I get a Man Cold from time to time. I figure we have equal rights now. If men can get Man Colds, then so can I. The kids bring me drinks and keep me surrounded by tissues. Of course, I do the same for everyone else in the family when they experience Man Colds. If you haven't had a Man Cold ever, I recommend it. It's in the same category for me as making sure my stocking is stuffed at Christmas. If everyone else in the family gets a stuffed stocking, then so does the mom. If everyone else gets to be pampered babies about colds, then so does the mom. It's pretty lovely to be pampered when sick. Now, the not taking medicine part drives me crazy. Gotta take the medicine!

The longer this thread goes on, the more nervous I get about my advice to back off. I don't want it to be taken as letting the kid dangle without guidance, left to flounder and waft through life. But conversely, for me the Tiger Mom/NYC elite pushing is going too far. I hate that sort of pushiness for kids. I know when I've been responding, I've been thinking of Chinese students who work from 7 in the morning until midnight. I know a group of them personally from the hosting of Chinese students we've done for the past few summers. Those kids excel academically, but they wither in their spirits from the insanely high expectations. I'm not kidding that they do school work from 7 in the morning until midnight for months on end. It's only a little less in the summer. The NYC elite schools are the same as the Chinese schools. Sooo much pressure on the students. I was responding to that in my posts. But a good solid hand on the back guiding the student and some solid rules and expectations aren't a bad thing. Setting high expectations and teaching the student how to meet them is good. It's all in finding a good balance and not crushing the student you have.

The racism is there; the bad guys are clearly Middle Eastern. They are Christian allegories, no matter what the author says. :) I adore the stories. My favorites are The Magician's Nephew and A Horse and His Boy. My older son listened to them on CD when he was about 10. I read them to my younger son last year when he was 10. We all greatly disliked The Last Battle. It was a slog to get through. There are not too many bright moments in that book. Everything is pretty dreary where the good guys keep losing over and over. I had read them as a kid and adored them as many others have. I lived in England for a bit when I was 5-7 years old. When we came back from England a friend my family made there, Lucy, came to visit us in America. I was eight. While she visited, she read The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe to me before I went to sleep at night. Nothing better than a little old English woman named Lucy reading WWW to you as you drift off to sleep at night.

I get it. I read some pie in the sky homeschooling books when I started this journey 10 years ago, but now I realize they weren't very realistic for most students. It is a loss. Wistful is the word I use for myself. I'm sorry you're in the same boat. I think a lot of people on this thread have felt that sense of loss, too, but a number of them say it can improve as the students get older. ETA: I was composing when Regentrude was writing, and I think she's right about not wanting to do small talk with mom. I was just thinking the other day about that phrase "small talk" and how my son doesn't have any interest in it. When I take him out to dinner one-on-one, he's happy to sit there in companionable silence for a good bit of the time. :)

Yes! You hit it on the head: it was just like watching any of us and so true to life that you can't always shake everything. There's a thing I've been struggling with with my family for 22 years, and I finally realized it will never be resolved. I'll never get over it, and I'm finally ok with that fact. Sometimes you just can't beat it. And there was a lot of humor in the movie. I laughed more in that movie than in the last comedy I watched.

Are they spongy feeling? I agree that they don't look like the ones I used to have. The ones I had had a slight yellow-ish cast to them and were in clumps. Yours aren't clumped at all. Yours looks like bits of cottage cheese. I would try working with them and see if after a while they start to grow into the clumps instead of those individual small pieces.

This is a good point. I haven't paid enough attention I don't think. I don't see him interact with his peers ever. He interacts in places where I am not (Spanish classroom/youth group at church/work.) I'm going to try to take better notice.

I'm in the camp that wants sympathy when I'm feeling sick, but in an amusing way. Pretty much every time I'm sick, I'll play the Man Cold video and ask my family to rub my forehead and call me a Poor Little Bunny. But they know it's a joke, tell me I'm a Poor Little Bunny, and I feel like I've received my sympathy. But I have a silly-side to me so it works. If a serious person tried that, it would probably be taken as very selfish. My family knows it's all silliness, but honestly, having them say Poor Little Bunny really does make me feel better. Not physically, but emotionally. And of course, when they are sick, I say, "Are you a Poor Little Bunny? Shall I rub your forehead?" And I usually do and they feel better, too. :) The two in your family should call the three Poor Little Bunnies and everyone should move on.

Oh! This hit me, what you wrote. I, too, soooo wanted the long discussions. Someone else recently posted that she and her daughter will discuss the things they read about in history and the daughter gets all fired up about it. I felt wistful. I had so thought that would be my sons and me. Nope. My ds14 is at a stage where he isn't quite capable of long conversations. It's frustrating. For example: I took my ds11 out to dinner the other night, just the two of us, and we discussed marriage and Mexican food and how restaurants decide how to decorate things and he contributed about 40% of the conversation. I remember having conversations like that with my ds14 when he was younger. Now, I drive my ds14 to his Spanish class, which is a little over an hour round trip, and he can barely get out a few words in response to the topics I bring up. I carry about 85% of the conversation because he just can't articulate things. He listens and nods his head, but just can't think of a thing to say to contribute to the conversation. In school, I try to ask open ended questions to pull information out of him, but it's hard for him. I do have a feeling that it's a developmental stage for him. When I was in high school my dad worked shift work. When he was on the night shifts, my mom and I sat at the dining room table for 2 or 3 hours every single night, talking. Hours of non-stop talking, back and forth. I honestly thought I'd have that with my sons. I thought we'd talk about all the books we'd read, we'd talk about news reports, we'd talk about history. Nope. I don't know if it'll ever come--if he'll develop and be able to talk with me later. I don't know if it never will. I hate stereotypes, but maybe it's a boy/girl thing and he'll never talk as much as I'd hoped. Or as another poster said, maybe he'll never talk with me like that. Maybe he'll only be able to talk to peers that way. With his peers right now, he's pretty quiet, too. I get it. I've almost completely let go of my disappointment over it. And I have stopped commenting on it to my son (like wishing he could read what I read.) It was a few months ago and I flat out said, "Oh, I wish you liked reading! I really thought we'd read together and talk about books." And he flat out said, "I'm so sorry, Mom. I feel so bad that you feel sad about this." And he looked sad. Gak. I didn't want to transfer my selfish disappointment on to him. I haven't breathed a word about it since. And I also told him, "No, no. It's ok. This is selfish of me. You have your own things." It was a wake up call for me. I'm at a bit of a loss right now, as you are, trying to find someone to talk to about things. That's why I hang out here so much. I can "talk" back and forth with you guys a bit. A book club is a good idea. (I saw Manchester by the Sea the other day and just about popped because I wanted to discuss it sooo bad, but have no one to talk to about it. Such a sad movie, but I thought it was so well done.)

From your response, I fear I wasn't clear and came across as accusatory. Not my intention. I'll clarify. I don't think you're pushing him, yet, but your DH sounds like he wants to. I think you're probably doing what everyone else does with their kids that aren't self-motivated: you are trying your best to keep him on track and provide structure. The thing I was mostly responding to was your dh's mentioning of the NYC people who hover and push their kids. That would be taking it too far. Your dh was already working at tip-top level by 14, but that's just not how a lot of people operate. It does sound like ds needs a little more help (how to study for a test, etc), but not as much as your dh is suggesting. It sounds like he could work harder academically, but at 14 that's how many kids are. They tend to step it up as they mature. My nephew's college application essay was about how when he was in 9th grade he had no motivation, but by 11th he had grown and was motivated. It's normal and expected. I did say to back off, but I was meaning for the fun stuff. You should still help him get his obligations done, but if he doesn't want to do the fun stuff, then don't push him. If doing a sport isn't fun, don't push a sport. If joining a club isn't fun, then don't push the club. But I wouldn't worry that he hasn't found an activity he likes to do. I'd be ok with him seeing his friends only once in a while if he's ok with it. I wouldn't worry about him pursuing a hobby or researching extracurricular things on his own. He'll come to that in his own time.

Halcyon, if I'm remembering correctly, your DH is the one who never, ever has down time. He is on the go, non-stop, from morning til night and struggles mightily to understand that sometimes people like to just do nothing and some even require down time every single day. Actually, from what I'm remembering, he doesn't struggle with understanding it. He thinks it's a bad way to live and doesn't really want to try to understand it. And I think you've posted in the past that you would like some down time, but your dh doesn't get it and it can be frustrating to you. If I've got the wrong person, please correct me. But I think I have the right person and from your OP with your DH going to college so young and being so driven. If that's your dh, then how in the world do I remember that? Are you wondering, "Why would some woman on the internet remember these things about my dh? I wrote that ages ago." Because it stands out. Because your dh is unusual. People like that (and you) will naturally surround yourself with other people of the same energy levels, so you think everyone is like that. But you guys are unusual. Not wrong, but unusual. I'm not sure if your dh is capable of cutting your son some slack because he doesn't seem to believe that it's ok for people not to be driven in all their activities all their waking hours. I don't intend for my tone to come out as cruel. Just a quick stating of a fact. He just might be blind in this particular area. I agree with other posters: help him get the base requirements done and then leave him alone to figure out the rest. He's had amazing examples in you guys. If he ever finds something to pursue, he'll know how to do it from watching you two do it. If you see him finding something to pursue and suspect he's struggling in knowing how to pursue it, you can always offer a few suggestions to help him get started, unless he balks at that. I loooove reading and I read to the kids and I share books with them, but they're not interested. I used to be sharply disappointed that my kids couldn't share that with me, but it's lessened. I was realizing that when I told them, "Oh, I wish we could share this!" that they were hearing, "Oh, you are a disappointment! I'm so unhappy with you!" I caught sadness flashing across their faces, so I was quick to stop saying that. As others in this thread have said, be careful that your struggle to get him doesn't come across as disapproval and disappointment. I had a friend who adopted 2 kids when they were very young. She and her husband are somewhat ambitious. She's a nurse practitioner and he's a judge. Their adopted kids are not driven academically at all. Their two biological children are. My friend has been known to say, "I just don't understand the mindset of X and Y (the adopted kids.)" She never means she doesn't love them. She never means she likes them less than her bio kids. But unfortunately, her kids have heard this sentiment and think it means she prefers the bio kids over them. Ay yi yi. Couldn't be farther from the truth. Another poster up thread was mentioning the health toll on being super-driven. Lots of people are fine being super-driven, but there are also a lot of teens out there being pushed externally and internally who end up suffering from anxiety, depression, and even end up suicidal. A lot of them are the NYC kids with parents who push, push, push. So, take care not to fall down that rabbit hole. Those stressed out parents and stressed out kids don't necessarily have all the answers. Help him more than you have been with organizing his work, but not as much as your DH would want. Pick the priorities of things that Must Be Done and have him work on those. For everything else: back off. Just do what is easy for you and not exhausting to you. If he gets a spark to do something, support it without smothering it.

I wear a super long sweater to cover the rear view if I'm wearing pants that are a bit too tight. Something like this length: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Faded-Glory-Women-s-Midi-Cardigan/50932756?action=product_interest&action_type=title&item_id=50932756&placement_id=irs-2-m2&strategy=PWVAV&visitor_id&category=&client_guid=6606ec56-859b-494d-b752-a72f4c30cec1&customer_id_enc&config_id=2&parent_item_id=103952680&parent_anchor_item_id=103952680&guid=2ef7f3e4-d890-4dbe-a3bc-c4293f643f95&bucket_id=irsbucketdefault&beacon_version=1.0.1&findingMethod=p13n

Here's our reality: Biology (8-10 hours a week) History (8-10 hours a week) Astronomy (4 hours a week) English (reading/writing/little grammar review) (7.5 hours a week) Spanish (with drive time: 7-8 hours week) Geometry (6 hours week) Bible devotional (1.5 hours a week) Karate twice a week (3 hours) Working at McDonalds (3-10 hours a week.) Baking cookies for the homeless outreach at church (4 hours a week.) Sleeping (10-11 hours a night.) Chores: various amounts of time, but I try to keep it light because he runs out of time. I don't have advice for you, but just wanted to show you how our day goes. Before 9th grade, I always taught 11-12 classes each semester. I've found that I can't do that now. High school level classes take us a long time. I don't know if it's the curriculum we chose or if we just work slowly or what. Adding in some bible, karate, work, and cookie baking, and all his time is gone. It all adds up to be about 55-63 hours a week working on school/extracurricular activities (not counting chores and the 10-11 hours of sleep time he needs in this stage of his development.) I try to keep weekends clear of academic work, but about every other weekend there is work from the week that bleeds over into the weekends. Sunday morning he spends 2.5 hours at church (church and Sunday School.)

We did the duct tape in conjunction with the tea tree oil for one boys' wart (they've each had a few of them.) It did work, but was a super big pain for me. This boy gets sweaty hands all the time and the tape was falling off all the time. I had to replace the tape many, many times a day and had to take the tape with me everywhere we went because it would fall off so often throughout the day. The thing is, the wart has to be starved of light and air, so you can't let the tape stay off for very long or all your hard work is wasted. I think duct tape works best on sedate adults and not on kids who might not be as careful with it.

Sniffing instead of blowing! Yes, that's a big one! I also struggle with watching little kids eat. When my own kids ate messily, I could handle it, but not anyone else's. No one's. Ever. It's always very, very disgusting.

If I get even the tiniest hint of a chill I cannot fall asleep. I can't control it. Whenever I've tried sleeping without clothes, I toss and turn and wake up all night. I must be encased by close fitting fabric or I will wake up. I'll tuck the pants into my socks, tuck the shirt into my pants, keep the blanket up around my neck and even start out my night wearing a knit hat. Sometime in the middle of the night I'll take off the hat because I'll get hot, but if I try to fall asleep without it, I'm too cold. The blankets also can't make a tent because then a pocket of air will form under them and keep me up. The blankets have to be draped over me, close, holding in my body heat. If I don't do these things, I get a terrible night's rest. I sometimes wonder if people who sleep poorly just need to either wear more or fewer bedclothes because they're too hot or cold. It took me years to figure out that the reason I sometimes couldn't sleep was because of little air pockets hitting my exposed skin.

I wore a mis-matching pj set last night to bed and it felt so wrong! Just so wrong! Blaring tvs. People listening to the radio in cars and trying to talk over it. I hate that! Turn it down if you're going to talk! I get soooo annoyed at people hollering in cars above their radios.

Also: there are lots of home remedies. Some people respond better to some over the others. You can sort of pick your remedy and see if it works and if not, try another one. The tea tree oil took a couple of weeks, though, from what I remember.

Tea tree oil worked for warts around here for one kid, but not so much for the other. Then again, for the other, we kept forgetting to put it on every day, so it was probably more user error than tea tree oil error. After the fiasco that was going to doctors and dermatologists, I'd certainly start with home remedies before going to the doc. It was when I was at the dermatologist and she was going to do the 5th treatment that I said, "Why can't I just use tea tree oil or something?" And she said, "Great idea! You should go do that now. I won't do the treatment today or charge you for it or anything." I think she knew that all the torture they were putting my son through (freezing and using beetle acids that made his skin blister), was overkill but she wasn't allowed to tell us to try home remedies. I found the tea tree oil at Walmart. It was under $10 for a bottle that lasted for a long time. Our insurance had been billed almost $1000 and we'd paid out about $150 in copays by the time I decided to try home remedies. I have a love/hate relationship with doctors.

Oh, and very quietly...your ds is probably more affected by a new member in the household than he's letting on. And just like little kids who throw tantrums when they're hungry because they can't articulate why they feel so bad, he will probably keep doing these little pesky annoying things without understanding that the root of it is that his world has been disrupted and he's still trying to deal with it. I remember a hiver posting about her mother moving in with the family. Even though everyone got along and it was a positive thing, they were still having issues a good year after Mom had moved in. It's disruptive and takes a long time for everyone to feel settled.

I wouldn't dole out punishments yet. I'd give them 3 solid weeks with no-nonsense reminders. No drama, just, "The timer went off. Reboot your stuff." After three weeks, then I'd worry about consequences for doing the job wrong. They're still experiencing a learning curve at this point. And warn them, "Guys you get three weeks of my reminders and after that, it's the laundromat for you." Or whatever your consequence is.

I'm not too good with makeup, but most people tend to go for mascara and maybe tinted something-or-other on lips as a minimal look. I think. :)

Some ideas: Layers (tshirts, but with a button down on top or sweater). Fitted jackets over the tshirts. Popping some sort of fitted jacket over a tshirt and jeans makes you look pulled together pretty much instantly. Pants in that yoga pant material or style, but that are dressier than just plain yoga pants. They have that sort of stuff at Target or Walmart, so you don't have to spend a ton. I'm not too good with shoes, but some sort of nicer than usual shoe--even if it's just a nicer than usual sneaker. Jewelry to dress things up. Not pearls and diamonds, but some fun earrings or a necklace.

I shouldn't answer, but it's a personal pet peeve of mine that my MIL will say what restaurant she wants to eat at for her meal and then will immedately start waffling (sorry for the pun) on it. "Oh, but will so-and-so like it? Oh, maybe we could go to Y instead. Oh, but then such-and-such might not find anything he likes...well, maybe we can go to Z..." Drives me nuts. Pick the place you want to go to and then go.

I get my checkups, but the hardest part is making the initial call to set up the appointment. That's like pulling my own teeth. The only way I can do it is to put it on a to-do list and not let myself wiggle out of it. I set a day of when I'll make the call, (sometimes way off in the future, but I still put it on the calendar to "make dentist apt") and I'll even set what time of day to make the call, "Tuesday, while the boys are in karate." I prop up a book and prepare to wait for my turn for them to answer the call (there are 6 calls ahead of you...) and get the appointment on the calendar. Once things are on the calendar, I just automatically do them. I read on another thread just this past week that someone else has trouble with making the appointment, so she will ask her DH to do it for her. I think that's genius. I might just start doing that...ask him to make the appointment for me. Then it's a done deal.