For all of you: A "bookish, readerly community, extending through time and across space, has still a substantial membership; nonreaders outnumber us - always have and always will - but we can always find one another and are always eager to welcome others into the fold. May our tribe increase." - Alan Jacobs, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction Glad to be reading with all of you!

Governess, I think that you changed my life this afternoon when I first read your post. I had no idea that Oxford had such a thing as online continuing education classes, and I spent about an hour just looking through their offerings. Oxford doesn't feel like a place for mere mortals like me, but I'm fascinated by some of their offerings. Maybe I might just try one of their classes! Thank you!

Congratulations! (I've never won anything from my library reading contests, despite trying every year. Glad to hear that it's possible!)

Faith-manor, I am so jealous! How did you get this gig? I just finished my third read of The Scarlet Letter and would love to be the one to introduce it to high schoolers! Have fun! (You may want to include a reading of Hawthorne's introductory essay, "The Custom-House", which details his inspiration for writing the book. The students may think it's really interesting that there really was a Hester and there really was an actual scarlet letter. Fascinating!)

Granny, I just want to tell you how sorry I am that you are going through this. Those little furry ones do work their way into our hearts, don't they? I'm hoping for the best outcome for both you and your sweet doggie. I'm glad that he's gaining weight! Best wishes to you both, and please keep us updated.

Hugs, Laura. You've been through a lot, and you've been brave and patient. May time help with the healing.

Well, I'll see if I can convince my husband... No-tech ideas like setting a timer sure aren't working.

Rats. We've prided ourselves on being a no-smartphone family. 😞. Another gadget is just the last thing we want right now. Bummer.

Yes, we've tried that, but the kids seemed to have found a way around it. 😞

One of my current reads right now is The Scarlet Letter. Without meaning to sound high-brow or pretentious, I really, truly love this book. It's my third time through it. The language is so beautiful, and Hawthorne is such a master of symbolism. Just a few days ago I noticed something in a scene that struck me at a suck-in-your-breath level of surprise. I'm also doing the Literary Life 2023 reading challenge - this is for the historical fiction category. Love reading this thread for what all of you are reading!

Can anyone recommend screen time control software that works for a shared desktop Mac OS? We’re looking for something in which we can tell the computer something like: Account A gets two hours of internet time, and then the internet just shuts off for that account, but not for the others. Everything that we’ve looked at only seems to work on PCs or is controlled by a smartphone (which we don’t have) or something. Simply watching the clock doesn’t seem to work because the kids always seem to have an excuse: “But I wasn’t really on the internet all that time…” I know that there’s the option of just disconnecting the modem and hiding it somewhere, but honestly, I’ve run out of hiding places, and what could I do if my bigger-than-I-am kids just decide to physically fight me for it? Plus, then my husband doesn’t get to use the computer once he gets home, and that’s not fair to him. Thank you for any help you can give me!

Oh, so true!

Hi everyone. Sorry I’ve stayed away from the forum for a while - it’s just been too painful. Thank you for asking about my daughter, @ScoutTN. After one week of public school, she is loving every minute. In my homeschool, she had nature walks with journals and high quality colored pencils. What she wanted was dodgeball games. She had in-depth chemistry and physics. What she wanted was video game-style quizzes in science class. She had rich exposure to music, visual art, dance, and architecture. What she wanted was… none of that boring stuff. Classically homeschooling my kids redeemed my own horrible public school years, when I was begging any adult who would listen to me, “Can you make the world safe for me? Does any of this matter?” My daughter needs public school education to redeem her no-one-to-play-with, my-mom-is-such-a-weirdo homeschool education. I guess sometimes you just can’t win.😢

I have put my heart and soul into homeschooling. My desire is that my lessons are creative, meaningful, deep, personal, and inspiring. Certainly my difficulties with homeschooling my children are not at all due to trying to replicate public school at home. I love homeschooling, and I love classical education. (Someday, I should write a variation on Keats' "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" that I would title, "On First Looking into SWB's Well-Trained Mind".) But it's just not working for the combination of my personality, my daughter's personality, and our community resources. If there were a classical charter school or private school, I'd enroll my kid in a heartbeat. But public school is the only other option. But what I wonder about is this: if "children are born persons", then maybe it's okay that my daughter is a "born person" for whom our small house and small family and small town are just not enough stimulation. She needs crowds the way I need alone time. I wish the CM interpreters would acknowledge that situation.

Hi @ScoutTN. Sorry I was away from this thread over Thanksgiving. We are definitely going to enroll her in public school for January, but we just haven't been able to start the paperwork yet.

Brava, @Ausmumof3! That's worth bragging about! Since your language is Italian, you have it easy… opera! Get a DVD of your favorite Italian opera and its libretto from the library, then watch and read along, or put on the Italian subtitles. One of the benefits of studying a language through song is that music is necessarily slower (well, unless you're listening to Rossini, of course). My first recommendation would be Puccini's La Bohème. If you would like other recommendations, I'd be happy to talk your ear off. You might also want to look into News in Slow Italian https://www.newsinslowitalian.com Just for reading, I've also found it helpful to increase my comprehension by reading travel websites. The vocabulary is not too challenging, and the the idea of traveling is also inspiring. Many travel websites allow you to toggle between the local language and English. Since my Italian friend said I am an “Umbrian girl”, here's an example for you: https://www.italia.it/it/umbria You may also have fun trying recipes in Italian. Here is a website for a magazine that I have from decades ago, but the food photography is just as good nowadays. http://www.atavolaweb.it As my first Italian teacher often reminded us, “Mangiare is the second most important verb in Italian.” 😉 Have fun!

It does seem that there should be an education redistribution: Those homeschooled kids who want the best of what public school offers (social interactions) should be able to go there and get a quality education. And those kids in public school who want the best of what homeschooling offers (quietness, individual attention, creative and meaningful teaching) should be able to get that, too, one way or another. Too bad there isn't an educational matching program. 😉 Let me assure everyone, that if the educational matching program ever happened, all the kids would go to their own homes at the end of the day. I'm certainly not suggesting I would give up my social kid! But I do have a very tender heart for the kids who don't want a loud, shallow, bully-infested education (because I was one).

"A host is like a general: it takes a mishap to reveal his genius." - Horace Whether a host is Marney-like or not, something will not go right. Whether or not I am assigned anything, I want to be the guest at a dinner where, if there end up being two of the same dish, the host/ess takes a bite of each and declares, "I can't decide which I like better! Thank you both!" Thanksgiving is supposed to be about gratitude for food, whatever happens! And, it's those things that don't go right that should make the funny memories that get passed through the family.

I asked the pediatrician on Monday about a one-time anti-anxiety pill for this reason, and she didn't seem to bite, but I think I'll try to push it and see if she'll do this.

Well, there is still a complication... - deleted, because I don't want a a psychological problem to be misunderstood as a political issue. - But I need, oh, I need the PS to take my daughter in January. And we're willing to eat the cost of the online courses she's currently attending (that is to say, blowing off) that were supposed to be her transition to PS. Plus, as so many others here have pointed out, the ADHD problems won't go away just because she's in PS. I don't want to drop her off where she might be doomed to fail. But we are working on getting her in to see a professional to get her medicated. She has no interest in trying non-pharmaceutical interventions. Believe me, I've tried.😞

Yes, a thousand times. She wants to be in the middle of a wave of kids and be just like them. If I'd known this when she was four, we would have done things very differently. But we thought that homeschooling would give her a superior education. But even a PS education, where they read corn commodity reports in "Literature" class, is better than the absence of education she's getting at home now. That isn't to say that it's been all bad. She has big dreams of being either a particle physicist or the next actress to strike it big in another Star Wars movie. We've had lots of good times. But the needs have changed.

My daughter would love the homeschooling community you have! My town had a similarly vibrant community about 15 years ago, but then as those kids aged out, new parents didn't take it up. I've tried to start to groups and to cheerlead some others, but the momentum just seems to be gone. 😞 But, what you mention about "other teen nonsense" is exactly what my kid wants! That sort of stuff repulsed me when I was a kid. How were my husband and I to know that we would have a kid so much the opposite of our personalities? As I keep saying to my husband, the sorting hat put this kid in the wrong house. (Just joking... kind of...)

Oh, here's where everyone is going to roll their eyes at me. 😉 I live in the "best school district in the state", the reports say. But I also hear the stories from the PS moms: "Literature class" has turned into "technical reports" class, teachers are burned out, some are... ahem... bending the rules in their classrooms, etc. I also hear about the mental health challenges (and the sad situations that result) because kids are pressured to succeed as their parents did. (I live in a town of high achievers.) The public school system is a pressure cooker. But, I think it is probably exactly where she needs to be. Current plan is to enroll her at the start of the new year. At least at home, she'll get the attitude that learning is just plain fun for its own sake.

Had a lightbulb moment yesterday after a good conversation with my daughter: My kids have two loving parents, abundant art and craft supplies, Classical music on the DVD player, Memoria Press art prints taped to the walls, plenty of outdoor time, beautifully illustrated editions of the all the children's classic books... you get the idea. That environment would have put me in bliss when I was a kid. But what my daughter wants is... ... a "frenemy". She wants someone to crush in competition. She wants a Gilbert to her Anne. (Don't take that analogy too far.) The very soul-withering environment that public school was for me (the crowds, the time-wasting assemblies, the competition, the wondering where to sit in the cafeteria), that I vowed to never make my own children endure, is the very environment in which this kid would thrive. The online classes and the extracurriculars are not enough. She is eight assignments behind and doesn't care. I have huge problems with the low academic expectations of public school, but that is where this kid needs to be.

I hope nobody minds me responding a thread several days old, but I wasn't able to get to it when it was still “fresh”… I am very grateful for the small farmers who sell at our local farmers' market. Small farmers are some of the hardest working people around! Every week during the growing season, I buy a whole cartful of produce from them. It's more than my family can eat in one week, so the extra gets frozen, dehydrated, or canned. In late fall, when I look at my shelves full of stored food in our garage, it makes me feel very happy. My heart swells with joy and the words from the old hymn "Come, Ye Thankful People Come" keep running through my head: All is safely gathered in Ere the winter storms begin. Similarly, these words, that Thoreau quotes from Cato, sum up my feelings of the primal satisfaction, even in our modern times, of having food stored away for the winter: Cato says, the master of a family (patremfamilias) must have in his rustic villa “an oil and wine cellar, many casks, so that it may be pleasant to expect hard times; it will be for his advantage, and virtue, and glory.” To be clear, I'm not prepping for the zombie apocalypse, but there is always something within me that fears, "Maybe this is the winter we'll get The Big Snowstorm!"