of events, since his accusers aren't women. Within two days of one public accusation he had lost his coming Emmy and his House of Cards job was suspended. That public accusation is about something that happened 30 years ago. I'm glad that people are taking it seriously, it just seems a striking juxtaposition with the recent female-victim scandals.

Sure. Listening to 20 year olds immediately puts me in mother mode lol.

Maybe, but then they open their mouth and it's like 'awww, you're just a baby!'

I did not know Hugh Jackman did a version of Oklahoma! I love that movie **nostalgia intensifies**

I do like that, take the mystery out of it. But, first the system has to actually work to help victims. At the moment only about 6 in every 1000 rapes sees the rapist do any time in prison. There are states with thousands of unprocessed rape kits. People don't report, in part, because they don't trust that the system will help.

My bold. Do you have any tips for me? My oldest son is 10.

Lol! They're not exactly googling how to be a generous lover or how to make foreplay amazing for my partner... And even if they were, there are nasty, evil people out there targeting kids with absolutely vile filth. People who publish porn aren't trying to do a public service for confused teens, they're interested in shoring up their future consumers. I would hope a class like this emphasised the violent exploitation inherent in the industry. Some literature from exited women would be good.

It's a bit of both I think. She absolutely goes charging over boundary pushing behaviour. Usually she looks them in the eye and says something loudly like 'why would a grown man do that, makes you look suspicious' She also describes an intuitive type of experience, she says it's like being able to see a certain colour. She sees it and the waves of gut-sickness hits. She has been proven right more times than I can count - which has helped her overcome the gaslighting. In that awful situation, I think you did a great job. I know that my friend would have done the same, she might have then stayed in between the man and the door while asking someone to call management/police. Yes, she's fierce, I doubt I could be so bold. She has lots of recurring nightmares where she 'practices' how to deal with this, so she kind of can't help herself in real life...

*hugs* I'm so sorry. My friend says similar things, she has spent 30 years overcoming this (she has PTSD and works very hard to be functional), and even now is struck by how her family bought into it and didn't protect her. Slowly but surely, she realises that she is not the crazy/mean/stuck up/dirty/problematic one. She now calls herself a secret weapon because she can spot these abusers and she gets fierce. It's a sight to behold! The problem is, these men get away with it, they know we are largely powerless, they are smug. I don't have answers. I think women especially are socialised to be nice, and that having uncompromising boundaries is not nice. That's the overriding the gift of fear thing, it's why we get into an elevator with a creep rather than offend him etc. It takes most of us well into adulthood to feel able to not care about what others think. Even with my children, I'm more likely to quietly usher them to safety than call out the creep. My friend would (and has) done both. I agree with the previous poster, we need to listen to our kids - not just their words, they won't always be able to verbalise their experiences (heck sometimes I struggle to!) and believe them.

They groom everyone. Carefully, so that they are fore armed in case of an accusation. As an example that my friend and I talked about today - one of her abusers put the idea in her family's head that she was just a cold, unloving, unaffectionate person by nature. So when she was cold and unloving towards her abuser, as a preschooler, it was 'just her personality' This adds to the internalised shame that there's something wrong with the victim. Yes, my friend is freaking amazing.