Note* We firmly believe the teen years are for quickly transitioning to adulthood, not so much maintaining childhood. This has been historically true of humanity. This was the time we started introducing adult issues in entertainment in the context of our supervision and discussion/input. Not lectures, just things to chat about: relationship dynamics, ethics, some real world issues. With our teens, starting around 13: Firefly Sarah Connor Chronicles Freaks and Geeks The Good Place Parks and Recreation The Office Myth Busters Chuck Better Call Saul I'll probably think of more later.

I'm married to a highly productive person too. The thing is to have a balanced view of productivity and its limited value. Yes, being productive is a good thing to a point, but highly productive people are almost always lacking in the ability to just be and to savor and to contemplate. We happen to live in a society at a time when productivity usually pays in ways like monetary value and often status, but there are other things of value too. Some people can't tolerate the thoughts in their heads, so they distract themselves with busyness. It's very sad. Therapy can help. Also, measuring self by others tends to be a more adolescent mindset that our society reinforces. Most Americans are perpetual adolescents because the culture largely allows and reinforces it: image consciousness, popularity as approval, magical thinking, maintaining youth, etc. Feelings are a byproduct of thoughts-sometimes conscious thoughts and sometimes unconscious thoughts. Spending some time deep diving into what you really think about an issue is worthwhile because you can question why you think it and where the thoughts came from and if those thoughts are consistent or there's cognitive dissonance going on. Then you can decide whether or not to change your thinking based on what you really think of those constellations of issues. Deep contemplation and mind changing are other things our society doesn't support much. And people wonder why Americans are the way they are. You really have to dig deep to push against the tide of cultural and subcultural norms. People who aren't natural questioners and who are prone to conformity are more likely to struggle. It's always harder to do what doesn't come naturally, but it's often worth it.

I agree it's overused. I think it's because phrases like "narcissistic tendencies" isn't as familiar a phrase. I have a toxic family with 1 family member who doesn't meet all of the criteria for clinical narcissism, but meets most of the criteria. I'm also prone to more precise thinking and speech, so I clarify using the phrase when I talk about it.

If it were me I'd do something like this in a conversation with Mommy Dearest: Mom: "....blah blah blah... I'm allergic to dogs and cats... blah blah blah....." Me: "OK, I'll let Sis know you're allergic to dogs and cats so we can factor that into holiday planning." Sisters (I only have brothers) talk to each other, especially when it comes to letting each other know if something they do could unknowingly cause a potential problem for others. That's just common courtesy. Mommy Dearest has a history of creating and stoking conflict, so that aspect of abnormal will have to be dealt with pro-actively by the sisters. Later in a conversation with Sis: Me: "In my last couple of conversations with her, Mom mentioned having developed an allergy to cats and dogs, so it looks like there's a new factor to work into holiday planning." That's what a normal person would do. Take people at their word and act accordingly. 1. You can't trust Mom to let Sis know in a timely way or that her motivations will be pure. 2. When you tell Sis, you're going to give her accurate information she needs out of pure motives. If it's a crazy, indirect way of Mommy Dearest saying she doesn't want to host pets anymore, well, she's got a right to it. She should've done it like an adult and said it directly, but it is what it is. If a future dramatic performance by Mommy Dearest is in production right now, it's best to let Sis opt out of attending that performance.

No. I'm prone to dry and sensitive skin and I lived in a dry climate when mine were babies, so I knew what daily bathing does to some people. Water from the tap is chlorinated which can contribute to dryness and sensitivity, so even a daily rinse can make things significantly worse. Also, youngest had eczema, to that was a whole other level of dry flakey skin and dermatologists strongly advise against daily bathing in those situations.

Well, I just retired, so I'm available. Vegetable gardening has a steep learning curve since I'm trying to learn how to grow everything and it hasn't rained much for a long time. I threw a rotten on the vine tomato at a bird today in frustration. I didn't actually hit the bird. I say we find a cool treehouse to crash in by some water and pretend to be mermaids. We can drink mimosas, read novels, and eat s'mores by the campfire.

I worked at a daycare center after high school for a year or so. I have no sympathy for most parents when daycares draw a hard time. More power to the daycare centers! The suspension isn't to motivate the child to better behavior, that's ridiculous It's to motivate the clueless parents to actively work with the child on behavioral issues when the child is usually at home with the parents or to have them seek professional help if appropriate. Don't respond that I'm suggesting any daycare center expects no biting at all ever from a 2 year old; that's not what I'm saying. There really are droves of total space cadet parents out there who see no reason to do anything at all ever to correct that behavior in anyway. They have a "Yeah kids bite. So?" attitude. It's oppressive to their peers whose contentious parents work consistently at home with them on better behavior and see improvement on the whole far sooner than parents who don't understand that the word parent is not just a noun, it's a verb. Yes, yes, yes temperaments in children are different, but I'm talking about the general principle here: the parent who works contentiously with a 2 year old on this will see improvement far sooner than if the parent never or inconsistently works with the 2 year old. When a parent has to scramble for a backup childcare provider short term because their regular daycare center won't let the kid in temporarily due to behavioral issues, it's a wake up call. Contrary to what many daycare parents seem to think, daycare providers and other daycare kids don't have to put up with unrestricted crap for your kid just because their parent pays for childcare. I'm not saying your grandkids' parents have this attitude because I'm speaking about the group as a whole, not individuals, but daycare workers are some of the most demeaned and underpaid employees by their customers. I'm glad there's enough of a shortage to be able to tell the parents to take a hike with their kid if they can't live up to basic standards of decency. B-bye! Now if only public shcools and ps teachers could only do that with clueless ps parents.

Thank you all!

It's been 22 years of homeschooling 3 kids K-12 with a few years of researching homeschooling intensively before that. Today I closed out my homeschool with the state, cleared out bookshelves and supplies, and donated them. Youngest starts cc in two weeks. I saved 1.5 shelves of favorite children's books (we're read aloud K-12+ people) and kept a half a shelf of lapbooks from Story of the World 1 and the accompanying activity book. The notebooks of Story of the World 2-4 and activity books are gone. It wasn't as emotionally intense as I thought it would be. I said lots of prayers of thanksgiving to God that I was able to not only homeschool them, but homeschool them the way I wanted. It was a precious gift. Now I'm a permaculturist (AKA Permie) afforesting full time. It does feel a little strange and disorienting, but I'm acclimating to it. I joined 2 local book clubs and a ladies' group for 40+ two months ago, so I think the transition will be manageable. How did the rest of you do transitioning to your post homeschooling lives?

I think anyone green lighting a bench is required to always be the person who sits in the middle of it, and they have to sit next to someone with a significant height difference. It's usually the person who chooses a bench that is always sitting in one of the chairs, then they expect ME (5'1", 128#s) to be the one to live with the consequences of their bad choices, often seated between my husband who is 10" taller than me and someone else. None of us sit the same distance from the table. Not cool, man. Not. cool.

I've very anti-bench. No one wants to be stuck on the bench. Middle daughter has one at her house and people grumble about who gets stuck on the bench. We're all people who like our own space, so individual chairs are a better option.

Me too. And I don't even eat breakfast, so my kids were taking care of breakfast for themselves at 4. I specifically bought 1/2 gal. milk so they could pour it themselves. (We only use milk for cereal, so we never needed to buy in bulk.) Did they occasionally spill some ? Yes, but so do I. Spills don't scare me-that's why we have tile/linoleum/hard flooring.

Yogurt (full fat, high protein) toast cooking their own scrambled eggs, pancakes, waffles hardboiled eggs cheese slices fresh fruit that doesn't require preparation: grapes, apples, pears, peaches, nectarines nuts

Do you explicitly tell him to stop talking? You should. My oldest was prone to talking non-stop, so I had to tell her (so people didn't end up resenting her) in a pleasant tone, "OK, you've been talking for about 15 minutes non-stop, so it's time to be quiet for a while now." or "That's nice. Now it's time to give your sister/friend/parent a turn to talk. Remember, you're not the only one with something to say." or "Did you ask (name of person doing the listening) what they thought of that topic and listen to them talk too?" None of these are unkind-quite the opposite. It's kind to teach children how to be in the world well. It's likely going to be a long term thing for kids wired this way. Some kids need to be told principles of communication explicitly because they're unable to intuit them: 1. Talking is demanding someone else's attention. That's fine for you to do it for a while off and on, but it's not OK to demand someone else' attention all the time or most of the time. 2. Other people have things to say too. When you talk non-stop you're not giving others a turn. 3. Other people enjoy periods of silence. You can't deny them that all the time. 4. Conversations go back and forth. Long monologue after long monologue is NOT a conversation. Pauses are necessary to allow the listener to respond to what was said before the conversation goes in a related or different direction. It's really awkward to revisit a topic at the beginning of someone else's monologue that went in multiple directions. 5. Your thoughts are valid even if no one else hears them. You can learn to turn that constant external monologue into an internal monologue (an essential skill set when living around other people) or you can learn to process verbally alone where others are not being denied silence or their turn to talk. Put hyper-individualistic, small sibling set culture is failing more and more children on this. I'm astonished at how many adults lack the awareness above. And I'm talking about neuro-typical people.

Here is a variety of magnifying glass options for reading a regular book: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=magnifying+glass+book+reader&crid=T3BCEVUBUU2U&sprefix=magnifying+glass+b%2Caps%2C138&ref=nb_sb_ss_retrain-deeppltr_4_18

I have 2 bibles (ESV & Message) on my kindle. Pros: The kindle is lightweight, you can easily control the size font, and lighting on it can range from low to very high. Cons: I haven't found either of them particularly well designed for quick searchability. There's a lot of clicking and scrolling which is frustrating for someone who grew up with bible drills and can find something in a dead tree book version of a Bible quickly. I can't imagine it's easier for someone of a generation that didn't grow up with much technology. Also, it's a hoot what shows up on the screen when you open it. Kindles advertise books and they're not based on past purchases. Romance novels with pictures of hunky guys are not unusual on mine, but I'm not bothered if someone near me sees them or the images of horror novels and such.

Thanks

Interracial family member here. Youngest was adopted from an Asian country and I've listened to many Asian-Americans and Asian-American adoptees talk about this topic. Yes and no. The most important aspect of interacting with diverse groups of people is hearing their perspectives and experiences that are different than yours-usually different enough that when you listen to them you realize you didn't know what you didn't know. It's complex and nuanced. New dimensions can open up. It's like water to a fish-until you've experienced air, you don't realize how vague your conception of air really is. Talking about being kind in all situations, both in water in air doesn't make you understand air better. It's about understanding, not kindness-those are different. One isn't a substitute for the other. It's not a great metaphor, but it's the best I can do at the moment without getting into the weeds. That said, I don't think that's the most pressing issue you have to deal with right now. You're dealing with serious long-term family challenges, so if it were me, I would prioritizing doing everything I could to minimize stressors and demands and focus my energy on dealing with the stress and demands that remain. Everyone is going to need every scrap of bandwidth in the this tough time for your family right now.

When dragons is an option, always pick dragons.

Your feelings are lying to you. Whoever sent you that message (parent, subculture, etc.) lied to you. You don't have to believe lies and you don't have live according to lies. This is a nationwide problem because of the lies people like you have been told, believe, and/or act on. You can break the cycle by being honest. "Please remove me from this list as I'm not interested in this product/service/event. Thank you."

The self-indulgent stuff: 1. Put a duck pond in my backyard. 2. Buy more ornamental and fruit trees. 3. Put in a walipini. 4. Put in more planting beds. 5. Replace the kitchen cabinets to a classic white kitchen and convert the downstairs powder room to a wet room with shower. Replace the flooring with hard wood. 6. Replace the mini blinds with shades. 7. Covert the house to off grid. 8. Do a tour of gardens in England in early spring/summer. 9. Build a tiny bathroom out near my ornamental garden (the farthest part of the property and where I entertain) and organize and decorate my shed with pretty containers and lighting. 10. Buy more ornamental plants. 11. Get more solar lighting for my ornamental garden. 12. Have beach vacation and a mountain vacation each year. 13. Buy closing cabinets for the garage instead of open shelving made of wire. 14. Buy a small electric truck. Charity: Set up an organization that buys up inner city apartment housing from slum lords, repair/update it, pay for skilled labor training for people who live there to maintain it and pay them well to do so. Put in a daycare center, private school, food forest, and clinic, and train and pay locals to staff it all. Provide scholarships and transportation for job training and college for locals. Fund food banks well and regularly. Pay off debts for all family members and friends. Pay for education and skills training for their kids. Pay for all my family members to move out of AZ and go to any state they choose that isn't dying like states out west. They can go together or to different locations. Buy land and build off grid for 1,000 sq. foot small homes (3 beds, 2 baths, front and back porches) furnish them and provide them to single mothers/refugees/others in need along with transportation, scholarships, community garden space, a private school/daycare center, neighborhood pool, and community center. Fund healthcare for them too.

And let's talk about the amazingly damaging comments to seriously ill people by some MLMers. My SIL had cancer for 11 years before she died. Unfortunately she worked for an evangelical mega church which has hoards of MLM dupes in attendance. If she made a prayer request related to her cancer she'd get some bubble headed MLMer saying things like, "I heard about your cancer and I just couldn't live with myself if I didn't tell you about (fill in name of MLM snake oil product here)." No, hon, your product can't do anything at all for her cancer. If it did the maker of that product would be selling it worldwide raking in billions of dollars and getting credit for being the one to cure freaking cancer. And then there are true cultist MLMers (usually online) who present that nonsensical idea with the phrase, "What doctors don't want you to know about (fill in name of MLM snake oil product here)." There is NOT a conspiracy among doctors to keep patients sick when the could be cured for financial gain. That's malicious slander and bearing false witness against people and it's evil. Stop doing it. I hope they're sued and punitive damages orders put them out of business.

Exactly this. If you're target market is friends and family at first or at all, you're a victim of a scam and you're participating in a scam. Legitimate business owners don't have friends and family as their target markets at any point. Not only do MLM sales people exploit family and friend relationships for their own personal financial gain, they insult legitimate business owners by trying to label themselves as such. And the vast majority of sales pitches from MLM dupes come from fellow church goers in my world. They've exploited spiritual church family relationships for personal financial gain. We have too many spinless and or clueless pastors in evangelicalism (where I've experienced this regularly) who can't stand up to this corrupting influence in The Church. So get a real job, "Boss Babe." That's what everyone else does. As soon as any friend on social media tries to sell me something, I unfriend them; no more weighing the pros and cons and no more unfollowing. I no longer tolerate it after years of messing with it.

I don't think time is the factor here. Are you not from a large cosmopolitan area where people move in and out with explosive growth? I was. That's a completely different culture. I was in the largest homeschool community (PHX) for 18 years. I was in huge homeschooling groups (100+ dues paying families,)smaller ones (1 or 2 dozen of families) and stealth ones (invitation only by members, half a dozen families.) A large percentage of homeschoolers I knew moved to different areas before their homeschooling careers over, and many groups didn't have consistent enough attendance for deep relationship, it was hang out with who showed up and don't expect to see them regularly. The roles you describe for your friends are more typically roles people's extended families and sometimes church members, but that usually means attending a church that does community well for a long time. The evangelical world in rapid growth areas where I've lived (PHX 45 years, Raleigh 4 years) don't have that kind of dynamic with new people coming in and "shopping" for a congregation among scores of churches.

Agreed! It's tragic so many women fall for the con and end up sacrificing relationships for some money or the hope of earning some money.