If you have a toddler in the house (I do too), is it possible that asking for more school is a way to hold on to more of your attention? I know that I have a tendency to drop everything and focus on my daughter if she wants to do math or go to the museum to see the mummies, but am much less likely to do that if she wants me to play Polly Pockets or something. So asking for more school can be her way of saying "More Mom, please." I wonder if she'd be just as happy to have you carve out half an hour of "Mom and daughter playtime" - maybe after Dad comes home to be with the toddler.

:iagree: There is not-so-subtle stuff that happens. Every time my MIL saw my daughter playing with blocks or trains she suggested that they have a tea party, or offered her a doll. (I have a hilarious photo of 2-year-old Alex building something complicated out of blocks with her back turned to Nana, who is behind her futilely holding out a baby doll.) But yes, much of the time it's more subtle than that. I am a serious feminist. But when I was sorting out my daughter's old baby clothes to see what could be used for my son, I got rid of almost all the pink. I had happily put her in blue overalls with doggies on them, but I froze at the idea of putting him in a petal-pink sleeper. And when he dresses up in his sister's princess dresses, which he loves to do, while most of me is cooing at the adorability there's still part of me that feels uncomfortable. (What if people tease him? What if they think I'm such a big feminist that I'm trying to feminize him?) How good am I at hiding that from him? At 1.5 he doesn't notice, but how about at 3? I do have some hopes for progress. Twenty years ago the party line on gender differences was that only girls are interested in babies and little children. These days, when we go to church, the group of big kids who follow my toddler around loving on him and interacting with him are mostly boys. They've grown up with involved fathers, and they don't know any different. My son, cradling his baby doll and bringing it to me to nurse, is probably going to turn out the same way. Yay.

The research on sex differences shows that the biological differences are very small - but those biological differences are magnified by different experiences and different cultural messages until, by adulthood, there appear to be large "natural" differences. Boys and girls are treated differently from birth. Researchers took the same babies and dressed them in a pink sleeper half the time, and a blue sleeper the other half the time. Adults asked to interact with the babies described them differently: the pink baby was "sweet" and "delicate," the blue baby "strong" and "active." They held them differently: the pink baby cradled close for eye-to-eye contact, the blue baby faced outward to see the world. Given a range of toys, they offered the pink baby the doll more often, the blue baby the football more often. And the majority of the adults swore that they treated boy and girl babies exactly the same. They had no idea that they were behaving differently depending on what sex they thought the baby was. If those people are doing the same things at home, and so is everyone else their children encounter, is it really surprising that the boys seem to "naturally" prefer trucks and the girls "naturally" prefer toy kitchens? And is it really surprising that after a childhood spent with nurturing toys instead of visuospatial toys, a girl decides in high school that she just doesn't seem to have much aptitude for engineering or math? I do agree that equality of opportunity will not necessary mean 50% representation in the final profession. But I think it's naive to say that males and females have equal opportunity to enter professions dominated by the opposite sex. I am one of a very few female faculty members in a male-dominated research institute. Sexist comments are pretty frequent, and so is a general heckling attitude - when someone gets up to present their research, other people make jokes and put-downs. It's a very adolescent-male atmosphere. They didn't not hire me because I'm a woman, and they wouldn't fire me because I'm a woman, but I can definitely see why the frat-boy atmosphere would make a lot of women uncomfortable enough to "decide on their own" to leave.

Taste a little sip and see if it's gone to vinegar. Some wines last a long time when opened, and others go vinegary really quickly.

I'm normally on a pretty even keel, but when I am pregnant I have huge issues with blood sugar crashes and mood swings. I would have been much less sympathetic to your daughter's situation before I had the experience of out-of-control emotions linked to my physical state. I used to freak out at my husband, and he would respond by handing me an individually-wrapped serving of cheese. "Eat this, and then we'll talk about it." Strangely enough, once I ate the cheese, the problem resolved itself. So I agree with the advice to feed her rather than punish her, and to encourage her to develop skills for self-monitoring her physical state. Maybe keeping a "food/mood" log would be helpful, to help her begin to recognize connections between her diet (and sleep) and her moods.

The Wizard of Oz. (If you only know the movie, the book is well worth checking out. And the sequels.) Little House in the Big Woods and Little House on Plum Creek. (I am holding off on Little House on the Prairie because of the Native American issues.) Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. (I don't care for the sequels, though.) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The BFG.

*Are* they supposed to be a year ahead? I had no idea. We're in MEP 1a right now, and it covers much, much more than our state standards for K. It certainly seems 1st grade level to me.

Sometimes we do math games outside, writing on the sidewalk with chalk.

I don't think that all advanced kids are pushed. I was reading chapter books when I was four, and the only thing my parents did was read to me and take me to the library. So I definitely wasn't pushed. Nor do I think it qualifies as "pushing" if a three- or four-year-old asks to learn to read and the parent buys a copy of OPGTR and does lessons when the child shows interest. What trips my "pushing" meter is a sense that it is important to the parent that the child be advanced, and that a young child is expected to meet parent-selected performance goals that are outside the normal developmental path. Little kids don't necessarily follow a steady trajectory on academic subjects. My daughter could identify all the letters by about 16 months. She was fascinated with letters and loved to have me write them down for her. She learned to read at five. If I had decided that she ought to keep up her early pace, we could have had some very unpleasant preschool years.

Seltzer with some juice in it. I especially like seltzer with lemonade or limeade. Unsweet tea. Water. I don't have anything against sugar, but sweet drinks don't satisfy my thirst.

I don't think it's "pushing" to nudge a child through a hard spot or to choose a curriculum that provides mental challenge. I have seen real pushing. I think Kumon tutoring programs for three-year-olds are pushing. I remember seeing someone say, once, that she had decided that she wanted her four-year-old to be reading at a second-grade level by her fifth birthday. That's pushing.

If it weren't for Dance Dance Revolution, the only exercise I would get would be walking around the neighborhood. I like the social aspect of a lot of Wii games - bowling together, etc. My daughter has a lot of trouble trying to use the Wii controller, but I'm sure that will improve as she gets older.

One of the things I hated most in school was being forced to drag slowly through our reading books, a tiny bit at a time. You bet my kid can read as much as she wants. ;)

I agree with those who think that he shouldn't tone down his principles to fit in. That said, he doesn't need to give a moral lecture - humor will probably be much more effective. He could say something like, "Dude, your compass has same-sex attractions? How can you even tell?" Or "It's gay? Whoa, is it waving a little rainbow flag?" Because most of these kids probably don't mean to be expressing malice towards gays, this is a gentle way of pointing out that the word that they are using to mean useless/pathetic/no-good is a word that applies to a specific group of people.

Wow. That's really mean.

In addition to the other suggestions, I think that every young person needs one excellent dish to bring to potlucks and one excellent dessert. Young adults entertain with potlucks a lot, so it's important to have something to bring. When young adults are entertained by older adults, it's gracious to be able to offer to bring dessert. These two things will cover the majority of your food-related social obligations. I always found that if I could make a really good from-scratch chocolate cake, I didn't need to know how to make any other dessert. No one complains about getting my chocolate cake again and again. :D And my go-to potluck dish is dead simple: Peel and slice potatoes and boil them until they are just able to be pierced with a fork. Layer them in a buttered baking dish. Top with salt and pepper. Layer sliced tomatoes on top and top them with basil. Layer slices of mozzarella cheese on top of that, and pour melted butter over the top of the whole thing. Bake uncovered at 350 for 30 minutes.

We recently took a field trip to an Asian supermarket. It was a great and free way to expose our young kids to aspects of another culture. My city has a lot of ethnic festivals which are usually free to enter, and offer exposure to another culture's art, music, food, traditional dress, etc. Going to watch a construction site makes a good field trip.

I think at 22 months I would be a little concerned but not totally freaked out. But I agree with the suggestion to go ahead and get him signed up for an EI assessment. It doesn't seem like there's a downside to having him evaluated - either they'll tell you he's fine and you can go on your merry way, or they'll tell you he needs services, in which case the earlier you start the better.

My MIL is already worried about the prom. My oldest is five.

We use our cloth napkins for a couple of days in a row or until they are soiled, and then swap them out. We keep our own napkins at our own place at the table - napkin rings would also work. If you've been eating something messy and wiping your hands and mouth, your napkin needs to be replaced right after that meal. If your napkin was set on your lap at the beginning of the meal and you ate neatly with silverware, it may be just as clean at the end of the meal as it was at the start.

I think kids are more likely to wind up feeling resentful about Santa if: - Santa is used in threats/emotional blackmail ("You'd better behave right now or Santa won't bring you any presents!") - The child has significant doubts and wants to know the truth, but the parents deny the truth. - The atmosphere of finding out is "ha ha, you were fooled" instead of "Santa is part of the spirit of Christmas..." or some other supportive explanation. I think we're on the last year of my 5yo believing. She's started to ask a bunch of questions. Right now she can be deflected with "What do YOU think?", but my husband and I agree that if she asks us directly if Santa is really real, and wants an answer, we have to tell her.

My husband and I went out to a fancy restaurant and the waiter called me "milady" the whole time. It irritated the cr@p out of me. This isn't a Renaissance Fair, it's a steakhouse! I remarked to my husband that I knew why he did it: too many adult women complaining that "ma'am" makes them feel old. I would have vastly preferred "ma'am" to "milady."

I read a pile of these books when I was a kid, and now that I have a budding history geek I am wondering about bringing them in as read-alouds. I don't know whether they are actually any good, though. What do you think of this series? Are they passably historically accurate? How is the writing quality? Do they have an ideology?

I will never forget being required to read the "everyone gets scarlet fever for Passover" chapter six. Bedtimes. In. A. Row. :lol:

I was given this book by my sixth grade teacher because I had finished all the reading books. I loved it, but there were aspects that went over my head. There are great read-alouds for younger kids about the immigrant experience. Have you read All of a Kind Family?