Stanford started a Santa Clara County serosurvey today. I'm not sure what test they're using, though, or what the turnaround time on the results will be.

Every week, at least one library books goes missing, necessitating a house-wide hunt. I'm trying to keep the level to around 20 kid books, but at times we've had more like 50, depending on kid interests. Nominally, we store them on top of the TV stand, but they end up on the living room chairs, at the kitchen table, next to their beds, in the car, etc. I'm trying to enforce that they get put back at the end of the night, but somehow one always gets forgotten somewhere. I'd love some tips on how other people keep track of their library books, and if they have if rules about when/where they're put back.

What grade is she going into? My son is only in first grade, so we don't have too much experience with teachers, but so far we've lucked out with ones who readily admitted most of the provided homework was busywork and were fine with me doing pretty much anything else instead. We've also generally agreed on what his strengths and weaknesses are, so they've given me heads-up on what assignments they think would be helpful for him. I'm assuming you'll have parent-teacher conferences soon, so I think I'd go into that with what you'd like to work on with her and see how that would fit in with what the teacher has planned for the year. I wouldn't necessarily plan on trying to align completely with the teacher. That sounds like too much work and, honestly, probably will mean missing out on a lot of the things you actually want to cover.

The Narwhal and Jelly books might work. When my son first started reading, he liked the Fly Guy books, and he'd read Fly Guy's parts (mostly "buzzzzz" 🙄) while I'd read everything else.

The IEP team screened her for autism (not ADOS, I think, though my brain is mush so I'll have to dig out the IEP report) and she didn't meet enough of their criteria. She's incredibly sweet and social with adults initially, makes eye contact, etc. It's only with kids her age (or with adults after she's gotten comfortable with them) that things really fall apart, and we're still not sure if it's just because most kids her age get frustrated with not being able to communicate with her or if she's on the spectrum. She's got enough red flags that we scheduled an appointment in January with a developmental pediatrician. You're right about the SLPs. I reached out to one this morning and we'll see when she can fit us in. It's funny because on the one hand, there's definitely a "been there, done that" feeling, but the resources I have in place for her brother aren't necessarily what works best for her, either. Thank you again!

She had a tongue tie that was clipped soon after birth, and her pediatric dentist examined it at her last appointment. She's going back in soon so I'll have her double-check it. She's seen an audiologist (though I question whether it was a good one since she didn't notice DD had ear infections at the time!). She's had several ear infections over the past year, though they do eventually clear up (we usually need to do 2 repeat ear checks, so 20-ish days after we initially notice the symptoms). She's pretty stoic so it's only in the past few months that she's been able to tell us that her ears hurt. I'm not convinced that she doesn't have hearing loss. This sounds weird, but there's something about the tone of her speech that reminds me of friends I know who are Deaf or heard of hearing. For the auditory discrimination, would that be checked by an audiologist? The one thing that makes me think it isn't apraxia is that her errors are consistent. The substitutions are always the same, same for the consonants she drops and how she simplifies words. She also doesn't seem to be really.. groping? I think was the word I saw in some videos I've watched of kids with apraxia. She just says what she thinks the word is, no extra mouth movements, and if I don't understand it (which happens a lot, as you can imagine) she'll keep repeating it until I finally figure out what she's saying. I was able to find two in a somewhat reasonable distance who completed Bridging over the summer. Our insurance situation will be changing in the next month, so I'm more at the stage of figuring out what to pursue next, but it seems like something to pursue along with the audiologist, if only to rule it out. Thank you all for the advice! I've spent a lot of time googling and watching videos, and you have all been immeasurably more helpful!

Yeah, school district just says "articulation disorder" while the SLP has mentioned apraxia before. We had some concerns about DD's hearing and were just able to resolve them over the summer. The SLP is not PROMPT trained. No flash cards (thank goodness, can't imagine my daughter putting up with that), more like, having her do "beaver teeth" to make the F sound, and then playing a game where she has to use the initial "f". She's pretty old school but we've been going to her for many years (my older kid has HF ASD and also had a speech delay, though not articulation related) so there's a bit of an emotional connection there, for both myself and the kids. There's several "PROMPT trained" SLPs near by, though it seems like the only certification listed is "introduction to PROMPT." Would that be enough to effectively diagnose it?

Hi all, my DD3 has been attending SLP since she was 2. We recently had an evaluation done as part of an initial IEP meeting and she's basically scoring at 1% for articulation for her age level. She has a lot of issues with consonants. As an example, "taco" and "Costco" sound the same as she's not saying the initial consonants or the /st/ part of Costco. The SLP has made a lot of progress in getting her to say sentences and we're working on /f/ and /s/. For instance, we've gone from her asking "mo!" to "I wa mo, mommy!" Most of the homework from the SLP has been to encourage her to speak slowly and using syllables and sentences, which is definitely working, but I'm wondering if there's anything else we could be doing at home.

PM'd you! Also, just noticed your two oldest are studying nursing - Lehigh Valley Hospital, St. Luke's, and Easton Hospital are all around the Easton area, if your olders are eventually looking for jobs near you.

Off the top of my head - smoke detectors, pretty much anything that uses satellites (so GPS, DirecTV, etc), something to do with pacemakers, LED brain surgery (ok, not everyday life type of thing ;) )... there's a pretty cool exhibit at Kennedy Space Center that lists some of these things. My big worry is the gap between the space shuttle program and the next gen program, when the Webb Telescope, scheduled to be launched in, what 2014?, needs repairs. I know they do as much as possible to replicate space here, but it seems odd to contemplate sending astronauts to another planet (like that whole Mars-in-2020 thing) who have never been in space before. On a side note, if you ever get down to the Florida area, Kennedy Space Center is AMAZING! The IMAX movies are fantastic - I believe they were both about the Hubble, one focusing more on repair missions and one more on what we've discovered about the galaxy from it - and the tours were so much fun.

Coming out of lurking to comment... I went through a similar situation with my dad (he was out fishing with my nephews when a teenager on a skidoo swerved in front of the boat and hit them). Reading the accident report was nearly as bad as the moment I found out about the accident - there are some times I wish I'd just asked the lawyer for the pertinent parts and not read the rest. For what it's worth, though, in some ways it felt like that was the true moment of closure. Just.... be prepared for that - I foolishly thought it wouldn't hit me so hard, and ended up bawling like a baby at a rest stop on the NY thruway. :grouphug: to you, and a separate :grouphug: to your friend for being there for you

Oh, memories. I remember watching the pilot episode of Stargate with my dad as a teenager - we ordered in pizza, had popcorn, the whole nine yards. Then that nude scene came on.... :blink: Glad it worked out better with your son!

I have a "happy" playlist on my iPod for days like these. Lots of upbeat songs that I like to sing along with, worship songs, things like that. Life just feels a lot better when I'm belting out lyrics (maybe not so much for DH, since I don't sing very well :D).

It's not your fault. I went through something similar at that age - quit ballet, quit basketball, etc - all because there were people who were better than me, and I *knew* no matter how much I tried, I could never be that good. I doubt it was my parents' fault - in retrospect, it was recognizing that I was doing so many of these activities to please my parents and not for me. I filled up my extra high school time with volunteering instead of all the things I quit. I think I felt that no matter how bad I was at that, I was still helping someone else out. It took years for me, but eventually I found a hobby that I enjoy so much that it doesn't really matter how good I am at it any longer. I still struggle with it, but I have better tools now than I did when I was a teenager :tongue_smilie:

Probably a dwarf Meyer lemon. Lovely flowers and they really smell yummy! They are around $30 for a 1-gallon sized tree, and if you can't find them locally, the shipping can be an additional half that price. Edit - oops, sorry, forgot this part - Care-wise, it needs a nice sunny window and frequent watering.