:iagree:The awkward phrasing and unfamiliar vocabulary in CVC-stage controlled readers really are problems. I'd rather get slightly more advanced readers and supply any words that my child doesn't know, or use something like Progressive Phonics (www.progressivephonics.com) readers which have certain words designated for the child to read.

Friend B should tell her kids not to use other kids' pillows, hats, or combs. Then she should take a deep breath and relax.

Thank you all so much for the support. I've been feeling incredibly guilty about this.

Colin is 18 months old. I'm not ready to wean; I'd like to continue nursing until he's two or so. But I am also having strong feelings lately that I am ready to nurse less than we're nursing. Some context/details: 1) When I am home, he probably nurses about 15-18 times in 24 hours. He is totally okay when I'm at work, though. 2) He will often demand to nurse and then just nurse for a few seconds. 3) He's way into nursing gymnastics, preferring to nurse standing up (or climbing around) unless he's very sleepy, and often wanting to climb/change positions while still latched on. 4) He's teething (molars). Need I say more? 5) He gropes a lot while he nurses. I try to stay covered up and absolutely don't allow touching or twiddling the off nipple, but he is still pretty grabby with his hands. 6) He still wakes up at night. Sometimes a lot. 7) It's very hot in Baltimore in August, and we don't have central air conditioning. Sometimes it's agonizing just to have him ON me that much. 8) He eats table food well, a good range of foods, and he drinks well from a cup. I am feeling "touched out," and I also have sore nipples from the combination of teething, frequent latching (and his latch has gotten pretty lazy), and gymnastic nursing. I am happy to keep up the longer feeds, like at naptime and bedtime and when he's just waking up and when I come home from work. The short drive-by active "feeds" (how much is he even getting?) and the six-times-an-hour feeds and the middle-of-the-night feeds are stressing me out. Just in the last few days I have started trying to distract him sometimes when he asks for "see-sees," offering a cup or snack or trying to interest him in a book or toy. I don't want to wean, but I don't want to nurse on demand anymore. It really feels like time to make this change. Any advice, suggestions, tips, stories, support, commiseration?

I think I need to ease off on my own position about this. My rule has been that there are "reading time" books and there are regular books. If it has "An I Can Read Book" on the cover (or the Cat in the Hat on the back, or whatever), it's a reading time book, it goes in the reading time basket, and I don't read it out loud until after she's read it to me. I will, however, read other books until my tongue falls off. Now that my daughter is reading "reading time" books pretty fluently and is starting to try to puzzle out other books (thank you, Laurie Keller, for the strong motivation!), I think I should probably back off my rule.

My name is Rivka, and I'm a scientist mom. (Although Moira, I have to say that "optimistic skeptic" is INSPIRED. :iagree:)

I'm a Unitarian-Universalist, which I understand is the American religion with the highest average education level. (Not that education level = intelligence, of course.) Here's something that was written by one of our founders, William Ellery Channing: Our religion has changed quite a bit from the "Unitarian Christianity" that Channing wrote about, but the central place given to rationality is still a major feature of UU. I could never be comfortable in a religion that asked me to shut off my scientific/analytic mind.

Much depends on how it's actually taught, of course. But I have no problem with the standards as written. I think people are imagining something really lurid, like showing pictures from the Kama Sutra. In reality, I expect that the lessons will simply explain that "intercourse" can mean vaginal, oral, or anal intercourse, and that kids shouldn't do any of them. Seriously, when you hear about girls having anal sex to preserve their virginity, this is a much-needed piece of education. Of course the media is feeding the flames because controversy = ratings, and "kids and sex!!!" is sure to bring in plenty of viewers.

I have no concerns about wheat or gluten in moderation, unless someone has celiac disease. I am in favor of a balanced diet including a variety of foods. I am dubious about most diet theories, because from what I've seen they are usually based in pop science without a firm foundation.

I'm another academic. I'm a researcher at a med school - on soft money, which means that I am expected to bring in my own salary in grants, etc. I work about 75-80% time. I've just found out that I'm going to be getting a good NIH grant which will improve things considerably at work - among other things, I'll be able to hire a full-time assistant. The hardest thing for me is feeling out-of-step. Academics are supposed to be incredibly ambitious and high-powered. I am at an excellent institution, went to a great graduate school with a fellowship, am getting grants, etc - but I don't want to work full time, much less the 60+ hours a week that an up-and-coming researcher usually puts in. It is very, very hard to explain - or to admit, even to myself - that I just don't want to be at the top in my field.

Hope by now you are on antibiotics. It's amazing how quickly they can work. I've had mastitis twice and it's just amazing how awful it makes you feel.

Joanne, I'm just a newbie here, but I have really valued your posts about religion. I understand that you are not just rebelling against inessential attitudes that some have layered on top of Christianity. I also once identified strongly as a liberal Christian, and eventually found the exclusive message to be more than I could accept. I second, or third, or whatever the number has gotten to, the idea that at some point you might find that you are at home in a UU or a Christian Universalist church. Best wishes to you.

Thanks for the advice. I don't know why I feel like I need permission to make big skips, given that that's supposedly one of the reasons why we're homeschooling. Today I told her we would skip through, taking turns picking one question that looked like the most fun off each page. She took me at my word and went for lesson 66. So yeah, I guess we don't have to do the pages in order. And 1b looks like it will line up well with where we are in Miquon. Thanks again.

I'm sure there must be people here who are combining Miquon and MEP, right? My 5yo started with Miquon Orange when she was 4, just working when she felt like it. When we started K and expected a little math every day (either Miquon or games), she was working partly in Orange and partly in Red. She does really well with the math, but started balking and saying it was too hard, the pages had too many questions on them, etc. So we switched to MEP for a while. My idea was that we could work back and forth between them. We started with MEP 1a and are sort of skipping quickly through the pages because it's so easy. She really loves the puzzle/logic elements in MEP. But I can't believe how slow it moves - like, more than a week of *just* sums and differences for the numbers 0-2. Today we went back to Miquon and the difference was just really striking. How do you match up Miquon and MEP, or do you not try? In theory, Miquon Orange/Red and MEP 1a/b should both be first grade level work, but it seems as though they couldn't possibly be more different in level! Does anyone have any guidance?

I had a couple of showers for my first. My mother's friends even threw a "grandmothers shower" because three of them were all expecting grandchildren at once. The grandmothers attended the party and opened the presents, and then shipped the gifts off to their expecting kids. For my second, a couple of friends asked and I told them I didn't think people did second showers. Then, as a total surprise, a small group of my out-of-town friends showed up at my house to "kidnap" me for lunch and a massage. They brought small gifts like an outfit for the baby or a foot soak kit for me. It was so nice, and it didn't make me uncomfortable like a full second shower would have.

I reported someone for doing this just the other day. They stuck out like a sore thumb because they were trying to advertise a whole-word reading program with sight word flash cards. Poor dear must have been misdirected here.,

You're not a freak! When I lived in Portland OR, I used to go to public baths that had hot tubs, saunas, and a sundeck. Technically it was "clothing optional" but I never ever saw anyone in a bathing suit. It was totally nonsexual, just a great place to relax. I moved from there to Iowa for grad school. In Iowa women wore swimsuits in the sauna that was INSIDE the women's locker room. It was a whole different world.

Liberty's Kids is a huge favorite at our house.

Regardless of the intentions behind the original redecoration, the way they're handling it afterward feels emotionally manipulative to me. What has your relationship been like prior to this? Has there been a pattern of disregard for your feelings and/or manipulation? Also, the original jungle murals were cut down, as in damaged? Your artwork was damaged? That alone would be a serious issue for me, regardless of what else happened.

Great detective work!

I don't think you'd find the book we use suitable, but I wonder if it might help to say something like, "A tiny piece from the father and a tiny piece from the mother come together to make a baby. That makes the baby part of the father's family as well as part of the mother's family - it's why you have blond hair like Daddy and Uncle Joe, but you also have brown eyes like Mommy." (Or whatever.) I completely agree with everyone who says that accurate sexual information doesn't damage a child's innocence, and that basic information about sex is age-appropriate for young children. But it does sound as though, at this point, your son is primarily interested in why there are fathers at all, not so much in the particulars of how reproduction happens.

:seeya:

I don't like the word "twaddle" because it seems so disrespectful of kids' interests and preferences. I also think that twaddle is often in the eye of the beholder. I'm guessing that there are parents here who would consider all science fiction to be twaddle, not differentiating between poor-quality, cliched series books and thoughtful novels of high literary quality. In the other direction, I think there are 19th century books that were the twaddle of their time, which have now been elevated to literary respectability because they're old. I do refuse to read licensed-character books out loud. I just can't tolerate the poor quality of a book that was written as a work-for-hire or by a corporate author instead of by someone who had a story to tell. But my child is free to read books like that on her own.

I grew up in a liberal mainline Protestant church (Congregationalist/UCC) and had a wonderful experience there. I enjoyed church and Sunday School and benefited from relationships with many great adults who lived their faith. My whole family was deeply involved in church life and religion was discussed and practiced at home as well. I continued to attend a UCC church off and on in college. I especially appreciated my church's focus on social justice work. If I had married someone who was also UCC/liberal Christian, I would probably still have that religious identity today. Instead, I married a recovering former Southern Baptist who had such terrible experiences with religion that he was not willing to consider going to a Christian church. He was a Unitarian-Universalist. It was important to me that we go to church together, so we both went to the UU church. In a UU church there is no creed or specific set of beliefs; people support each other's faith, knowing that we may wind up walking different religious paths. So it was a good match for a mixed couple. I still identified as a Christian and took part in a Christian group at my church which had Bible study and celebrated Communion. Eventually, though, my Christian identity sort of fell away as my UU identity became stronger. I found that I just became too uncomfortable with the exclusiveness of Christianity. Liberal Christian teachings still have resonance for me, and I direct the Christmas pageant at my church and am comfortable discussing Jesus with my daughter. But I now identify as straight-up UU, no longer as Christian UU. I am very happy in my faith and our family are deeply involved in our church community.

As a Unitarian-Universalist, I am contractually obligated from using the words "spiritual" and "leader" in such close proximity to each other. :lol: My husband is very active in the leadership of our church; he's currently the VP of our Board of Trustees and previously served as the church Treasurer for several years. I am more of a Sunday School teacher kind of person. But that doesn't carry over to leadership in our home and family. We tend to be of one mind about vital issues. If one of us is more passionate or focused on an issue, the other one listens very carefully and usually winds up following. If we were faced with a critical issue, we would think, and talk, and think some more, and talk some more, and seek advice, and discuss the advice, and come to a unified position. No one would lead.