I write research and write articles on health-related issues, which is to say I am not an expert but a continual student. If on a cancer diet, I understand the necessity to avoid sugar and connection between sugar and cancer, but xylitol? That I do not get. I would prefer to eat natural sweeteners in a natural ratio/combination. If there is anything that the history of nature has proven it is this: When we take any one part of even a natural substance and use it in quantities or in combinations never found in nature, that is when we create new health issues. Sugar alcohols have not been used, as the additive in foods are being used today, long enough to recognize any long term effects they may have and I am rather skeptical due to the short term side effects. While some do not have much of the short term effects, my family does within 30 minutes of eating it. Maybe it is because we have been eating mostly organic, less process foods for so long our bodies recognize when something is really out of proportion and responds quickly...? A woman from Belgium once told me that when she came to the U.S. she could not believe how sweet all the food was. She kept her native diet because of it. I think, for the most part, people need to back off all added sweeteners and I also have seen the effects of sugar with my daughter. No study is going to convince me that the difference I have witnessed in her is all in my head.

I would not be considering the minimum monthly payment at all, unless it was more like I did not have the money to pay both together. If both debts were about the same in amount, I would go with paying the highest interest off first. Well, actually, I would be opening credit card with a 0% introductory offer to transfer it, but that is just me and definitely not something Dave Ramsey would advise. I am of the mindset that while I have a good FICO score, I am going to use it to my advantage and not pay even a dollar more in interest if I can help it. I want every dollar I put towards my debt actually going towards my debt and not towards interest that is increasing my debt each month, but I do the math so that the transfer fees do not end up costing more than the best interest rate I can get. This motivates me far more than seeing those monthly interest fees! If I could pay off a low interest one in just a few months, I would do that one first and then attack the bigger debt with higher interest even if I did not transfer it to a 0%. In the end, you may pay a few dollars more, but it really is worth it to be able to focus on a single debt rather than two.

As I see it, grammar is a subject that really is never "ended," just learned in more depth as the child progresses. I began it as soon as my child was solidly reading at a 2nd grade level for the most part, which for her was when she was 5 years old. I used First Language Lessons for Grades 1 and 2, which I liked because it trained me in the classical methods as well as my daughter. As for Latin, I began with Latin's Not So Tough at about the same time. The first year of that program is just phonics so it was nice ease-into-it kind of program (I never learned Latin either), but one could start an older child skipping the first level as it is all covered in the 2nd level as review. I found Latin phonics helped with the phonetics found in many English words personally and although it is not an obvious part of our spelling program, because she is already aware that "i" can sound like "ee" as in the word machine, it has been helpful in her spelling.

Interesting. As I read through some of the posts, I found it interesting that a child, who expresses restlessness or hyperactivity, has often been wrongly identified as a kinetic learner. Being that we lean classical here, I am obviously a believer in rote, particularly in the grammar stage, however how that information is presented can make it longer or shorter for the child to memorize. As I said before, my child is fairly even, but certain things she gets more visually and others more audibly and a few others more kinetically, and I have purposely tried to expound her boundaries in how she accepts information so she continues to be more well rounded in that way. However, I have also tutored math and I have to say that some children are in the extremes of a learning style and repetition is not enough unless it is done in an input style compatible with how the child can recognize and understand the information, otherwise it is like installing a Mac program on a PC. No matter how great the computer is, if the program does not "speak its language" it is not going to work.

You have done well. I will happily be the bad guy when my daughter feels pressure, but she is a "no means NO" type of girl...so far...(I am so hoping that holds!)

I see that we also have that in our area now as well, which has changed in just the last year I think, but still...I am not sure this works the same nationwide yet.

:iagree:Me, three! Personally, I am strictly a butter, no trans fats, kind of baker but a woman in my church makes these really great looking chocolate chip cookies and she uses Crisco. They don't taste quite as rich as mine but when they are right in front of me I cannot resist. So I say go for the look more than the taste.

I agree that having a sex offender nearby is something to know about and I check it often too, but I also keep in mind that some of these "offenders" could have been teenage boys who were charged for having sex with their minor girlfriends or boyfriends (or visa versa). Sex offenders are all grouped together without distinction and some of them were just not being careful when they were teenagers or young adults dating underage girlfriends (boyfriends) and are harmless people, but branded for life. They have to go by these same rules as a serial rapist. I know of a few young men where this has been the case and it is really sad that they have this hanging over them for the rest of their lives.

Personally, I lean more on the Gregorc's Model, because I think that all senses are used by all, but I believe that we do rely on certain input methods more than others. For instance, I can learn to do or about anything from reading it or seeing it in great detail, but hearing it alone I only catch the highlights unless I am focused on visualizing the details. My daughter uses all these methods nearly evenly, but I believe that is because of her early training with piano. She started lessons at four years old. Even so, she leans a bit more toward visual on most things. However, she most definitely is a random abstract learner, as sequential and concrete methodologies are not her thing at all. My husband is more kinetic, and that does not equate to hyperactive. He cannot really retain the information unless he has the opportunity to apply it hands-on. His second best is auditory. He chose well for his profession which is in a highly technical service industry. He is most definitely a concrete random learner. I do agree that trying to present everything just a certain way to each child is perhaps overboard particularly after the elementary years, but I believe that the child should learn to use his strengths to modify how the information gets retained. For instance, if sitting in on a lecture, the more visual learner needs to take notes or just doodle while listening. To me, the learning styles thing is kind of like blood. Everyone has blood but antigen factors in the blood make break it down into four distinct groups. However, it does not end there because there are within those groups other factors, like atypical antibodies, that make it a specific type, even thought it is all just blood and looks about the same to the eye. Likewise, I think that learning styles can be grouped, but each individual is also quite individual. As I said in an earlier post, with every theory you will find whoever believes in the theory will try to fit everything into it. So, if you believe in learning styles, you see learning styles...and if you don't, you won't.

I have to say something about the TP v. family cloth thing here. I am all for being conservative with our resources, but what is conservative changes with environmental issues. For instance, we were in a drought situation for four years and last year was quite severe in the Atlanta area. So, would it have been more conservative to use TP and flush only when necessary (smell factor) or to use family cloth and end up with more laundry using more water? I think it all gets to be a bit ridiculous at times as to what is conservation and what is frugality. I like to think my family does a pretty good job for not living in a tent and hunting game for our food and clothing.

No, no, no, and not sorry. ;)

I know this might sound hard but if your family is allowing this behavior right in front of them without saying something to him, they are part of the problem. They are, as someone put it before me, enabling him. I would excuse my family out of a few family get-togethers and explain that you don't feel that it is good for your daughter to be there and why. Another route would be that you talk to him and even apologize to him for the incident that you believe set this off and I would do that calmly with your family around so you have them witness that you have tried to humbly make it right. I know this goes against our nature when it seems someone is trying to overpower us, but it does have a positive outcome either way. (I would not ask your daughter to apologize in this case, because I think it is rather odd to hold a grudge against a child for so long--but I have had a family member like that: my own mother, in fact.) Apologizing puts the pressure on him to either forgive or to live with the regret of his inability to forgive, plus he will lose credibility with family members if he does not thereafter act better towards her. I am very sorry your daughter is going through this and that your family has seen it all this time and allowed it. I think I would have said enough is enough years ago.

I think he makes some valid points in his argument against learning styles, but then he made points that support them as well. Of course, each person uses all their senses gain understanding, but some children, for example, need to hear the music to copy how it is played and others can read music to play it better and regardless of what learning style a child has he must move to play the music. They use all the learning styles, but one is going to be the strongest in helping the child to learn the music. I would have to say that I disagree with his closing statement. A good teacher is a good teacher, but the best teachers actually reach a child and if the child gains understanding quicker and better using one style more heavily then the teacher has modified the approach for that child, or taught to his learning style. The argument he had as to why people believe the theory about learning style works for any theory. If you believe a theory, you try to fit everything into that theory and that is how science has always worked. A theory is a theory until it is proven untrue. What I see is another theory that does not disprove the learning styles theories, but another theory that just does not support them.

Wow! There has been some major changes with the family all with high expectations that your daughter be able to get the type of college education she wants. Well, there are two things that come to mind. The first is if she really wants it, she is the one who needs to work for it. At this point you should be guiding her in the right direction, not leading, not providing for all her needs to get her prepared. This is something she needs to do herself, which actually is part of her college prep. If she is not pushing herself to prepare for ACT and college, then she is sending signals that she is not ready for college, particularly one away from home. Second, she is ill. Mono is relentless. As much as she has hopes for this time in her life, this illness is not something that can be ignored. Whatever expectations she has had needs to be modified until she is better because even if she has the heart to prepare for college, she may not have the strength. I would remind her that if she rests and gives her body the time it needs to heal, it would help shorten her recovery time. The depression, now that could be something that needs to be address, perhaps medically...? It would be difficult to say if it is part of the mono or not, but if she was depressed before.... One last thought, we are only disappointed when we have expectations and I think your family has been going through too many changes and challenges to have certain expectations right now, don't you? We cannot control our lot in life, we can only control how we respond to the lot we are given. Give yourself credit for what you have done well and teach your daughter that not everything will work out the way she wants it, but she can influence the outcome to make it bend her way if she works at it. It will not score on any test, but it would be the best college prep she might ever have.

Why is it that babies just keep growing up? My one and only is just six months younger and I am in the middle of redecorating her room from the nursery theme to a little girl's pink theme with castles and horses. Plus, it has been hitting me that we are nearly halfway through that part of her life when I am responsible for her education. Talk about pressure!!!! I hope your family has an enjoyable day.

Take a deep breath in an out. Education is a work in progress. I would not panic, but from your description, it sounds like she needs more exercises in dictation, even if just a sentence or two each day (or at least every other day). It sounds like she has been relying on you doing the work and she just copies it, not a bad thing get her started in narratives, but there comes a time for her to work at it on her own. So, you may just need to shift your methods a bit to train her to do it herself. When she writes her own narratives, have her read them aloud back to you or you read them aloud back to her. She may catch her own mistakes. If begins to recognize some of them, then all is not lost; she just needs the practice in the application of her knowledge. I would go over each sentence asking her if the sentence has both a subject and predicate, having her identify the parts of speech, or pointing out a misspelled word and asking her if that looks right to her. Basically, help her to see her own mistakes and remind her of the grammar rules that would apply.

We eat mostly natural meats, organic foods and juices so we spend a bit more, but still about $100 to $125 per person per month. We also buy fresh raw milk from a nearby farm and handmade soaps. I bake my own sourdough bread. I use coupons when I can and buy in bulk when items are on sale.

Works for me, too!!! ;)

I began using a cash envelop system about 20 years ago, before Dave Ramsey wrote his first book, and we were completely debt-free for a few years as well. As he says, his cash method is nothing new. We are not debt-free now as we have a house and have had some really bad fortune in last few years. We are pretty much using every penny in our budget now, since my husband is making about 70% of what he was. I withdraw the entire amount of our paycheck, which is direct deposited, except for our tithing amount, for which I write a check as long as it is under $250 or two checks if more, as advised by a IRS tax attorney. Other than tithing by check, I do everything in cash and money orders purchased from U.S. Post Offices. I pay what bills I can in person and the rest by mail. I don't like automatic bill paying. Unlike Dave Ramsey, I do believe in keeping a credit card and we use that when making purchases that are ordered. Regardless of what he says about this, a credit card is better about taking off a debt amount when you have not received the goods, which happened to us once when a furniture retailer when bankrupt. If we had used cash or a debit card at that time, it would have been months to get our money back, if we would have gotten it at all. I don't like one account to touch another and I do not use our debit card, but my husband does for expenses associated with his work because we are reimbursed through that account. It makes things a bit more complicated in some ways, easier in others. We have a set amount we contribute to an envelop for health, but if something is known about ahead of time, we make adjustments to the budget to save up for them if possible and, if not, there is the emergency fund. I also part ways with Dave on the $1K emergency fund and try to have enough to buy another used car since ours nearly 150,000 miles on it or at least three months of expenses, particularly with how things are in the economy. As for the car expenses, we have an envelop for that too. We had to get new tires last winter and the money was sitting there in the envelop. We still paid insurance and tags without dipping into the emergency fund at all. When all the money is all pooled together in an account, people tend to forget things that are coming up, like car insurance or don't plan for the unexpected, like newer but cheap tires coming apart. Such things seem so far into the future or unforeseen and there is plenty of time to make it up, so the rationalization goes as they buy that really cool wide screen TV, but once the money is spent, it is spent and the car insurance is due before you know it. The envelop method demands accountability. I put receipts in the envelop so I know where the last paycheck went before filling up with the next one. We have gotten cash discounts on some purchases also. My thoughts are if you have enough money to make sizable amount of interest so that it is a factor in your decision about whether or not to start an envelop system, you should be debt-free and investing that money in a better way. Since tithing is taken care of by check, these are the envelops we have currently: Groceries Mortgage Utilities Auto: maintenance, repairs, tags, and insurance Gas Personal: clothing, haircuts, gifts Household: maintenance and repairs Outings: occasional eating out but mostly trips to visit and help ailing family members or go to funerals Piano: lessons, tunings, books Homeschool Health Care Pet Care: food, health care, litter, accessories Pay Down: any debts (when needed) We many be adding one for Orthodontics in the near future and possibly Horseback Lessons if I can squeeze it out of the Homechooling Budget. We usually have just a bit to add to our emergency fund as we are paying down a cc debt right now.

It is all in the location, what you buy and how much. We don't save as much as most families. We eat organic foods mostly, so as for groceries, we get a huge package of organic spring mix for less than half the price I would at any other store, and I even get a 20% discount at one health food store. So, we buy about 20-30 of just those a year, saving at least $4-$6 each. Just ten of them alone pays for the membership. Now and then they have other organic produce. They have good men's jeans for around $13 here and in my husband's size, which has been very difficult to find in any store and certainly not at that price. Yeah, once in a while, we find jeans on sale, but it is really difficult to find his size and we run from one store to another for just work jeans that will probably have ink on them after one wearing. (He services industrial ink printers.) We bought ten of them in the last year. Our DVD player just died on us and we looked to get a DVD/VHS combo that would allow us to copy VHS to DVD. They have one that is $50 less than the best price I can find online without added shipping costs. So, even though that $40 membership a year seems to be borderline worth it for us at the time it is due, when I add it up over a year's time, it is worth it and it saves me some gas and time as well.

If the phonics/spelling rules are taught in a word-family oriented way along with the exceptions, it seems to work very well for my daughter. No word in the English language ends with "v" but always "ve" regardless of whether the proceeding vowel is long or short or has a special sound. live-adjective (long i) live-verb (short i) dove-past tense of dive (long o) dove-bird (schwa) That most single-syllable words ending with a single consonant sound of f, l, s, and z will be doubled, with a few exceptions. lass class glass exceptions: gas, his, this If the /ch/ sound at the end of a single syllable word follows a single short vowel, it is usually spelled "tch." patch pitch hatch hutch exceptions: rich, such, much, which Personally, I never learned these rules and just memorized lists when I went to school. Although I found memorization to be easy, I wish I had learned these rules because now that I am learning them they make so much sense as to why a word is spelled the way it is. That being said, I have not yet found that perfect spelling program for us so I devised my own using an index card system, because my daughter does not do well when there are too many words on a page.

Ours is as well, which is why I draw the drapes so I don't have little ones looking in. Still, you don't have to necessarily make it look as if no one is home, just obvious that you will not be answering the door. At the most, we only get two knocks at the door each year since we started doing it this way.

You might be able to largely skip phonics from the reading standpoint in the younger years. I used 100EZLessons to get my daughter reading, which is not really a phonetics program. However, you might find that learning phonics is necessary when your child becomes ready for spelling. I always planned to teach phonics/spelling rules when she began writing, which is what I did.

For number 2, we stay home, don't answer the door, draw the drapes, and have fun playing a game or watching a favorite movie with the sound turned up. We have found that if you answer the door, the other kids think you gave candy away and they keep coming for that reason.