I'm so sorry for your pain and grief. I am feeling the same way due to my sister's death this year. Hugs and prayers

Thank you all for your kind and caring responses. I have read them but haven't the energy for replies right now. I went to visit my parents last week for a couple of days and when there we went to visit my sister's grave for the first time since she died in January. The support I had hoped to get from my husband didn't pan out so my stress level is over the top. I am doing my best to keep my son off his devices as much as possible and getting him to bed at a reasonable time. He is supposed to start a job on Tuesday at a local breakfast/lunch cafe and he may start as someone's personal chef one day a week soon. His grades in the AP Hist and US Lit class are good right now as well as his health class. He opted to start doing Algebra 2 with me and will do so once the books come here. We can take it as slowly as we need to but it gives him the option to finish his degree on time if he chooses. I have to deal with my other children's schooling and my health taking a toll from the stress. I'll be back to update if I can get my head above water.

I 100% understand - I wish I had more of my sister's emails. :( Or you can email me at yael.aldrich at gmail dot com Thank you!

Thank you for your reply! Online (but synchronous courses except for AP Bio and Bio) classes were the only choice I could make work. Our public school is failing, and wouldn't take his courses from the so-far unaccredited private school he attended. I was not paying 35-45K for the acceptable private schools he could attend. So with these classes he has accountability. His PSAT score from the 10th grade were good but not outstanding. So I think he will not take it. But if he won;t work for the PSAT, I'm not seeing how he will work for the SAT/ACT. His GPA is not good enough to get into his father's school right now. He has only one extracurricular. He has to do well in some area to even be considered. AP or SAT is what I can see doing that. I don't think he needs to be up at 6am and go to bed at 10pm, but I think keeping regular enough hours that you can attend your classes/job and interact with other humans is a good thing. Right now, he wakes his family up banging around the house at 3am, misses his classes unless someone else wakes him up and holes himself up on his computer and phone the rest of the time. That is not the ticket to success and independence as far as I can see! He has a 10 am class MW; is that not enough reason to get up?

Hornblower, you cannot get any new messages. Can you message me please?

OMG Hornblower. You are scaring the crap out of me. Really and for true. I never, ever thought I would have to even ever consider this. By my son's age/grade, I was living away from home at a boarding school I had gotten into. I met and started dating my husband by this point. I worked and went to school and played sports and had fun (and even had access to the fledgling internet!). I cannot wrap my brain around a kid who cannot/will not get his crap together to do 50% of this. With all the other stuff in my life right now, I am hard pressed to figure out how to make this happen without me going off the rails and into the looney bin. I have so little bandwidth to deal with out of the ordinary right now. But I guess I have to start praying really hard for even more help than I have ever gotten before. G-d help me.

That conversation was rather...one sided. We explained what was going on, showed him the grades, explained that he would have to get 99s to bring his grades up to a B-grade level. That his GPA at the end of the 10th grade was 2.9 and that it had to get a lot higher to get into his father's university and Fs were not going to raise that GPA. We asked him if he still wanted to be a vet. We asked him how he planned on getting to his goal. We asked him if he wanted to take an additional year to graduate (he had told me many times that he wanted to graduate with his class). His response was silence and then a couple of grunts. I think he thinks he is on his way and doesn't get yet that he is not. Now that he only has two real courses for the year, he cannot tell us that he needs to be on the computer all the day long. I asked him to work near me but he doesn't want to without his phone/computer blasting music all day long since his siblings work at the same table with me. I asked him to take his work to my husband's office at the university where it is quiet and he doesn't want to. He can't stay on task without outside help. Do I insist on being that outside structure and accountability even though is 16 - just two years away from 18? I'm happy to do that job and I have never been a helicopter parent, so I think I can do a good job of staying involved without being overbearing. If he goes with my husband, there will be more fighting, but he would be in an environment that is his goal (college so he can be independent). How/is is possible to create or enforce this kind of structure with a kid this old? It's not like I can take his Lego away or his Sunday playtime.

Hiring a tutor isn't a bad idea. In fact, to complete his 10th grade year with the school in which he was expelled (they were kind enough to let him finish the year at home and get grades for the year), he was required to get a tutor to finish Judaic studies. We made him hire the tutor. I'm not sure he could get the credit for AP Bio without the labs. He could read for the test but could he get a good score without the labs? I wouldn't let him look at the math videos unless he was having a hard time with the lessons. He did Saxon with good results until he went to high school...

Thank you all for responding so quickly and compassionately. To answer your collective questions. We had found him a therapist (who takes our insurance - like finding hen's teeth, even in a large city like Boston. We've had no trouble finding someone for our marriage counseling!). He went for about eight months and the therapist told us that our son is very confident about his abilities and goals, but without concrete ways to get to those goals and he was unwilling to figure out how to get there. He was resistant to family therapy. About a month ago our son told the therapist that he wasn't interested in talking to him anymore and stopped talking to him. The therapist told us if he isn't going to talk, it isn't worth his or our time/efforts to get him to open up. He has become less oppositional at least with me. With his father, he still butts heads more. I can get him to talk a little bit. I can see he is stressed by our marital issues (separate, but enmeshed with his issues, and thank G-d, getting much better with our own therapy). I do tell him that we are using therapy to help our marriage and that it would have been helpful if he had used therapy to do the same with his life. He has toured the school (and the previous university at which my husband worked) so he knows exactly what he has to do to get in. What he doesn't know is that the university is more lenient with faculty dependent admissions, but at a monetary cost. They can get in on a probationary basis, take classes at another institution (at parental cost of course) and then with good grades get into the university fully. He got into a vet high school program at our region's vet school this summer and the admissions people told them what they have to do to get in (10% admission rate!). He was surprised when Mom was right! LOL He owns and pays for his own phone. He got it without our permission many months ago. I offered to get him one over a year ago, but he demurred because it would be under our control. I offered the same offer last month when my DH and I moved to smartphones. I do have control over the computer router and it does turn off at midnight for him. I did get him to put away the phone and computer at 11:30pm for the last week or so to segue way to bed by midnight. But when I don't ride herd on him, he won't. I've offering to have weekly (or more) mentor meetings. He won't take me up on them. Men around us who love him have offered to help him and mentor him, nope. I'm willing to be the baddie, but how do you take away the phone and computer of a kid almost a foot taller than you? I got him to trim his usage but take it away? I want him working, working out, doing good someplace and then fun stuff, preferably with good kids/people and/or his family. I've jettisoned the idea of him re-discovering religion again, and have enrolled him in an expensive but terrific cooking series with lots of unkosher foods. He has a love of cooking so he is enjoying the series, but I am loath to spend another $500 on a six week class if he cost us time and money in all these classes we just dropped. Honestly, I told him to drop out and study for the GED (or whatever it is called). I'm not sure how that would affect his admission possibilities, but if he doesn't want to do high school, this is one way to finish.

My son, who is in 11th grade and now homeschooling (again) after being expelled from his private school late last year (for behavioral issues). He was homeschooled from 1st grade to 8th grade, so I know his intellectual capabilities. After his 10th grade year, we talked over the summer about his goals (to be a vet) and what he needed to get there. If he can get into his father's university (a relatively selective university), he can go for free (we'll pay the fees) and be debt-free for any more schooling he wishes to do. I asked him to take a regular online biology course over the summer and then take on the following classes for his 11th grade year: AP Bio (PA Homeschoolers), AP US Hist (WTMA), US Lit (WTMA), Health (WTMA), and Alg 2 (Wilson Hill Acad). I thought it was a heavy but doable schedule, especially for a kid whose classmates have all that plus Jewish studies and a foreign language or two. The Bio class started in May and should have been finished by the beginning of September. He wasn't working this summer and he opted to spend a month with his grandparents instead of coming with the rest of us on a trip out west. He said he would get more work done that way. Instead he got about 1/4 of the course done over the summer. So he started out behind. As of last week, he was failing or coming close to failing Bio, AP Bio, Alg 2. My husband asked me to pull him from all those classes and I did. Now I cannot see a way to graduate him on time. He is also due to take the PSAT next week; he hasn't studied at all. I think he should not take the PSAT, take a bonus 11th grade next year and work part-time this year while taking the two year-long classes and the one semester health class. He is addicted to his phone and his computer. He applied for jobs and is awaiting answers. He's happy staying up until 3am and sleeping until 1pm. I am trying to get him back to a more normal sleep schedule and away from the screens, but it is almost impossible on the latter so far. I need advice, love, hugs, and whatever else you can offer. I think I might offer to let him buy Saxon Alg 2 and the DIVE CDs /Art Reed CDs and have him work on it with me on a daily basis. I cannot do Bio; I have three other kids who are more willing to do the work needed for their homeschooling.

OK, I saw someone saying take smaller sizes or just enough deodorant to Japan. If your son is a sweat-er or he is going anytime from April to October, spring for whatever deodorant he needs. Japanese deodorant sucks big time. Like, I don't really need deodorant most of the time, but Japanese deodorant does nothing at all - maybe even makes it worse! Bring pain meds too. Can't find them in Japan easily. If you have any other questions about stuff to bring/not bring, PM me.

Hurricane Katrina survivor. Did just that - three days of clothing, some books, some toys, pictures. I learned to take the pictures because of CA fire victims. I hope they don't have to have that feeling. But on the other hand it was freeing to know I wasn't weighed down by anything. To this day I still have to think about whether I still own something or lost it in Katrina.

I agree with the others rhat he can get a thin, not very fluffy, smallish towel at any 100 yen store near a train station. Look up Daiso or 100 yen store. A regular size towl probably can be gotten at a department or some grocery stores in the bottom of the bigger train stations for about 500 yen.

How does one treat the adrenals because if my insomnia doesn't cease, I'm going to go nuts!

I'd be pretty amazed since I have an IUD and am on the Pill to push off my period for a couple of months (I hope!). I would be kinda happy (I love giving birth and having little babies - I miss nursing and wearing babies) and kinda sad (I hate being pregnant, don't want to lose the weight again, and dealing with loss of sleep). My DH would be stupefied. ETA: Oh, and I would totally freak out because we are at the limit of housing space.

We keep kosher and have limited and not great choices in Boston and when we lived in Indianapolis. We would drive two hours one way to Cincy for Amma's Indian about every six weeks. Now we drive 3.5 hours to a kosher Indian place in Stamford around every three months if I'm not driving through from BOS to NC. We like Indian food a lot! There is a Georgian (former USSR) place we need to get back to in Queens soon. That's up to 5 hours in traffic.

Black currant jam and fig jam please!

My husband kind of does. He us one if the guys whose name is on the front of textbooks and manuals for disaster planning and speaks to groups of people involved in disaster management.

Katrina evacuee/survivor here - we moved to NOLA six weeks before Katrina! When we came back in January, I had to transport my son to school in Metairie from Uptown. I saw those marks everywhere and the whole city freaked me out. Kinda triggering.

I almost cried several times but it was because today is my sister's first birthday after her passing this January. She would have loved this and we would have watched it together. I took my boys down to NC to be with my parents for this day and the eclipse. We went to the local science museum (95%). I decided there to be like my sister and share our glasses with all the people who didn't have glasses (the museum ran out - people made pinhole viewers). They thanked me (and my parents and kids) and showered blessings on us. That made me cry a little.

My parents got that Gerber baby life insurance when we were babies. I thought it was a waste of money until my sister's death in January. Her husband didn't have the money to bury her, so my husband and I and my parents picked up the costs. We could've handled the expenses but that insurance money was enough to pay for most of the expenses. My policy is in my hands now and will hopefully never be needed.

If it rose, you're good. They might be a little more dense, but I bet they'll be tasty regardless.

Thank you - that website has been sitting in my open tabs for a week now waiting for me to take the plunge.

I bought our first eclipse glasses at a science museum. They are supposedly one of the "approved" manufacturers and look legit on the front side, but the back side is not at all like the approved ones. It looked sketchy to me because the phone numbers of the company are written out as if they were from someone who knew how to call the US from overseas. I went to our local MOS and got real ones. I cannot figure out which museum I bought the fake one from unfortunately.

Double post