Yes it was a different brand of mirtazapine that caused more fatigue and appetite. I'm not sure how that's even possible but it was noticeable.

Hello! I'm currently working as a private teacher with a nine year old girl, meant to teach alongside online school and to supplement her education throughout the day. I've been at it for about 3 weeks and from the beginning everything has been a battle to a degree I've never experienced and I'm trying to figure out if the situation is salvageable to the degree that I can do the job I was hired for. I do have experience as a classroom teacher with the age group, a private tutor, a nanny, etc. etc. So I absolutely am accustomed to dealing with a range of behaviors from elementary schoolers. I would say, though, that this is unique in terms of degree and extent of time and triviality of the things to have an extreme response to. The parents have explained to the girl what my role is and that they expect her to listen to me and I have tried to be patient and understanding of the fact that she basically has done no schoolwork for a year prior to my arrival - as it seems she refused to and is now unaccustomed to doing anything she doesn't want to nor to not being allowed to do anything she does want to do. I've been here about 4 weeks. I'd say she obeys me less than 5% of the time, arguing and shouting about anything and everything, insults me, has tantrums consistently, treats me with more disrespect than I've ever been treated by a child before - and unendingly - and is completely willing to physically assault me over anything. She throws things at my face occasionally, shoves me, has bitten and scratched when I asked her to wait 3 minutes to have her bowl of whipped cream. I spend almost the entirety of my day trying to manage her behavior rather than teaching her. I am pretty careful about monitoring ability and frustration levels, and I'm careful not to demand too much of her. Nothing that I've asked of her has been unreasonable or beyond her ability level. It is possible, even likely, that she has ADHD so there's a lot of movement breaks, fidget objects, breaks when she wants them, etc. I often to writing for her for things where ideas are important, we take turns reading assignments, I make sure she spends time outside. I have a bit more patience when she is clearly being pushed but it also seems that I often see her deciding to react with a tantrum or violence just because she can? Things she reacted to violently out of the blue today included being asked to subtract 8 from 16 (tantrum), my standing next to her when apparently she didn't want me to (shove), my not acquiescing to her order to do all of her schoolwork for her today (throwing things at me), my asking her to wash her hands after taking her out today before she touched anything (she shoved her hands in my mouth before i could react, in my water bottle, on my face and computer - no preceding conflict at all), saying she hated me and hoped I would die, throwing my computer on the ground, saying she would punch me if I didn't give her candy, telling me I had to leave because it was her room in her house, shoving her bike into the creek because I said it was time to go home (after a 5 and 10 minute warning). The rest of the time she ignored me and was off-task or pretended not to know the answer to things when she clearly did. Occasionally, she will be on the floor kicking and making scream-crying noises when she looks up at people but will take a break from it and when she curls to face the wall will be smiling. Apparently, she is not a sociopath nor on the autism spectrum. So I'm not sure what to call this. Her home is wealthy, affectionate, and happy and she is doted upon by her parents and much-elder brothers. The parents don't believe in consequences but they've been supportive (kind of) of my instituting a points system for getting rewards, and I avoid to the fullest extent possible bickering with the girl and thereby encouraging that behavior - I try just to tell her that she has x amount of work to do that day and it's up to her when she finishes and if she has time to go play. I also try mainly ignore or leave the room for bad behavior, but the reality is that if I don't intercede regularly she would never do anything. I do praise any good behavior and I've spoken to her about how I feel when she treats me the way she does. I'm also not at all the only adult she treats that way - she spit on her horseback riding instructor today because she was told that 8 hours from noon would be 8PM that night and not the next day and she hurt the horse when she refused to listen to instructions about the bridle. I know that it's a joke that kids think they know everything but she *really* seems to think that she knows everything and adults do not. She also behaves poorly with other children but not nearly to the same extent and I'm not sure I can make it a priority right now. I think what I'm looking for is a sort of way of presenting to her why it's important to treat adults with respect, and what that looks like practically as well as some strategies for a sense of proportion as well as regulating emotional responses? If such a thing exists as a workbook or in more cohesive personal strategies? I did have her using a social skills handbook but that mainly focused on self esteem and hasn't been very helpful. I do now insist on her saying thank you to people who do things for her, but that's about as far as it's gotten. I have told the parents that if I can't get her to the place that I'm doing the job I was hired for 50% of the time then I won't be able to stay, but I'd like to make as good an effort as possible before giving up, especially as they've gone through like 6 or 7 teachers, nannies, and babysitters in the past year. But at the moment I really regret not taking another position. Any tips would be much appreciated. Thanks!

I took 15 mg - oddly, I just recalled that one brand they gave me when they were out of the one I was taking was a quite different experience in terms of lingering fatigue even at the same dose. I was also taking escitalopram at 15 or 20 mgs. It was definitely part of the issue. But it sounds like it's working for you and if so that's really all that matters. I'm also hopeful for you that if these issues didn't start manifesting from the beginning, they're probably less likely to pop up randomly later.

Definitely listen to your body and if it's working for you - that's great. My experience was possibly the most negative experience of my life though I'm aware it's an atypical one. I was prescribed it along with an SSRI (which I've never responded well to and is definitely a confounding variable) in Germany, which is relevant only insofar as they don't take the Hippocratic oath or engage in patient disclosure so I didn't really know what I was taking or potential side effects until much later. On the plus side I did sleep and I no longer woke up dozens of time hearing voices telling me to off myself. On the negative side - I slept 20+ hours, was not awake when I was technically awake, I have next to no memories of 2.5 years of my life because I was in a dissociative fog (again, prone to this but the meds exponentially exacerbated it). I woke up years later when I ran out of meds and was cognitively incapable of figuring out the train ride to go get them. I had been top of my MA class at one of the top universities of the world, within the average parameters for weight, and found myself unemployed, 80+ lbs overweight, and without having spoken to anyone in that time and in a world set on fire. I also no longer seem to have a personality or any of my interests that previously excited me, even consumed me. Clearly, that's not the norm, but maybe it would be a good idea to track how you're feeling and thinking regularly? And make sure you have a dr who listens to you / treats you with respect? The main killer in my case was that a) when I told my doctor that I couldn't think, was sleeping 20+ hours, had difficulty remembering, couldn't walk without stumbling, gained x amount of weight - he told me I was a very pretty girl and not to be so negative. And b) the side effects developed gradually concurrent with the mental decline, so while I was originally able to advocate for myself when things weren't that bad and give it the benefit of the doubt, by the time things got worse and worse, I was no longer able to think or really realize at all, I was too far gone. That being said, I have heard that it can be effective in cases of major depression / anxiety for cases in which other meds are ineffective, so if your side effects are minimal - that would be such a huge plus that it may not matter. I'd just be vigilant - even regarding how vigilant you're able to be.

I will look that up! Thank you!

I'm toying with the idea of using On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes as part of a "noticing" course. Reading those segments, maybe supplementing them, taking similar walks and practicing seeing the world in different ways, exercises in perspective. That would be with a younger child, but I think it could work for middle schoolers? They might be at the point where they could design some themselves according to their interests - i.e. what might a manga artist notice? A mathematician? I was also looking at using a combination of the Great Courses cooking through history + A History of Food in 100 Recipes alongside a world history course, cooking using (somewhat) historically-accurate recipes. Maybe using The Story of Food / The Story of Salt / similar supplements, it would be possible to do a culinary-focused world history course at their level? If there's interest, the computational linguistic olympiad is more or less logic applied to language. So they'll give you Yoruba, for instance, and a few examples, and you'll have to extrapolate from that how to construct or decipher different statements. Examples here: https://nacloweb.org/practice.php And I don't know if it's especially fun or out of the box, but I'm a fan of the idea of cyber civics, whether the official course offering or via reading and discussing segments of, say, Sherry Turkle, Nicholas Carr, Digital Minimalism, You are Not a Gadget, etc. Thinking about how they want to live in and respond to the digital world? It might also be a good time to "learn how to learn." The Great Courses has a psych course called The Learning Brain that it might be fun to pair with The Human Brain Coloring Book. You could also go from the psychology/neurology of learning for one semester to a philosophy of learning the next? Really getting into thinking about what it means, to them, to be educated, maybe an acquaintance with different educational philosophers. I don't know that I'd necessarily throw a french copy of Rousseau at a preteen - but they might read and discuss Sayers, "Why Getting into Harvard is no Long an Honor," "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education," segments of Gladwell and Confucius. I really love the college writing textbook Reading the World: Ideas that Matter (I have the 3rd edition I'm not as sure of the others) - it has topical sections with discussion and writing questions that I think would be accessible to bright middle schoolers. One of the segments is on education. Cheers!

I think WWE and FLL would be a good choice. It would be more a question of the level to use. I have had her read to me, but I'm still unsure what level or resource it would translate to. Partially because I need to separate comprehension from fluency - as for fluency, as she skips around a lot, I thought adding Reading Pathways might accomplish both fluency and some phonics?

Hello all, I'm potentially going to be working with or homeschooling a third grader who is currently doing public schooling online. I would like to get a better sense of her progress or knowledge base in order to know how to help her. I was curious what resources you might recommend for assessment, and I'm especially interested in ones that might catch gaps from further back in order to fill them in. She was previously identified as gifted but her reading and math are assessed as below grade level. For math, I was considering using the Singapore diagnostics starting from maybe 1B and moving upwards, I think they recommend an 80% as mastery, so possibly settling on where she gets under that score. I was also considering doing Singapore roughly on grade level, depending, and doing a more remedial / review round of math using Shillermath and therefore using their diagnostic. I'm not sure, though, if it requires a lot of materials, and it costs something like $25 so it would be great if anyone that has used it has any feedback. I know that it would cover math gaps from pre-k through 3rd so that would be a huge plus. But I'm totally open to other options. For reading and writing I'm less sure of what to use. This is not my child, so I don't have a huge amount of background knowledge. I do know that she is not accustomed to doing anything she doesn't want to, so I think she hasn't done the majority of her work since last spring. Any suggestions would be fantastic. Thanks!

Thank you for the background and suggestions! That information is also really useful just generally as someone who engages with arguments on the internet (and in real life).

Great point! I was especially puzzled by the recent uptick.

I think that's definitely part of it that they construct their online presence in a way that they rarely hear anything else. Thank you! And I will! I have been reading a lot of priors in the education board and I'm hoping it will make me a much better and effective teacher one day! I really admire the commitment to good thinking.

Thank you! I think part of the issue is I can't quite understand where or what the argument is. Like, I know what it's supposed to show, but not how they get there. But it's a fairly point that they probably won't listen or care what any response to them is. And they're not really misogynistic sites, they're (usually) normal ones that this sort of thing has been creeping into. For instance, I got threats on a discussion forum about media usage during the Cold War?

I came across The Well Trained Mind as part of research I was doing in grad school about alternative educational systems. I don’t yet have children, but I want to eventually homeschool them using a combination of classical ed and world/travel schooling. I’ve read threads here for a while and I joined as well because I recently graduated and got a job offer as a home educator (presently on hold and maybe kaput because of the virus situation, very bummed) and I am trying to aggregate information and ask questions as I create curricula and plans and organize activities for my students. The off topic question is - now that I’m self-quarantining, I’ve been spending more time online and an internet forum I visit has recently become over-run with angry misogynists spouting quite a lot of nonsense that I’d like to address in a logical way, but I’m having some trouble because things like that upset me quite a lot. Which made me think of the emphasis on logic and good thinking here - even formal logic as something to teach. I’ve not yet taught formal logic, but I was curious if maybe someone with a good knowledge of fallacies (or just someone with a clearer head) could give feedback on some of the arguments they’re presenting? I know that a lot of it is incorrect but I’m in the odd position of not being able to really articulate precisely why or back it up factually maybe in part because the arguments themselves are difficult to follow and seem to rely on a frame of reference which I lack (I also don’t speak English natively so that might be part of it). I’m trying to view this as an opportunity to clarify my own stance because when I say MRAs are wrong to consider women evil and themselves oppressed victims I should know why clearly and be able to express it and back it up with sources/evidence, But I also really don’t want to be incendiary and some of it is pretty vile and would normally need some sort of content warning. It also has literally nothing to do with homeschooling - only with bad/good thinking. I read that political posts are not permitted and I don’t know if misogyny then counts? I’m just really trying to put something together to say beyond what my friends would respond with which is just one—off dismissal or insult or saying “you are a misogynist/ horrible person” and leaving it at that. So I’m not sure if it would be appropriate to paste some of what their arguments are here to examine and respond to logically?