[Breakthrough on SIDS]

6 hours ago, bolt. said:

Could it just be supplemented? And people can go back to giving their babies cuddly soft tummy-sleeping environments for happiness and less night crying? Even safe co-sleeping?

Well I don't know I think some of the cuddly soft tummy-sleeping environments are also found to cause strangulation and asphyxiation in infants and especially newborns who are not good at controlling their movements.

Essentially the big back is best study found that approx. 3% of infants died from SIDS when they told parent tummy is best. When they began telling parents back is best (after finding babies suffocated in their pillows or something, purely speculation I'm unclear why they started telling parents to do back instead of tummy) they found that dropped down to approx. 2%. Leading to the 30% drop statistic in infant SIDS. So probably back is still best in terms for baby survival rate but it could further reduce the occurrence of SIDS among infants sleeping on their backs.

[Streams of Engineering]

As much as I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up before high school (engineer more specifically B'elanna Torres from Star Trek Voyager) and finished deciding what my major was going to be sophomore year of high school. I didn't really talked to my parents about it. I think they found out I was planning on majoring in EE my junior year of high school while we were filling out my applications.

As much as I believe parents know a lot about their children and have more intuition about them then school officials and such, sometimes their perception of laziness in their teens is not quite true. My own parents thought I was quite lazy K-12. Part of that was I didn't really ask for their help on picking careers (my mom speaks her mind and I didn't want her to naysay my dreams). 

I know I said a bunch of things about my major being hard, but as a teenager I picked Electrical Engineering because I thought it was the easiest major for me. I was good at math (bad at geometry and pre-Calculus was a breath of fresh air). And really like physics (I did HS physics and it wasn't a slog and astrophysics was really interesting). I didn't enjoy writing and getting kicked out of AP English crossed out humanities for me. I liked designing things (at the time mostly this was making really bad drawings of ball gowns and Sim houses). I knew I couldn't go into clothing design because I was bad at drawing and sewing. So designing, physics and math landed me with ME vs. EE and I knew where the EE jobs were. 

This is the mind of a 11-17 year old. Don't be too hard on your son. Even though everyone else doesn't think it's an "easy" career/job. You know I still do to this day. I love designing things and I'm a lot better at math and physics than I am at drawing and sewing. So, it's hard work for someone whose heart isn't in it, but it's not as hard of work for someone who likes doing it. (Long hours definitely going to happen, but it's more like the time flew past you more than drudgery.) 

[Things that Seemed to Work But Later Backfired]

1 hour ago, seemesew said:

I agree this was a mistake I made with my kids when they first started too. I'm trying to be better about my younger ones.

How are you changing with your younger ones @seemesew and @Not_a_Number in this regard? I had/have a sense in early elementary I'm still "suppose" to be very involved during school time. 

[Streams of Engineering]

42 minutes ago, Teaching3bears said:

Hmm … are all the streams of engineering this much work?  

I don't know I think so? I'm probably also the wrong person to ask about it. Since I would like my kids to work this hard if they are going to spend the money to go to college, but that's a different discussion.

To give you insight though, you may look into a nearby University for this information as well. I found UC Berkeley lists out their graduation requirements for their college of engineering.

https://engineering.berkeley.edu/students/undergraduate-guide/degree-requirements/degree-worksheets/

Look at the worksheets for each engineering degree. You'll see Humanities/Sciences, UC Campus Requirements and Ethics aside from those all the other classes will be your major courses. Every 4 units is about a class some classes maybe 3 units or 5 units and they do that to try and reflect the workload of a class. Sometimes having more units in a course could mean  a "lab" portion is a part of that class. If you kind of divide that total by 4 years you can kind of see what the workload looks like for the different majors. You can probably find descriptions of those classes to get a better sense as well.

[Streams of Engineering]

19 minutes ago, prairiewindmomma said:

You can’t drag a kid into engineering. It’s too much work.

Can not stress this enough, because you have to do loads of schoolwork while everyone else has a college experience. 

I went to a university on a beach (UC Santa Barbara) never once did I study on the beach. I attempted once it was an epic failure. 

[Streams of Engineering]

2 hours ago, Teaching3bears said:

I used to get him Kiwi crates and then I got the crates for the older kids and he said they were too hard and stopped doing all of them.  I now have a pile of unopened Kiwi crates😛

Why don't you bring those out and and say "Hey let's do this." Either a parent and him or the whole family. I know the crates are suppose to be able to be done individually by the child but you don't have to do it that way. It's much nicer to at least have a partner to struggle with the hard problems and even a partner to fail with you.

 

2 hours ago, Teaching3bears said:

I am not 100% sure of the STEM career.  If he said he wanted to be a mathematician again I would think that was perfect for him.  I wonder if he might like business.  

Business is STEM. So when I say explore I don't mean just in the engineering fields. My mom is good at math and she is an accountant. She wasn't able to be super ambitious in that field because she was a mom already when she began to pursue it. She works with CPA's and it can be a good career too.  She likes it because it's more procedural rather than problem solving. (In simplified terms) She can take some numbers push it through some math and out pops some answers. According to my mom finance/accounting/business the college academics is a little less intense than engineering (when comparing her schooling with mine). The math tends more towards the statistics side rather than calculus. 

Law is also a good career choice. If he is interested/doesn't mind the science and math, patent law can pay pretty well. Then you get to see cool ideas, touch the cool ideas but you don't have to be the one to come up with or make the cool ideas work. 10+ years ago when I was an entry level engineer speaking to an entry level patent lawyer our starting salaries were similar and the partners seem to be doing very well for themselves.

[Streams of Engineering]

2 hours ago, Teaching3bears said:

Unfortunately, he is not thinking seriously about career choices right now.   Although he is doing moderately well in school he seems to be fueled by a fear of failing more than anything.   He has been turned off by the expectations of high school and says he wants an easy job where you don’t have to work hard.  I am hoping he will find his passion for math again.  

Ahh so you want to motivate him towards a STEM career. In that case, see if there is a program or summer camp or something nearby that tout something along the lines of explore STEM stuff. If there isn't anything nearby you can also get one of those subscription kits like MEL Science or Kiwi Crates to explore the fun parts of science. The building, tinkering, experiments without the grades/academics/write a report bogging it down. 

Then he can find his interest/passion and that's when he'd be more likely to deal with crushing failure, and working hard.   

[Things that Seemed to Work But Later Backfired]

4 hours ago, Not_a_Number said:

My kids are gifted and very stubborn, so this probably won't apply to everyone... but my biggest regret is constantly sitting with DD9 when she was doing her schoolwork in Grade 1. She got used to it and really struggled with any transition to independence until we went cold turkey on my involvement this year. I wish I had let her get used to being stuck and having to power through it earlier on, before she got used to taking out all of her frustration about her work on me. 

Oh this is interesting. My DS5 is starting to get upset and mad at "school time" because I've started doing lessons with DD3. I've been feeling a little guilty because they currently get split attention from me during their school time instead of one-on-one attention, but now I can think it's a good thing. 

[Streams of Engineering]

1 hour ago, Melissa in Australia said:

I know University is vastly different in USA compared to Australia, but here not having physics would limit the type of engineering degree a student could get into

I would think so too. Especially any even slightly competitive university. But it seems like her child will have time to take Physics before needing apply to university and is trying to think of things so they can plan their high school career.

[No, seriously, WTH are the friggin' dishes?!]

3 minutes ago, Gil said:

A deals-a-deal, so I won't ask. But I promise that I'm feeling curious.

I feel like I couldn't have offered "never say another word about it," because mom and dad are just too curious.

[Are all paint brands pretty much the same?]

I'm most happy with my Sherwin Williams paint. I'm good with Kelly Moore too. I felt like the Sherwin Williams covered better with less coats. There are different grades even between brands. The Sherwin Williams I was always the one who made the purchases so I purchased the best that would suit my needs (because I hate painting).

[Streams of Engineering]

11 hours ago, Teaching3bears said:

He loves math.  Of the sciences, he says he likes chemistry but he has not studied much physics.  He does not like biology because of the memorizing.  He is interested in the environment.  He is interested in computers but seems to find coding frustrating and has given up any coding projects he tried.  He is very good at games of strategy and loves Minecraft.  

Does he enjoy applied mathematics more or logic/proofs/number theory/set theory stuff(think math major stuff)?

Logic/math major stuff you can go into computer science because although "writing code" is part of your job, what you actually would be getting the big bucks for is being able to design a solid the framework/architecture. I don't know what part of coding he finds frustrating, sometimes it could be just the language he has to use. (Sorry not my field so probably horrendous description.) 

Applied mathematics is Calculus and statistics. 

If he really enjoys Chemistry he can look into Chemical Engineering and see what that really means. Look at the major courses see if they look interesting. Look at potential jobs and job description do they sound interesting. I didn't like chemistry and material sciences because to me there was a lot of memorization needed there. I was already turned off in high school by having to learn the elements in the periodic table.

ME and EE is a lot of physics/calculus. At some point to be honest the physics and calculus blend together; in my opinion if he likes/loves calculus then he'd probably be pretty happy with doing physics. Personally, this one was a hard choice for me; to this day I feel like I would be just as happy if I were an ME vs. an EE. I ended up choosing what I chose because my dad was an EE so I already had connections and was fairly sure what the jobs may look like.

If he doesn't have to make a decision in the coming months or year, look for places or things he could do to explore STEM areas. Reading books (I loved science fiction as a kid and there were some job descriptions buried in those books sometimes), STEM summer/spring break/day camps, talk to friends of yours who are in some field and maybe he can shadow them to work or talk to them about projects they are working on, look up locations of job opportunities, college (even community college) classes, university mini research opportunities (usually these look a bit like summer camp), etc.

Maybe this is old school thinking and don't take it the wrong way, but light a fire under his bottom to figure some of it out, because he will be competing against kids who knew what engineering field they want to pursue before high school or freshman/sophomore year of high school.

 

[Streams of Engineering]

It's hard for me to get behind the just learn problem solving skills and you don't need an engineering degree. You really have to know what you are getting into if you are hedging your bet like that. I know what journalists and entrepreneurs say. Technology does change rapidly but a lot of the underlying science and math hasn't really. For example it's not like Calculus has vastly changed between 1980 and 2020 or that electricity no longer works in the same way. Even though we can do things that were science fiction a few decades ago, there is a lot of facts/things you learn in your degree that helps you come up with the new fangled technology. Also you are not always using cutting edge technology of everything in every project that you do. 

A lot of entry level job's prerequisites do expect you with a bachelor's of science in whatever they are looking for. There are still companies out there who put a glass ceiling in their technical ladders for people without an engineering degree (with or without a college degree). 

[Adding to OPGTR]

I use AAR but I've been getting in some handwriting practice by asking him to write some words on the word list instead of reading them. I try and pick the not so tricky words. and let him look at the list. My kid can only write about 3 words per day so there is plenty of words. I also give him a "moveable alphabet" to help him. 

I've also been borrowing random easy readers from the library and kid books from the library (big (size) words, small number of words). I let him read what he can and let him ask me for help on words. I help him whether its a word he should know how to pronounce or not. For this exercise I let him pick, twaddle is allowed.

[Streams of Engineering]

Toa answer one of your questions.

4 hours ago, Teaching3bears said:

What are the advantages and disadvantages of the more common streams?

The disadvantages are hard work and long hours (all optional and fun until college). I have yet to find an engineering discipline where this is untrue. There is a reason why the job is salaried, has flexible hours and there are more than a few workplaces offering free meals, etc.    

[Streams of Engineering]

1 hour ago, Melissa in Australia said:

My son is an aerospace engineer.

Both my husband and I had dreams of becoming an aerospace engineer growing up, but in high school was told it was not a good career to choose. I did think it was coming back, but I guess not.

My husband and I did internships before graduating from college. Even without job offers directly tied to that, it's great to be able to try out the industry. The actual work can be very different than the schoolwork. One there is a certain amount of (for lack of a better term) "business" work in industry (dealing with people, paperwork, writing ...). Also, I found in school things were more black and white, right or wrong, then it can be jarring when in industry the textbook "right" solution isn't always the appropriate solution. Especially when you spent 16 years being good at school by finding the right answer.   

[Streams of Engineering]

FWIW my husband is a software engineer and I was an electrical engineer. We've done pretty well for ourselves.

[Streams of Engineering]

1 hour ago, Teaching3bears said:

My son is considering engineering as a career option.  Which streams of engineering have the most jobs? What are the advantages and disadvantages of the more common streams?

What science or math does he like? Then go from there.

For whatever type of engineering he chooses it's going to be A LOT of courses in that discipline. Narrow it down to the science and math he thinks he can do 4+ more years of (even after you get a job you are probably going to continue learning in that discipline). Does he prefer physics, chemistry, logic...?

[(English) Language Usage Question]

Sometimes I use whenever instead of when on an event that technically I should know the date and time of it's happening to impart the feeling that the when is fuzzy in my mind. 

For example, say "whenever I had the baby" sure I have my kids' birth certificates and clearly, I was present for the event, but I was pretty foggy at the time. 

[Ignore this thread!]

26 minutes ago, Slache said:

Now they like having Saturdays off.

It probably changes too because it's more work as they get older and more information. I could imagine kids need the processing time and break from the amount of information they take in each week. 

I'm pretty sure I'm not doing anything super exciting over here just mostly flipping to the next page.

[So your reaction to this?]

2 hours ago, teachermom2834 said:

well I did enough to ask dh what would have happened had he said that when he was a middle school teacher

What did he say? I'm just curious. 

I was kind of thinking about it in the workplace, really quick apologies (an oops I thought it was funny in my head but now that it came out is totally inappropriate) and in another case my manager told the guy if he hears him utter those statements again it will be cause for removal (@ his 2nd offense after being told those types of jokes and statements are not appropriate for the workplace).

[Ignore this thread!]

My kids (5 and almost 4) want to do school on Saturdays. I'm the one who's like "do I have to...". Also, my eldest is weirdly afraid of being sent to a B&M school. Now that I think of it maybe it's because his B&M school friends celebrate the weekend because they don't have school and he totally doesn't understand because he's over there wanting school 7 days a week.

[Ignore this thread!]

I think I'll move to SOTW when my eldest is in first. I just don't think they could do it now. As disjointed and random Star Spangled Story is to me, my eldest actually gets a lot out of it. I just have to remind myself he is 5 and he doesn't need to know all the nuances and make all the connections in American History. 

[Anyone with experience with a degree in Dance?]

9 hours ago, Farrar said:

It's as realistic as telling someone interested in chemical engineering they should forgo college and "start" with a play chemistry set or just read some old textbooks and see where it goes. 

Well if she were talking about Chemical Engineering I would tell her to still try and get in touch with a chemical engineer and try out some chemistry kit or something to see if she is actually interested. I would suggest all high schoolers would do this through out their high school careers even when they are choosing between becoming a surgeon, an accountant or an engineer. 

The only difference here is because she is 17, society needs her to decide now what her college major should be. I may be more than a little influenced since I'm reading "Rethinking Education" right now. Maybe a gap year or something so she can explore some career options would be helpful.  (Ducks the tomatoes and eggs that might come my way for those statements.)

[Ignore this thread!]

39 minutes ago, KrissiK said:

I love Notgrass. But...then again I don't. I love the format and the pictures and I do like the lessons, but the lack of continuity, or something just drives me batty. It's so random.

I know my kids are little so I really don't care. They love listening to the stories and looking at the pictures (My Star Spangled Story). It totally feels random to me what is covered and what is not and when. Even though I'm Christian I skipped some of the missionary (?) stories because I don't know it feels weird to emphasize that when  our nation isn't that Christ-like.