We did Mammoth Cave last year. Most of the tours require a lot of stairs and a lot of walking, then a lot of sitting quietly and waiting for the rest of the group. I am pretty fit and my legs were sore for a couple days. The other half of our group did the accessible tour and that was great for our kids with wheelchairs, low vision, less coordination who couldn't have done the regular tours. We had a few friends who did the Crystal Onyx Cave tour instead and I think that was a much better experience for most people who took kids. There are also a lot of other cool places to check out in the immediate area or within a couple hours drive. We did Carlsbad a few years ago on our own, without a tour. That was great. We had little kids with us at the time but no problem walking around. I felt like we were able to see a lot more formations and cool stuff. There is not much else to do in the area there though.

So far I have done the kitchen countertops, the top of our Lego bins, and the stand next to our dining room fridge. The Lego bins will be hardest to keep clean because that is where my husband drops his sweaters and papers. I have to finish the window sills above the sink tonight, then I'm done for this week.

I'm wondering where they are going to find all these ABA providers for the kids who will be eligible by these guidelines. Some of the wait lists around the country are staggering. Then you have a lot of professionals who don't know what it is. When I requested ABA at an IEP meeting the only person in the room who knew what it was, out of a dozen people, was the behavioral therapist on consult services. That son is in a contained life skills classroom full of kids with autism. I think expansion of therapies would make an even bigger impact than just early screening. But the AAP can't just command new therapists to suddenly appear.

There is such a broad range of ability for kids with Down Syndrome. One of my friends has a son who can read and write in Spanish as well as English. I have several friends who have kids with autism and DS and are nonverbal. My kid with DS could not do WTM materials as written. Most of my other kids have special needs and they could not either. BUT. What we can do is approach material with many of the same goals that guide WTM and other classical philosophies. We never get to an advanced level, but we do aim for quality in what we do achieve. I read excellent literature to them, but the language can't be as complicated. (Mine are also ELL.) We learn things in history and science that broaden their horizons. We talk about if it was good for a person to do something. We talk about how events and stories are the same or different. We make sure they are exposed to beautiful art and music. Most of this would never happen if my delayed kids were in public school here. One attends school, and all he does every day is color the same few sheets in his life skills class. A few years ago we tried school for a couple of the others, and while that one was slightly better, it was still inadequate. There was not even curriculum for teaching math and reading! If any kids would need explicit instruction to learn these things, it is mine. Mine are all older, and have long since crossed the threshold where the school thinks educating them is worthwhile compared to warehousing them during school hours. You know your kid best. Our philosophy in our house is that we will not ever limit what our kids can achieve, but we love them just as much no matter what that achievement may be.

One thing that I have done in the past in addition to this list is to make a list of places where things collect. Surfaces in my house accumulate clutter every day. So I write down all of them and work on one a day or every other day if they are bigger. Mantle, coffee table, built-in, dresser, and so on. Then once I have them cleared I try to do a daily clean up before bed to keep them clean, or add a day here and there to repeat everything I have already cleaned. The advantage to this is that it is built around our own house and where we are usually putting out fires.

I suspect if it wasn't the humming being bothersome to her, it would be something else. Being in the same room, standing at the fridge too long, anything. It's likely more about how she is feeling inside than what is actually happening around her.

All the irritation sounds like anxiety to me. I remember going through a time around that age where literally everything got on my nerves. In retrospect it is the same way I feel if I am anxious now, but I didn't have the ability to recognize that at the time. The stage of my cycle impacts it now, so it makes sense that it would be worse at that age as hormones are still stabilizing. My 20 year son started doing it over the summer, but he is too delayed to have a conversation with self introspection. He was pulling the hair on the top of his head and on his legs. None of the typical triggers fit. Anxiety, pain, illness, nothing we could see. After a while it turned into a bit of a stim for him, and he already has several of those. That made it easier because we were able to transfer his behavior to a different stim and it went away. It's completely different than working with a typical kid doing the same behavior though.

Does anyone have any recommendations? I'm trying to put together some "scavenger hunt" online type of activities, where my kids need to look up search terms to find answers to questions. Famous quotations, important events, crossword puzzle type of questions, etc. Is a regular Google safe search okay these days, or do I need something different? In this context I'm mostly worried about them stumbling across something with a poorly worded search phrase, not anyone actively seeking trouble.

I know pool tables are expensive. Would you be able to replace it if you did regret it? That might influence my decision. If the cost wasn't prohibitive for me I would be more willing to make a change.

From my point of view there are a few main requirements to be educated. There is a lot of overlap between the categories. These are also our main goals in our family. It is knowing enough about the world beyond your life that you are able to look outside of yourself. Languages, history and science jump into this category. In addition it is having the knowledge and ability to look inside yourself, to be able to act rightly and be a positive influence in that world. Ethics, religion, and also things that fall outside of the traditional school scope like personal mental health work fall here. You should be able to recognize beauty and wonder in the world. Math, the arts, science all fit here for me. You should have the ability to provide for yourself and others. Practical life skills, basic home and auto needs, financial education, career training if your passion is not also your job, and a responsible attitude toward work. If there is a general cultural body of knowledge I feel like that should be included. That influences what we focus on within those categories. Why is geometry "required" but advanced number theory is optional and extra? Why do we read enduring and influential literature rather than writing from an obscure and unrecognized author?

She is at the upper end of the age range, but especially with such a sudden onset I would repeat this recommendation to check for PANDAS. You can walk in to an urgent care to run a strep test to get it checked more quickly.

I had another topic from that same post that I wanted to dig into. I like the idea of taking advantage of the flexibility of homeschooling so that you can focus on opportunities when they come up, and let things take a back seat temporarily. What are opportunities you have taken? What are some you would like to take in the future? Do you have things you do and don't see as being worth giving your kid the free time to explore? Right now most of our breaks are to accommodate our family's schedule. Sometimes we take a little time to focus on contests or rabbit trails. We did incorporate interests more into our day when my kids were younger, but I have gotten boring as life has gotten busier the last couple years. We have natural lulls in January and February as kids are going to finish a few current subjects. I would like to take advantage of that time and give them a chance to go outside of the box. However - first choice for two kids would be learning everything about playing Terraria (but trust me, they already know everything there is to know). Some of the other kids could find pursuits I would see as more worthwhile. So I guess that is scaffolding outside the box? I'd love to hear some examples of what other people have done to jumpstart my brain on the possibilities we can explore.

That's true that most people putting young babies in daycare don't have an alternative because they need to be at work. In this case it was by choice, but that's not going to be as common. From my own point of view it's intriguing and frustrating what people focus on. Every one of our hospital visits this time of year includes the question if our household is vaccinated for the flu. Okay. But I also had to get the charge nurse to change our assigned nurse in October on the step down unit because ours was sick as a dog. Nope, nope, nope!

Yeah, the only example I have heard recently was a person requiring vaccinations to see a child, but had put that infant in daycare at only a few weeks old. I promise you I am WAY less worried about an unvaccinated person with no symptoms of illness being around my medically fragile kids than I am worried about the kind of germs floating around a daycare.

I hadn't watched the commercial. The internet started bombarding me with peloton ads right after we bought a new spin bike, so I've ignored them all. (Sunny Pro, way less expensive, but not all the bells and whistles!) Their algorithm is a bit silly. Why would I buy another exercise bike when I just bought one?

Hopefully I link these correctly! https://m.facebook.com/Susan.Wise.Bauer/photos/a.210316115663470/3021150357913351/?type=3&source=48 https://medium.com/@shauntagrimes/the-one-notebook-habit-699af3480e7d

I saw it on Facebook.

Our "oxygen mask" level homeschooling is very stripped down. Do free reading, do Khan Academy, write a page about something. That's my bare minimum when life hits major chaos. It's a contrast with our typical daily schedule where my middle school students have 8 or 9 subjects every day. Some of my kids thrive with those minimum requirements and spend the rest of their time following their own interests, gaining an in-depth education in the process. Others will finish that small amount of work after much complaining, and immediately switch on a YouTube video of someone else playing a game. (Particularly if I am at the hospital with another kid and dad is running the house by himself.) They need a lot more outside structure and motivation. We do streamline a lot, even when we are doing every subject at full speed. Parent driven projects? Nope. Combining seven different textbooks for a single subject? Not these days. (I did when we had a fraction of the kids!) Daily lessons require zero prep. I am willing to go down rabbit trails when they come up. Most kids only have one notebook they are working in at a time, and they do all their work in it. Loose papers get photographed or scanned if we need to keep them, immediately recycled if not.

Our big local university allows cards for high school students with proof of AP enrollment, but that's it. We do have a city library network so we aren't just using the library closest to our house, but it still doesn't include a lot of the books we try to find. We can have 10 ILL requests in process at a time, but ILL for more than the occasional book is too much to try to keep track of in our busy household. I could easily stack up bigger fines than if we were buying the books!

I would be in heaven if I could immediately buy any book off Amazon that came up in our learning. My 7th grader is a voracious reader, and we are at a point where most of the things she is interested in have a wide range of books geared for the "knowledgeable adult but not expert" category. She has devoured every linguistics book our library has from the great courses plus syllabus, along with a dozen others. But they only have so many, and then we are still fussing with holds and pick ups. Even used, I can't justify buying every book on a topic when she will read it in a couple days and then only reread a fraction of them again. Then we have art, biology, science fiction, DnD, and everything else she is obsessed with. Even better if she had a personal librarian who was an expert in every field who could create recommended lists related to her interests. Not too much ask for, right?

It is an interesting connection. Trauma in children is often misdiagnosed as ADHD because they can look so similar on the outside.

We are LCOL and the best I have seen is .49/lb.

I could see it working at a place where there is a set closing time for everyone who works there, like a factory. But it doesn't look like an industrial area.

There are so many adults who need help with EF. For the last few years I've been volunteering to help families through the adoption process because I'm familiar with the country we adopted from. There are paid employees of agencies who are technically supposed to be doing this, but they don't provide that level of support. So I answer questions about how to do forms, what to do next, what you should do in the meantime. I cheerlead each success, and I ask how a document is going when I know it has been longer than it should take. I have my own constellation of EF issues, ADHD, and anxiety. Plus a million kids. So I know how hard it can be to get things organized in your head and done in a timely fashion. I've had to drag people across the finish line to get their paperwork done when they were completely overwhelmed and asked for me to help. I've done it because I love it. I love seeing kids who would have aged out in institutions join a family. These families have become close friends. But I have had to step away because I can't take it anymore. A series of families asked for help, took up a lot of valuable time for me to help them, ignored what I said, then complained to the world that no one had ever informed them of any of the things I had spent hours going over with them. It moved far past people struggling with EF into people actually being selfish and inconsiderate. That's one of the biggest things we focus on for my own kids with EF and a couple relatives who we have helped launch into adulthood. It's okay to need help. It's okay to ask for help. It's okay to have to ridiculously micromanage yourself to provide the structure you need to get things done. (I had 25 daily alarms on my phone the last time we changed our kids' medication and feeding schedule.) People might already see that as you being X, Y and Z. So make sure you aren't actually being those things in addition to working through your weak areas. Emphasizing again that it's better to ask for help than to fail. It's okay to be the hot mess mom here and there. It's not okay if these things are having a major impact on your life and you won't do anything to help yourself.

It is like magic, right?! The manual that came with ours had instructions for adjusting the time and temperature if you cooked from frozen. You take the giblets and neck out when it is thawed enough.