My dd just came home from a birthday party and is embarrassed because the other kids got the birthday girls more expensive and elaborate gifts. There were 2 birthday girls, and we got one a gift set from Bath and Body Works, and the other a dance shirt that my dd knew she wanted. Each gift was ~$25. Other kids gave multiple gifts, such as Aeropostale pjs with a makeup kit and jewelry; Aeropostale sweatpants with an iTunes gift card and bubble bath; you get the idea. Is this a new trend or am I really out of it? I think we'll skip future birthdays if it's going to be a competition on who gives the most presents. ETA: I'm talking about LARGE makeup kits and $25 gift cards- several small gifts would be different but these kids were giving 3 or 4 presents, each worth $20-$30..

Maybe this will set your mind at ease. From the Merck Veterinary Manual:

If she still hates it after 6 years I don't think she's going to change her mind. I'd have her to pick something else.

I would make an appointment with her doctor ASAP, get a serum pregnancy test, and if she's not pregnant, get her started on a reliable birth control method.

I might leave them if I thought they were better off without me than with me. But I can't imagine a scenario where that would be true.

The graduate school I attended accepted my 15 year old GRE scores. I think it will depend on the school and the department.

Me too. I wish you were my neighbor. :001_smile:

Then you probably wouldn't like these roads much.

I PM'd you with some more info on ds.

His reading speed is definitely affecting his comprehension, as well as his attitude. Reading is such a struggle and requires so much effort. His listening comprehension is better than reading comprehension, but neither are great. Both are improving though. I bought Idea Chain and we started it last fall, but it was too much with VT and Brainware and everything else we were doing. I decided to do them sequentially, with VT first, then Brainware, then Idea Chain, so we will probably get to that this summer. It looks good, but is time consuming. Last month we started Reading Detective, and that is going well. His language skills have always been below average, and I think his comprehension issues are a result of that and inadequate background knowledge. He just hasn't been interested in learning much, particularly if it comes from a book. His attention is fine if he is interested in the topic, but it's difficult to get him to listen to most books. He loathes fiction but will tolerate an occasional adventure story. It's really kind of difficult to gauge his comprehension ability, because if he is paying attention and is engaged, his comprehension is actually pretty good. Unfortunately, that doesn't happen too often.

:iagree: I also think if the government wanted to poison or sterilize us (and I can't imagine why they would), there are more efficient and effective ways to do it.

When my kids were in 4th grade, they wrote "stories" every few weeks and journaled every day. However, they had essentially NO writing instruction and the quality of their work was poor. My oldest went back this past January for 8th grade after four years of homeschooling. I was very, very worried about her writing, because it has always been such a struggle for her and we did not make nearly as much progress as I had hoped. So far, in the past 5 weeks, she's written a one page persuasive essay for Language Arts. It was filled with grammatical and spelling mistakes, wasn't organized well, and the writing sounded very immature. I would have felt generous giving it a C. She received an A+.

My 14 year old went to get her driver's permit and didn't know how to spell her middle name. Even worse, dh was with her and he didn't know either. Oops.

We just finished a course of VT, although we didn't see any improvement. They had him do one thing that I thought looked promising, so I'm going to buy the program (Vision Builder) and have him do it at home. I posted about it here. We started Brainware Safari last fall, and he did well up to a point, then stopped making progress and became extremely frustrated. We put it on hold until we finished VT, and will be starting it up again soon. We just aren't making much progress with fluency. We've been doing lots of phonics since removing him from ps last March, and his reading level has improved quite a bit. I'm sure he's made several years growth in decoding, but his speed hasn't changed much at all, even on text that is several years below grade level. We've done repeated readings (ad nauseum) but that hasn't helped at all. I just don't think we will make much progress unless we can figure out how to remediate the underlying problem. PATH claims to improve Rapid Automatic Naming. I've looked at the studies posted on the PATH website, but I am skeptical. I found Twinmom's posts but the last thing I read was that she was having trouble with the 30 minutes of reading after each session. I haven't seen a follow up. If my son could read 30 continuous minutes a day I don't think he would need PATH.

I'm a member of that group. I'm hoping to hear from those that have used it. Dr. Lawton obviously has a bias.

The author of PATH participates in an email list that I use. It sounds interesting but is very expensive ($1050) for a home user. Has anyone found this helpful for kids with Rapid Automatic Naming problems?

My son has a similar problem. You might want to research dysnomia and Rapid Automatic Naming disorders, and see if those sound familiar.

Mine are completely gone. Anybody else?

Dr. Doe

Thanks. Was it this one? My library has it so I'll pick it up tomorrow.

That's what we've been doing, when possible, and it's been working well. Tonight, the problem was during hockey practice, so obviously I couldn't do much. The coach intervened when the kid punched my son in the head, but that was after about 45 minutes of taunting. This was not regular hockey roughhousing, it was a completely unprovoked punch while they were in a line doing drills. The kid had also stolen his stick and played keep away with it, tried to trip him numerous times, and tried to get others to gang up on him. Hockey is very physical, but this boy was just being mean spirited.

I wish I knew how to help my son. He's always had trouble making friends, and has had a problem with bullies since kindergarten. We took him out of ps last year in large part because of bullying and social problems. He gets picked on in just about every group situation- camp, sports, school - so clearly there is something about him that makes him an attractive bully target. His verbal skills are somewhat below average, so he has some trouble expressing himself and gets very frustrated at times. He's also a little immature for his age. Any ideas about how to help him? Have you had any success with working with a professional? TIA.

I agree with Plaid Dad and yes, I would support a national curriculum IF it was Core Knowledge or something similar. But I don't think it's possible, because there is just no way the PTB could ever come to a consensus over what should be taught. It would be more practical to have lots of CK schools available so parents could choose. I don't believe we have a CK school in my entire state. If we had one locally, I would not be homeschooling.

I'm using K12 this year, but it was a mistake. I won't do it again. We might use Sonlight next year, though I'd prefer something secular.

I believe they are still using mercury in fillings.