Is it inappropriate to mention in this thread that long-time WTMer Farrar Williams has a GoFundMe up to help her Destination Imagination team? The kids have qualified to go to Globals, it's expensive, and they're homeschoolers so they can't call on an institutional sponsor. http://www.gofundme.com/t3bza2mc

I adooooore book lists. Setting up the year's required reading list is my favorite part of homeschool planning. I just finished Alex's required reading list for fifth grade: -The Green Glass Sea, Ellen Klages -Bud, Not Buddy, Christopher John Curtis -Harriet the Spy, Louise Fitzhugh -Island of the Blue Dolphins, Scott O'Dell -Bridge to Terabithia, Katherine Paterson -A Long Walk to Water, Linda Sue Park -Homecoming, Cynthia Voigt -The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman -Black Ships Before Troy, Rosemary Sutcliff -Moon Over Manifest, Clare Vanderpool -The Winged Watchman, Hilda von Stockum -Gone Away Lake, Elizabeth Enright -The View from Saturday, EL Konigsburg -The Jungle Book, Rudyard Kipling - illustrated by Ingpen -The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Elizabeth Speare -The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett Before that, 2nd through 4th grade: Second grade: Understood Betsy, Dorothy Canfield Fisher All-Of-A-Kind Family, Sidney Taylor Charlotte's Web, E.B. White Nim's Island, Wendy Orr The Door in the Wall, Marguerite di Angeli Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, Grace Lin A Lion to Guard Us, Clyde Robert Bulla Ramona Quimby, Age 8, Beverly Cleary Sarah, Plain and Tall, Patricia MacLachlan On the Banks of Plum Creek, Laura Ingalls Wilder In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson, Bette Bao Lord Paddle to the Sea, Holling C. Holling Follow My Leader, James Garfield The Water Horse, Dick King-Smith Third grade: Ella Enchanted. Gail Carson Levine. The Tale of Despereaux. Kate DiCamillo. The Penderwicks. Jeanne Birdsall. Five Children and It. E. Nesbit. Haroun and the Sea of Stories. Salman Rushdie. Shiloh. Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. C.S. Lewis. My Side of the Mountain. Jean Craighead George. From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. E.L. Konigsburg. The Phantom Tollbooth. Norton Juster. Swallows and Amazons. Arthur Ransome. The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. Joan Aiken. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Lewis Carroll. Homer Price. Robert McCloskey. Fourth grade: Number the Stars. Lois Lowry. The Time Garden. Edward Eager. Savvy. Ingrid Law. The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Brian Selznick. Little Men. Louisa May Alcott. The Egypt Game. Zilpha Keatley Snyder. Catherine, Called Birdy. Karen Cushman. The Princess and the Goblin. George MacDonald. Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. Robert O’Brien. Danny the Champion of the World. Roald Dahl. Tuck Everlasting. The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate. Jacqueline Kelly. Emily of New Moon. L.M. Montgomery. Saffy's Angel. Hilary McKay. The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963. Christopher Paul Curtis.

As a Baltimorean, I feel incredibly relieved that the charges came down before the weekend.

Okay, I realize that I had better bow out of this conversation. This is my home, not an abstraction. I can't do this right now. Not trying to flounce, just clarifying that I will no longer be engaging or (if I can prevent myself) reading.

Evidence tells us that my fair-skinned and standard-English-speaking son is unlikely to be perceived as a criminal and a threat just for existing in public spaces. He is vanishingly unlikely to be shot or beaten by the police when he is unarmed. I don't need to tell him how to act so that he won't get arrested or shot on a trip to Starbucks with his homeschooled friends. That's not a risk he faces. The burly black kid at my homeschool center? Nowhere near as safe. He has to be a lot more careful.

At my homeschool community center yesterday, well before the violence erupted, I heard one of the directors, a black woman my age, dressing down a black teenage boy. He was heading to Starbucks with some of his friends and made a stupid joke about robbing a store. There was PANIC in her voice. It was the voice you might use on a kid who ran blithely out in front of a semi truck. It's a conversation I will never have to have with my middle-class white son.

I live in Baltimore. There have been peaceful protests, larger and larger, every day since Freddie Gray was killed. Saturday night a small fraction of protestors became violent and damaged property. Yesterday afternoon, teens getting out of school arrived at a major bus transit junction to find hundreds of riot police and the buses shut down. There are no school buses in Baltimore, so kids take public transit to school - sometimes two or three buses, across the city. They were scared and mad about Freddie Gray, had no way to leave where they were, and were surrounded by threatening authorities. Not surprising to me that it spiraled out of control. Last night's violence and property damage didn't come out of protests, though. The looters were opportunists responding to a perceived breakdown in social order. They're people who are disconnected from the society they live in and a total lack of expectation that they will ever "make it" through traditional/legal means. For those who are baffled at why violence, why not work peacefully within the system, please read this Baltimore Sun report about police brutality: http://data.baltimoresun.com/news/police-settlements/ Over the years there have been countless public meetings, peaceful demonstrations, political efforts, nonviolent protests, and court actions to stem police brutality in Baltimore. Nothing has worked. More than 100 people WON THEIR COURT CASES - how many more didn't even go to court? - and even with that acknowledgement by the legal system of the problems, nothing has changed. It's easy for you to say "they should be patient, they're only hurting themselves" when you're not the 87-year-old lady whose shoulder was broken because the cops handcuffed her so roughly. Freddie Gray was healthy and completely subdued, in shackles, when he was placed in that police van. When the paramedics eventually got to him, his spine was almost severed. Imagine the brutality that must have taken. No, I don't think that looting is okay. But if the only wrong thing that's happened in Baltimore lately that you feel the need to post about is broken windows at a CVS and people loading themselves up with stolen shoes, I think you have to ask yourself why.

I let my 9yo (now 10) paint her nails, but no makeup. Nail painting seems more like an accessory, like barettes or temporary tattoos. It's done as decoration, not as allure.

I take the same approach as Laura Corin - I expect my kids to put in an age-appropriate amount of time on schoolwork, regardless of how far above level they are. In my family, advanced math ability has not come with advanced patience, advanced frustration tolerance, or advanced ability to sit still. In general, gifted kids need less review and less practice. If they can do 10 practice problems perfectly, I don't see an advantage to doing 30.

Not necessarily true. I'm a psychologist, not a neuropsychologist, and I can do a full battery of cognitive tests to diagnose learning disabilities. Most of the people I know who do LD testing are psychologists. I would definitely want to see a neuropsychologist involved for a case in which there's a known insult to the brain, like a head injury or a brain tumor, but for most other purposes a clinical or educational psychologist who specializes in assessment is able to do all of the necessary testing. I wonder what was involved in the school's decision that she didn't have an LD. Was there an assessment, or just a determination that no adequate education had been provided? If there wasn't a full and thorough assessment, I think finding a psychologist who can do that is a priority.

Repelled. ...But totally fantasizing about a week's vacation by myself. That sounds like heaven.

I am too old and too busy to do flamewars anymore. I am likely to unfriend or unfollow someone who posts really provocative stuff to stir up argument or who wants to get in big FB battles. That said, I don't use FB just for trivial stuff, either. I have really good, really long conversations on my FB page, and I appreciate them.

I thought this was a really good article about these issues of parenting surveillance and judgment: http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-04-13/seven-reasons-we-hate-free-range-parenting This part seems particularly apt: I live in a neighborhood where the GACP is that children play outside without a parent at young ages. I actually have no fear or guilt about deciding, this summer, that my six-year-old is old enough to ride his scooter around the block without his big sister or a parent, because I know it's a generally accepted practice. I know there will be other kids out and about. I know that it will raise zero eyebrows in the neighborhood and will absolutely not result in a CPS call. Colin knows - as all the neighborhood kids do - that he's not to go inside anyone's house or car without explicit parental permission. That's part of the GACP too. I am well aware, though, that there are other neighborhoods in which a six-year-old riding his scooter alone would freak people out. I know there are people on this forum who would never let their six-year-old do what I let Colin do, and who are thinking right now about all the terrible things that could happen to him and how guilty I would feel if one of them occurred. Are those neighborhoods actually more dangerous? Or is it just a difference in neighborhood culture? I can see this from the other side, too. There are apparently a lot of cultures and communities in America in which, when a kid gets hold of a parent's gun and shoots himself or someone else, it's considered a tragic accident that's nobody's fault. No one is charged with a crime or with child neglect. It's something awful that just happens, like a car accident. In those communities, having guns accessible to little kids is part of GACP. To me, that's insane. In those communities, it isn't.

I'll be there exhibiting for my practice. Look for me in Building 13 near Rainbow Resources!

She read Watsons Go To Birmingham this year and really enjoyed it. Funnily enough, she also completely devoured Number the Stars. My mistake was giving her The Upstairs Room when she finished that one. There's a brief couple of lines in that one about gas chambers and ovens, and she was completely devastated. Winged Watchman looks really good, maybe as a family read-aloud. I am also thinking of assigning Ellen Klages' Green Glass Sea, which is about the Manhattan Project.

We just gave up and admitted all around that no one is enjoying SOTW4. It seems dry and disjointed, and it's just one war and political takeover after another. Plus, Alex is nervous about World War II coming up. In a novel, she hit a brief description of the Holocaust that was more than she was ready to know about. She's an extremely sensitive kid. I was looking forward to doing the Progressive Era, the Dust Bowl/Great Depression, and the Civil Rights movement, and DH was very excited about studying WWII, but I'm also feeling like if we were going to cover those things the way we'd like to see them covered we would need to put the resources together ourselves... and I just don't have the time. Plus, if the kid tells us she's not ready for Hitler, she's not ready for Hitler... or Stalin, or trench warfare in WWI, and on and on. Is anyone going to come around and take our homeschooling license away if we stop now and go back to Ancients? Everyone is excited about that idea. Colin will start SOTW 1 using Build Your Library and Alex will do a combination of K12 Human Odyssey and Story of Science.

A psychiatrist can and should order blood work to check potential medical contributors to anxiety. Mine checked my thyroid, vitamin D, etc. at my first visit. No need to wait for two completely separate doctors.

I think that what you said in your previous post, "Sometimes you just don't know until you've given them some time and tried different things," is very reasonable. Honestly, a lot of the answers for homeschoolers turn out to be "it depends." For example, an unschooled 8-year-old who can't read is a different story from a public school student of the same age who hasn't responded to 3 1/2 years of reading instruction. As I said earlier, a kid who can't read but has rock-solid phonological skills worries me less than a kid who can't read OR rhyme. I don't think we all need to become LD experts and know what to look for in other people's kids or when another mom should seek professional advice. All I really ask is that people keep the existence of LDs in mind before telling a worried mom not to worry because "they all get it eventually."

It's time to get help. Anxiety is debilitating, but very treatable. Usually the best medications to try first are antidepressants, most of which also have an anti-anxiety effect without being "tranquilizers" or sedating you. (Disclaimer: I am not a medical doctor.) Cognitive-behavioral therapy for anxiety is about as effective as medications for most people. Are you in Maryland? Feel free to PM me. I'm a psychologist in the Baltimore suburbs.

I think you must have misunderstood my original post. I was describing a common pattern I have seen across multiple homeschooling discussion groups, email lists, facebook groups, forums (although not this one), etc. I wasn't speaking about my own children or a specific encounter I personally had. That's why the post is titled "Things homeschoolers say that drive me crazy," rather than "My fellow homeschoolers are not solving my children's problems for me." So while I'm sure your chiding was well-meant, it was also off the mark. I do think it's unfair to characterize parents who are seeking advice on a learning issue as "gossiping." Homeschooling has been a peer-supported enterprise from its earliest days. I think it's entirely natural to make other parents your first stop for advice when you're facing a nonemergency problem with learning, behavior, or health. Of course it is also the case, as you say, that a casual chat is not a professional consultation. My concern is that too many homeschoolers hurry to reassure each other that professional consultation is never needed, because children will figure out everything on their own. That drives me crazy. ...Although I acknowledge that it may sound self-serving of me to say so, given that I'm a licensed psychologist who specializes in children with learning issues.

I have certainly seen kids who were young enough that I thought it was too early to tell whether they were just a little slower to mature, cognitively, or whether there was likely to be a persistent reading problem. I often recommend that parents put the reading curriculum aside for six months or so and focus on phonological awareness games, working on identifying and manipulating sounds in different ways. If the games are easy and the kid has solid phonological skills, then yeah, keep reading aloud a lot, build pre-reading skills, wait for a little more developmental maturation to happen, and don't worry too much. If the kid doesn't have good phonological skills, you don't need to wait until they're old enough for a diagnosis of dyslexia to start working on those things. And if there are warning signs, even if you aren't sure, I think it makes a lot of sense to proceed with a good Orton-Gillingham curriculum without waiting to be positive that your kid "needs" it.

OneStepAtATime, which program did you wind up using? I am always looking for recommendations, especially for programs that won't seem babyish to preteens/teens.

Person 1: "My child is really resisting learning to read, and we have dyslexia on both sides of our family, so I'm worried." Person 2: "You just need to stop pushing him." Person 3: "Reading is like a light coming on, they seem to struggle and then one day they can just do it! Don't worry!" Person 4: "He will want to learn how himself when he's ready." Person 5: "When he's motivated to do it for himself, it will click." Person 6: "It's not developmentally appropriate for children to read before eight." Person 7: "One day it will just happen. Don't worry about it." Yes, obviously there is a wide age range for developmental readiness to read. Yes, there are parents who are pushing too hard and worrying too much about a very young child who is not reading. Yes, there are kids who seem to learn to read overnight. On the other hand, there are kids who won't learn to read fluently without a great deal of step-by-step instruction and remediation. There are teens and adults who can't read. The light doesn't always come on by itself, and it seems to me that it takes willful ignorance to deny that. "We have dyslexia on both sides of our family" is a warning sign. It's not evidence of anything, but it's a reason to monitor reading progress and be ready to have a proactive response. We don't serve our fellow homeschoolers well by trotting out "relax, don't worry" in every situation.