It depends on many factors. My, then severely suicidal, daughter was inpatient for about 2 months. It was necessary for her safety, but there were certainly problematic parts of the experience. Facilities vary. If you have choices, I'd investigate the differences. The truth is that there is no perfect solution when dealing with a mentally ill teen.

I tend to suggest that people choose classes based on what makes the most sense for the student educationally at that time, and not worry too much about what an elite college might think. They are going to be looking at the package in its entirety, and it's unlikely that DE v AP will make a significant difference in the decision. My personal experience with a daughter that did well in elite admissions: she did more APs, because we avoided classes with specific meeting times as much as possible because of her packed extracurricular schedule, and because the class topics were of interest to her. She did a couple of DE when we could not find any other alternative. Our local DE options are not impressive, honestly, which factored into the decision making too. And you can do fine without either, if the rest of the student's "package" is interesting/impressive. :-)

I always encourage people to be minimalistic when it comes to college living, especially at first. It's hard though, because people getting excited about setting up the first adult living space, and I get that. Sheets, towels, clothing are must-haves, then it is usually pretty easy to add items as it becomes clear that they are needed. The kids end up moving so frequently, and it's especially problematic to have a lot of stuff if you are not local. Summer storage can be a pain!

As others said, it is early. I will add that there isn't typically a lot of negotiating scholarship offers with less selective schools. You can always ask, of course, but keep expectations low. What your student should do though (and it sounds like he is) is apply for all the extra scholarships the school offers for which he is qualified. As far as timelines for additional merit offers, it varies quite a bit. But spring would not be unusual, even going into April. Hang in there!

There's going to have to inevitably be some adjustments/tradeoffs for a kid who was very busy with activities as a homeschooler. There's just not much flexibility in the brick and mortar schedules. For my oldest, the decision to attend public school meant that for her comp figure skating was no longer realistic, if she wanted to continue in back to back theatre productions. If she had been involved in school sports, I doubt she could have kept up theatre either. She did eventually go to a part time homeschool schedule and could work some additional activities in. My youngest was full time public high school for two years, has been part time since Covid. She did an after school sport, so was gone from 7 A-5P daily. She is honors track, so there's a fair amount of homework, but she was asleep by 9 most nights. Actually all of mine were asleep by 9-ish during high school. Never found lack of sleep to be a big issue.

The laser procedure is ablation, which burns the endo lesions on the surface, but does not completely remove anything deeper in the tissue. Wanted to clarify that. It's simpler to find providers who perform ablation, and the procedure is generally easier on the body, but the risk of recurrence is much higher than if excision is performed. It sounds like you had long term success with it though, and that's fantastic! :-)

I don't want to be a downer, but three different gyns later, and no relief for my daughter. Birth control pills or IUD are the typical default, and it is fine to try that. But if she doesn't get relief though, definitely try to get her in with someone who specializes in excision of endometriosis. We travled out of state to find the right person. I hope your daughter's path is simpler than that, but it's such a common story that I feel like I want to repeat my earlier advice. 🙂

Full tuition!! Fabulous!!

My 17 year old just had surgery for endometriosis. It is relatively common, debilitating and horribly under/inadequately treated. The average GYN does not know how to deal with endo and will put women on BCP/IUDs as a bandaid while the disease continues to progress. Go to the Nancy's Nook website for years of research and a list of excision specialists. If it's endo, excision is your daughter's best bet (not ablation, which is much more commonly practiced.) Unfortunately, surgery is the only way to definitively diagnose it. I 100% suggest getting that surgery with an endometriosis specialist. not just a GYN. Here's a link to an excellent NYT article from this past spring: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/27/health/endometriosis-griffith-uterus.html Nancy's Nook: https://nancysnookendo.com/ Nancy's Nook has a Facebook group as well.

Oh sorry, I thought she said 10th grade 🙂

I can tell you what we did for my older daughter (STEM/engineering focused and eventually attended Princeton, then Duke for grad school) for US History, but I would not call it honors. There is a syllabus floating around somewhere here on the forum that has a list of assignments/books and videos. We used that, checked most things out of the library, and that was her US History. No stress, and it was her "get 'er done" class. If you don't really need honors, I recommend the approach for kid who will otherwise be buried academically. I'm going to look and see if I can find the link to the plan.

I'm not sure what you mean by moving parts? My daughter negotiated it without my help, so I don't think the setup was too complicated. It's not live (asynchronous is always our preference because of our time zone :-)), but there does seem to be a good bit of interaction with teacher and class.

It looks like you have a plan, so I won't comment on that. I did want to give you a general piece of advice though on the topic of reviewing 🙂 My daughter was also doing Calc in 10th grade (she finished DE 2 and 3 before the start of junior year.) Anyway, make sure she goes back and reviews SAT-specific math before the junior year PSAT if you are hoping for National Merit. It's amazing how much they forget, and it can really impact the very advanced math student's score.

My daughter really liked FundaFunda Honors US History last year. It was engaging (and she is not a history fan)

If this ends up being functional neurological disorder, have her look into The Recovery project in Livonia, Michigan. We traveled there from out of state and it was life changing for my daughter. Our experience is that it is exceptionally difficult to find a PT familiar enough to deal adequately with the condition.

FAFSA done here too. EFC $72,000, which was some $32,000 higher than the last time I did this, 3 years ago, and not realistic at all, of course. Our income has not changed much, but we do have fewer dependents, and there were a couple other factors. 2020 was an atypical year as far as income because of overlap between my husband's retirement and his new job. Some of the schools are requiring this for merit too though, so it's done. Most apps done. Daughter is trying to decide if she wants to put in the effort for the reaches. The fact that she is not excited about it tells me that maybe she would be happier elsewhere anyway 🙂 She has a couple of acceptances that I think could work out just fine.

Look into Functional Neurological Disorder. It used to be called Conversion Disorder. My daughter developed very similar symptoms, seemingly out of the blue, a couple years ago. She went from a normal busy college student to someone requiring a note taker in class and additional time on tests. She had to give up playing music for a time. Poorly understood, but appears to be a stress reaction of sorts. It’s been seen with some newly vaxxed people too, but is probably less about Covid and more about the body’s stress in mounting an immune response. The FND Hope website is one place to start and there are a couple of Facebook groups. She will have to rule out every other possibility though before getting a diagnosis. In my daughter’s case, it meant a wait for a neurologist, multiple scans/labs, then evaluation by a movement disorder specialist. It’s a strange condition that presents in multiple ways, and I had never heard of it. Now I know it is relatively common. Probably far down the road, but we got help for my daughter at The Recovery Project in Michigan. Life changing.

If the internship is a mostly sure thing, I'd book now.

My daughter used Air BnB more than once for summer internships and it worked out nicely. Our experience is that the programs don't tend to be helpful as far as housing unless it is campus-based. As someone else said, the cancellation policy will vary. I know my daughter did get funds returned from AirBnB when she had a medical problem which resulted in delayed arrival to the site and needing to change housing.

It really is shocking to realize how poorly we still deal with mental health crisis. I'm glad your child survived the experience. For what it's worth, it's unlikely that the ER would have been terribly helpful unless he coded. My oldest did get transported to the ER after an overdose, though she consented. Once there, she was basically ignored. I sat by her the entire night (talking 15+ hours). Talked briefly to a social worker who gave me inaccurate information about her options for post-care (told me that the public facility was her only choice. A few calls on my own and we found a much better situation). Watched her become increasingly unresponsive, and though she was on a cardiac monitor, no one was checking on her in person. Not an exaggeration. Finally at 7 AM, when she was lying in her own urine, I went into the hallway and insisted a doc come to the bedside, My daughter was on a vent within the hour. I highly suspect that she would have coded (and finally got attention) had I not been there. I have many more stories, both from my family and other families who talk to me. At the facility described above, mental health issues are the number one health concern for the population served, but they are still not prepared to deal efficiently. I have learned to seek out options for my daughter myself (and my background in nursing helps, though psych was not my specialty). She is doing great now, but I don't credit any one provider, with the possible exception of one fantastic evidence-based therapist who I found with my research and saw her for a couple years. Unfortunately, you won't be able to rely on much guidance, even from "professionals".

Kind of a miraculous occurrence here...the neighborhood school is willing to host my daughter for all 6 AP exams. Really interesting because they don't even have a class for two of the subjects and it appears they are hosting those just for independent students. I can't emphasize enough how unusual this is, having spent several years arranging AP exams for two daughters.

Agreed, to a large extent (not specifically about your kids being weird; I will let you assess that 😉 ) It seems to me that the vast majority of people drawn to homeschooling (especially those that want to do it from the very start) are not typical/mainstream personalities. It's not terribly shocking that the kids would be a little quirky/atypical regardless of their education situation.

In my experience with three daughters, age 9 is where things start to get...exciting. 🙂 It sounds to me like you have a decent plan. And it may turn out that a little time in school makes her get serious about home education. Or not, but it will be fine either way.

I did the part time thing for a few years. It was the worst of all worlds for me. Still needed to keep up all professional requirements of a full time worker, did not have the same connection to co-workers. Kids were not in day care enough to feel entirely comfortable there, and the cost was higher because of part time status. They seemed to be there just enough to get whatever illness was going around, and the employer was less understanding about the part-timer calling in sick. Spent the first four hours of the day working to pay for the child care, and the rest bumped us up a tax bracket, so no real financial advantage at that time (some-20 odd years ago, tax laws may be different now). All that to say, that there are pros and cons. For my profession and my situation, the cons outweighed the pros for me, I do know part time nurses though that seem to enjoy their situation. It's so individual.

That's a great idea, and may offer some healing too as you go through the memories, My kids definitely have selective memories, and the negative things tend to stick in there a little more clearly, it seems. I guess my memory is somewhat that way too though.