If it's something that needs to be dealt with, eg unfinished work or a discussion of future expectations, I need to set a time when it's going to happen before I can let it go and just be Mom. Then I can let go of whatever it is until the appointed time.

My 14 yo makes himself an entire extra meal mid-afternoon. Omelet, or bagel sandwich or burrito mostly. I try to recommend an apple or carrot sticks on the side occasionally, other than that I leave him to to it.

If your teen has not previously been an outdoorsy person and doesn’t have good clothes for it invest in some. Base layers and good wool socks make a huge difference in how long it’s comfortable to be outdoors.

Nah, they're in snow shoveling 354 by now. Minnesota, remember? Our state standards are accelerated in the winter chore subjects. 😃

Rough estimate — take the population of the region in millions and divide by three. Multiply that by the positivity rate today to get the death count two weeks from today. You should use the 7-day rolling average for both positivity rate and death count to cancel out weekend reporting effects. If you have past data for your region you can test that. You might find out that 2.5 or 3.5 is closer. But if it’s fairly constant over time you can use it to make an educated guess about two weeks from now.

For a second when I read your post I was picturing a gang of hogs hanging out and smoking cigarettes in a gas station parking lot. I got as far as “wait . . . what?!?” before I realized what you meant.

Yep.

P.E. might be sledding this week. With a big enough hill it's good exercise.

I had planned on P.E. being outside for another month at least. I did not plan on eight inches of snow in the middle of October!

I lesson-plan eight weeks at a time. If something is really not working I’ll consider 1) What did I intend that activity to accomplish? 2) Do I still think that is an important goal? If not, trash it and move on. 3) Is it a goal that the child is not ready for? If so, identify what needs to be worked on first or a more age-appropriate interim goal and file this one for later. 4) If the goal is important and appropriate but the activity is not working then what can I replace it with that will accomplish the goal? Example: my 12 y.o. is doing an American Studies year combined with African-American, Native American, and Lantinx young adult literature. We’re working on bigger projects for writing, so he’s writing one paper a month that he works on every-other day, heavily scaffolded into note taking, outlining, drafting, and revising. That part is going well, but because it focuses on one paper for so long I wanted to be sure he was also interacting with the daily material that he reads, so I made a workbook with shorter activities and discussion questions and scheduled that on alternate days with the longer writing work. He’s loving everything about this course except the workbook. He hates it. I was kind of dreading making the next eight weeks of it, so we’re agreed there. We’ve talked about it and decided instead he’s going to make presentation slides once a week with four interesting things from the reading that week and once a month record a video presentation to send to his grandparents. If that goes well we’ll keep it. If not, we’ll try something else.

Ask. “Hey, would it feel supportive if I tried a walk-at-home 5K in solidarity or should I stick to other exercises and cheer your accomplishment?”

Short for bratwurst.

With the caveat that I am from Minnesota, and will yield to anyone with a better regional claim to authentic gumbo . . . For every cup of broth you're going to use start with 1 T of butter, 1 T of vegetable oil, and 2 T flour. Heat the butter and oil until the butter melts, then whisk in the four. Cook over med-low heat stirring pretty much constantly until the roux is dark brown. This is going to take 20-30 minutes. In the meantime saute onions, peppers, and celery. Add garlic just before the onions are done. When the roux is done stir in the cooked veggies and frozen sliced okra (if you can get it fresh, you could use that but . . . Minnesota). Add broth (chicken, seafood, or veggie), a can of diced tomatoes, a bay leaf and season with Cajun seasoning mix (premade or mix your own), thyme, and salt and pepper. If you're using sausage or chicken you can put it in now, fresh seafood should wait until the end. Simmer for 40 minutes. Add shrimp, crab, whatever, and simmer just long enough to cook it.

I buy all my bras from https://www.breakoutbras.com They are pricy, but always good quality and they specialize in fitting larger sizes. And they have periodic sales, and sharply discounted “grab bags” of discontinued styles.

I think we went through about six months where every hair-combing session included me saying “I have my scissors right here,” the kid saying “no, no!” and me saying “then stop whining.” With the younger we fell into a routine where he got to play a game on the iPad while I combed his hair. That worked well. And I second the earlier poster that said a trim can make a big difference. When you start to get split ends the tangles get worse, so trimming just a few inches can make haircare much easier.

My long-haired boys still needed help at that age. They could mostly do it, but if I didn’t do a snarl check at least every couple of days they’d end up with a giant rat’s nest at the back of their necks.

All But Dissertation.

Extensions were probably too easy at my school, although I appreciated my extra year. I defended in 2015. There were people in my advisory group who had been ABD when I started coursework and still haven't finished.

But the key to finishing it is to have some goal other than the study itself. Or to pick a program that kicks you out after a certain number of years. Some programs are full of people who just want to keep studying and never leave.

I wish we lived in the same town. I’d invite you over to sit around the fire pit in the backyard drinking mulled cider and chatting.

Talk to the instructor. I only assign group work when group process/dynamics is explicitly part of the learning goal. I also assign roles within the groups or let them chose roles and tell me who has which role and one of the roles is a monitor who is responsible for making sure everyone is participating. I do think learning to work in groups is an important educational goal, but that should mean learning skills to make your groups work better, not “let’s get students habituated to dysfunctional group work, because they’ll have to put up with a lot of it in the real world!”

All of this. These were not scenarios that provoked any kind of weighing of risks for me, they were all “nope, don’t see any need to do that.” If they’d had weddings or funerals, or would you travel for work if a promotion hangs on it, or allowing kids to participate in recreational/social activities . . . things that are higher on the value side of the risk/value scale . . . it would have been a very different picture.

Based on reading here I just started this with my 12 year old. We both have been too sedentary since March, and noticed the difference when we tried to do active things this summer. I started us at the very beginning of the rebuild program to ease into it. So far there’ve been fewer complaints than I expected.

At this point I would assume the refusal to have a Zoom playdate is about rejecting Zoom, not rejecting your DD. I don't think there's any reason to believe she will be hostile to you or DD at in-person events.

I'm not sure that it makes positivity mean something else. I mean, maybe if you're testing multiple times a day, but if it's once every few weeks the chance or significance of someone catching the virus this week isn't different depending on whether they had a negative test last week. And if you go by individual people rather than tests and have widespread testing you could get to a situation where your positivity was over 100%. On college campuses that tested everyone on their return to campus that would be the case for the rest of the semester.