If your husband wants to go back on his promise, then he should be the one to explain why to your son. And he should be the one to drop him off at school. He needs to see what's happening, not just hear it second hand. With my kids, when they were that reluctant to go to school, there was generally something going on that shouldn't have been going on. It's amazing how things can happen in there once the doors shut and the parents have been sent home. The teachers may not know, or worse, may know and are keeping it from you. You could call me paranoid, except that I've been through this. When we were in similar situations, once I told my husband that it was HIS responsibility to get the kid to school, he suddenly began to understand why I wanted to keep them home. Later, we began to hear some of the things that were going on. We would never have sent our kids if we had known. Kids can't talk much. Ten years later, I am only now hearing about some of the things that happened to my daughter in her first weeks of first grade before she refused to go anymore. You're listening to your son. Your husband needs to listen too, so you can both discuss it with the same knowledge. If your husband won't participate, then you get to make the decision. If your husband doesn't understand that and can't eventually comes to term with it, then your marriage is in a lot worse shape than this particular event would indicate and bowing to his wishes may create more harm. Do your part by involving him in these decisions, but if he refuses to be fully involved in an adult fashion then you have to do what's right for your son. I didn't mean that in a harsh way -- nor do I mean that you should be harsh with your husband. But you can insist that your son be treated respectfully, while still respecting your husband. This shouldn't necessarily be your son's decision, but it should also not be the decision of someone who doesn't see the full situation (ie, as your husband seems to be, from reading your description). I was in a similar situation with my husband. I told him my mind and got him involved. He wasn't happy, but months later he thanked me. He ended up closer to our kids because of it. Of course, you're not in my exact situation, so you'll have to see what seems best to you. I'm only offering that experience in case it seems to help.

I'd be so thrilled to get anything in that situation. It wouldn't matter if it was "enough". They'll appreciate whatever you do. Maybe if you do one or two calls, the word will get around and more will show up. Maybe you could suggest cut up vegetables or some fruit for someone else to bring, but don't burn yourself out doing it all.

I had one hs and one in public K. It was ok. There were a lot of days the K didn't want to go, but that had been true of my first child when she was in K. School can get a little wearing at times. I didn't have any trouble bringing the younger one home after first grade. If anything, it's made my life easier, as she knows what school is all about and has no desire to go back and experience it again. If your daughter is having attitude issues about schoolwork, I might suspect it's because she's gone about as far as she can go academically in her current development configuration. Kids do take breaks. It's ok to let her slide as it sounds like she's already ahead for her age. I had a very bossy kindergartner who went to school and got bossed by everyone else, but it didn't help with her attitude at home. It just made her miserable and made her even more bossy at home. And there were some bad influences I wish she hadn't hung out with. The bossiness at home is probably just a phase. In order to get along with us, she needed to spend time with us, not with a bunch of other kids putting her in her place. I'm not sure that K would accomplish what you want. However, all kids and situations are different.

Thanks for the suggestions! Now we have a few more ideas. Our problem, of course, is that we want to stay with one car. When my husband drives, he's generally hauling a bunch of stuff, so he'd like a van. When I drive I'm generally running errands and getting in and out of tight parking lots, so I'd really like something smaller -- and with better gas mileage. Seems my needs ought to trump his, seeing as I do most of the driving, and driving a huge car around just so he can haul something big once a year seems pointless, but we'll see. Actually, what I'd really like is a car without power windows or those silly remote keys that cost hundreds of dollars. I don't know if one can even find those anymore -- let alone in a used car.

Alone at the swimming pool during free swim? Nope. I wouldn't do it. It's not overprotectiveness. Lifeguards can't follow everything, and there's a lot going on during free swim. Not to mention the fact that a lot of kids show up to free swim who seem to think it's fun to try to drown whoever is near them. I wouldn't even go swimming by myself during free swim. It just makes sense to have a designated someone who's looking out for you. In case the lifeguard doesn't see an accident developing. And although I may trust my own kids to watch ME, I'm not sure I'd trust most other kids to watch my kid. I know my kids pay attention. I'm not so sure about others. As far as weirdos in the locker room -- that's not something I really worry about during free swim. There are so many people running in and out I doubt there'd be the privacy for anything to happen. At that age, my kids were doing short trips on their bikes to the convenience store, the park, and the library. But, to be honest, I kind of rethought that after my daughter had her bike stolen out from under her. I didn't actually have to tell her to stay closer to home after that incident, though. She just did. Turned out our instincts were probably right, as that single kid who stole her bike terrorized the neighborhood for several years afterward -- culminating in murdering some innocent pedestrian. If that kid hadn't been roaming the neighborhood, we might have been freer in letting our kids roam, but one has to consider the circumstances.

Thanks! They need everything they can get.

Any suggestions for a decent one? We're looking at Mazda5, Honda Fit, Honda Odyssey, VW Passat, and Volvo wagon. Maybe we flirted with some Subaru thing as well. I'm hoping to get something that's about 3-5 years old. I personally think the Odyssey is too big and too gas hungry, but my husband really likes it. I like the Honda Fit, except it only seats the 4 of us and there are times when we need to do 5. We'll have 2 cars for awhile, but once our old one bites the dust, we'll be back down to one, so a car that only seats 4 might turn out to be a problem. Also, my husband wants something a little bigger as he's hoping it will be safer. The Mazda5 is somewhere in between those two and that's what we're looking at more seriously. Does this seem like a good choice? Any others we should consider? I also have to figure out where all that money I've been stashing for a car has ended up and get it back in the checking account.

I just gave straight grades and didn't weight anything. If she took an AP test at the end of a class, I gave the AP score (although that wasn't necessarily the grade). I decided naming certain classes "honors" would just raise eyebrows. Anyway, they were probably all honors classes (or more) compared to the local high school, and I didn't want things to look padded. The fact that she did so many classes in high school, that she did so well in her dual enrollment courses and AP tests, and that she scored well on the ACT were probably more influential than naming some of her classes "honors". I also listed her college classes on her high school transcript and labelled them that way. If the colleges she was applying to wanted to do any weighting, I just left that up to them. It seemed presumptuous to do it myself. Seems presumptuous for high schools to do it too, frankly. It's just a way to get their students to come out on top. I'm not convinced one can compare GPAs between high schools anyway. Some colleges do their own weighting. Some will take weighted GPAs and convert them back to a normal scale.

As I posted before, my daughter made a trailer for the play she's going to be in. She entered the trailer in a contest. If they win the contest by getting the most votes, they'll get 500 dollars that might cover some of their expenses. If you'd like to help - view the trailer and vote: http://www.fringeyawards.com/view-trailer/?v_id=56 They'll appreciate your support - thanks!

I read Tale of Two Cities in 10th grade and enjoyed it. My daughter read Great Expectations in 9th grade and thought it worth reading -- although she suggested a bit of editing in the middle.

Which is all making Long Black Veil run through my head. Anyone heard of that one? "A saga song, "Long Black Veil" is told from the point of view of an executed man falsely accused of murder. He refuses to provide an alibi, since on the night of the murder he was having an affair with his best friend's wife, and would rather die and take their secret to his grave than admit the truth. The chorus describes the woman's mourning visits to his gravesite, wearing a long black veil and enduring a howling wind."

9th grade: one short story by Poe after that we watched movies and wrote about them 10th grade: We got to choose our own books: The Plague Dr. Zhivago Farewell to Manzanar The Source and were required to read: Catch-22 11th grade: The Scarlet Letter Huckleberry Finn Sister Carrie Babbitt parts of Walden 12th grade (AP): Tom Jones Wuthering Heights Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Invisible Man As You Like It King Lear Waiting for Godot some poetry

There are a lot of good schools out there that allow non-majors into the music classes/performance groups -- even schools with top notch music majors. I think it's odd that there's a school that doesn't, in fact. I'd just look elsewhere. (Although, I'd be sure to check that this one person wasn't just giving her some weird story about this. This seems very strange to me.) However, if that's the school she has her heart set on, why not double major in both music and something else? Then, when the music major gets to be too much, just drop back to a minor. Or just only finish the "other" major while dragging one's feet on the music major, thus allowing her to take the music classes, but not have to do everything she doesn't have time for. I know people who minored in music specifically so they could get cheaper lessons. The key is just not being totally honest, unfortunately, but I personally wouldn't feel too bad about it if this is really their policy. I know there are music faculty here and there that have the idea that you have sleep/eat/breathe music or you're just not worth having around, but I think they lose a lot of good students that way who just decide to do something else.

We forgot to put it on the list of awards for my daughter. I doubt it really mattered, as her ACT scores were in a similar range. I don't know that anyone actually looks at Commended status. It probably doesn't really add anything to the application if the ACT/SAT scores are just as high. And I wouldn't send a copy of the letter, if it were me. There's usually a space for listing awards. That would be plenty. I was a NM scholar. I think I listed it on my awards and that was it. By the time I applied, I don't think I even knew where the letter was.

I lived in the dorms and hated it. It was SO distracting it was difficult to get anything done. It was also just uncomfortable, and having to eat at specified times just about drove me crazy. My daughter's even worse than I am about being distracted and wanting to eat when she's hungry, not when the food happens to be served. Also, she has food allergies, so dorm food is really not a good idea. So she'll live at home. The commute is only about 20 minutes by bike (10 minutes by car). For a social life, I think she'll do better getting to know people by getting involved in activities than meeting them in the dorm. Just physically being with other people doesn't make friends for her. She has to be working with them on something. So she's signed up for band and pep band and theater, for starters. She's also figured out where the ping-pong and pool tables are and intends to do a lot of skating at the ice rink. Anyway, she spent Friday night in the dorm at the orientation session and while it was fun for one night, she's pretty sure she couldn't physically handle it for any longer. There was just too much noise for her -- and the dorm parties weren't even in session. It was the little things of people walking down the hall and opening and shutting doors that were keeping her up. Also, I think studying in groups is a little overrated. All I ever did in study groups was help others, or get distracted by all the chatter. Helping others and having a social life is important, of course, but at some point, one does have to have the time to sit down and learn the material. As for independence for my daughter -- just doing classes on her own is plenty independent. I don't think she's too worried about that. We're not planning on having her do a lot of required chores around here. She'll have enough to worry about. (However, she does help out when she has time.) This past year she did 3 classes a semester at another nearby college while living at home, so it's not like she doesn't know what she's getting into. It is true she didn't get involved socially with the kids at that college, but the truth is, she just didn't have the time because she had too many other social things going on with theater and band and choir that weren't meeting at that school. If she concentrates her extracurricular activities at the college (which she'll now be allowed to do as a full time student), she'll probably get into the social scene fairly quickly.

My kids were both like this early on. I never disciplined. I may have encouraged, but I didn't make a big deal of it. They both talk in public now. If I'd disciplined them, it would have made it worse. It's an anxiety issue. Disciplining isn't going to make a child less anxious.

You could try this yahoo group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FrenchEnglishTutor/ I haven't been there in awhile so I don't remember how much legitimate activity there is. However, it was set up for folks to chat in French and English and help each other learn the languages.

I've found planning in detail to be a complete waste of time for us. In recent years, our "planning" has consisted of: it would be nice to get through these books this year. And then we don't get through them anyway, we end up doing something else. And the kids learn just fine. They also do fine on standardized tests. And my older one has done fine in college. I probably do have an "overall" plan, and maybe a transcript in the back of my head (for the high school years), but I've never written it down. For first grade, though, think about what kids really need to know and just work toward that. "Need to know" are things like reading, writing and rithmetic. And that's about it. Everything else gets covered just because it's interesting.

OTOH, my daughter doesn't cough at all. She does, however, have terrible "insomnia" because her heart races and she has to work hard to breathe if she lays down. It has helped to sleep sitting up, but she can't sleep as well that way. I'm only mentioning this in case others are reading this and suspecting asthma but thinking it has to have a cough with it. When my husband's asthma attacks are at their worst, he just sits there and can't move. No coughing, no wheezing, nothing audible from the outside.

And this is somehow different from having an insurance company deny coverage, which they do all the time? If the appeal to cover the first surgery is successful, I rather doubt Fox news will carry that.

On thinking about this, I've been wondering if study sheets are professors' response to the fact that the text books are somewhat incomprehensible. I know that I don't like reading textbooks. I'd like to read them, to get something out of them, but I'm always left wondering what the author thought they were saying. Also, the study that was cited in the article really only compares how many hours students thought they were studying (or wanted to report), not how many hours they actually studied. If there's been a trend toward not wanting to seem like a grind, lots of students now may believe they study less than they actually do -- and students back in the 60's may have tended to think the opposite. I remember "studying" back in college consisted of a lot of hanging at the library. Even if you wanted to get anything done, there wasn't the quiet to do it. But I'm sure we all would have said we were studying all those hours if we'd been asked. Also, those icons on cash registers have been around for years. It's usually cited as evidence that people working those jobs must be illiterate. I suspect, though, that it's just an efficiency device. Time is saved if there isn't the extra step of the cashier taking the order and then having to relay it back to the food preparers (I won't say cooks). But if you're going to put the order into a computer, it isn't very efficient to have to type in the words -- and the full words won't fit on the button unless they're so tiny they're hard to read. The employees don't have to be illiterate for there to be very good reasons to put pictures on the buttons. It's all about moving customers through as fast as possible (which is why the cash registers also figure the change due, because even for folks who are really good at making change, it will probably still save a second or so).

My daughter did physics in college after having done no physics in high school. She did fine. You might want to check with colleges. For PT, the physics required might be less rigorous. It might not need calculus before or during. However, if it is calculus based physics, many physics courses do require a semester of calculus first. It varies by college. If your plan is to have him take an AP test, you might want to check whether either will get credit through AP at the colleges he's interested in. If he'll need calculus before taking physics at college, then I'd tend to toward doing calculus now. It would put him a semester ahead. If he doesn't plan on AP, I'd just let him choose which looked more interesting. I don't know that calculus is easier than physics. For me, it was the other way around. I think a lot of that depends on how good the teacher is. For my daughter, if I'd given her the choice (and knowing what she knows now after having done both of them), I think she would have chosen the physics as it's a lot more interesting to her.

Our favorite part of this movie was when the geologist finds a fossilized hand sticking out of rock. As he can't figure out what it is he just lops it off and hauls it back to his institute to find someone who can identify it. He didn't exactly nail it over the hall door to celebrate, but it was still good for a laugh from those of us who had just read Beowulf.

We just watched Creature from the Black Lagoon (what can I say? it's a classic). For those interested in Beowulf, it had some obviously Beowulf-inspired moments. And yes, it was bad, although not as bad as we'd hoped.

OTOH, on the topic of providing students with the test questions beforehand, I don't really see a problem with this if it's done right. My husband routinely hands out study sheets. They contain a LOT of material. Some students complain he needs to trim it down to "know" what to study. Other students just study it all. Guess who gets the A? He often also provides essay test questions beforehand. He gives a lot more than what will be on the test. His thinking is that any student that is willing to put in the time to figure out decent answers to every essay question that might possibly be on the test has basically studied as well as they should have. All he's doing is guiding them in the way HE would study if he were in the class: setting up all possible questions for himself and then answering them. Some students don't need this. For those who do, that's why they have a teacher, rather just self-studying. In my daughter's college physics class last year, she encountered some of the same thing. The professors would choose a couple of the homework problems to be done on the test (although no one knew which they would be), assigned a couple derivations that were sure to be on the test, and had a couple more problems that no one had seen before. Done right, it can be a useful teaching tool. However, even when it's done right and the students are learning, there will always be doomsayers who squawk that it's the end of the world as we know it. And, frankly, there have always been students who just didn't try very hard. I remember them from my college days. I remember having them in my classes back when I was teaching college classes. They're still there.