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Greenmama2

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Everything posted by Greenmama2

  1. Ouch. That is awful :( I can understand why it is driving you crazy. Absolutely it is emotional abuse. You may find that CPS is able to help by requiring your sister to participate in mandatory counselling. At least, that would be a first step in this country. Is your BIL deployed? It sounds as though your sister could really use more time out to pull herself together. Is there any way your parents could pick the girls up from preschool and have them without your sister for a couple of hours one day a week? Both to build that sense of safe space for the girls but also for your sister to have time to prepare herself for mothering.
  2. I wouldn't translate it but I did pay the ludicrously high shipping to the Southern Hemisphere & I'm glad I did. It turned out to be perfect for DD.
  3. I really don't understand why you would want to put a rug in the work area of the kitchen? Even neat cooks spill a little flour or oil now & then. A quick mop is much easier than cleaning a rug.
  4. Thanks all. Nice to read about so many different days and somehow feel "normal" in the midst of them. By intensity, I meant intensity of focus - how challenging is the work for the child (not what the skill level is), how *hard* do they work? Anyway, thanks again. All the answers were helpful :)
  5. Hmm, BFSU really picks up the intensity in 2. I would not expect to move through it at the same pace. I love Ellen McHenry, but we have found her programs to fit well concurrently with BFSU 2, rather than following 3.
  6. My accelerated in maths DD7 could possibly do it, but I would need to talk her through the problem. If she just read & attempted it her head would implode lol. I think you have your answer - the teacher doesn't have appropriate expectations.
  7. I've only heard good things about them. If you like it that's all that matters :)
  8. Since he doesn't have a preference, do you have budget constraints? A piano would be a one-off expense (at least for a good number of years) but possibly a big one, a string instrument would be initially cheaper but he would need a new one every year or two as he grows (you can rent of course). What about carting it around? Will he need to carry it places himself as he gets older or will you be available to drive until he does? It isn't fun negotiating a bus with a tuba or double bass. Is he tall for his age? How long are his arms? What shape are his lips? Those can all influence choice of wind instrument. The instrument a child is most likely to succeed with is the one they have chosen themselves IMO. The best plan would be to start taking him to concerts, especially children's symphony performances & letting him get to know the instruments. Perhaps something will catch his fancy :)
  9. I started the seven year old thread, so I understand the need to ask. At five though we were still officially unschooling. That included plenty of academics because DD requested them. Technically we are still unschooling as everything "school" we do is something DD has asked for. Unschooling as a lifestyle suits our family a lot better than an structured approach, however I have found that DD needs clear cut time set aside in order to get the seatwork done that *she* wants to. This is something that has developed for her between six & seven so it's still new for me - hence needing to see how others approach it.At five we had no daily routine although I was trying desperately (&unsuccsefully) to insert some Waldorf style rhythm to our days. We did have a weekly schedule revolving around DDs dance classes, violin lessons and drama classes. That year DD did EPGY maths whenever she felt like it (which was often), SM whenever she liked (far less often), Mathletics (also whenever) ate up all the BFSU I could feed her and listened to as many read amours as her then 1 year old brother would let us get through. None of those things happened on any daily schedule however...
  10. Thanks everyone. To clarify for zaichiki, I was thinking of daily routines I guess. Along with the understanding that there is no "normal" day of course.
  11. Skip comes from Skippy the Kangaroo & is a derogatory term for "white Australians" used I'm response to being called "wog" "slanteye" etc. I don't think it was ever reclaimed to the extent that wog was and seems to have pretty much slipped from the vernacular since my childhood in the eighties.People with southern European heritage will still sometimes proudly call themselves wigs but I haven't heard anyone use skip for a long time.
  12. Skip comes from Skippy the Kangaroo & is a derogatory term for "white Australians" used I'm response to being called "wog" "slanteye" etc. I don't think it was ever reclaimed to the extent that wog was and seems to have pretty much slipped from the vernacular since my childhood in the eighties.People with southern European heritage will still sometimes proudly call themselves wigs but I haven't heard anyone use skip for a long time.
  13. Oh, wish I could edit the title on iPad. Also, what did it look like if you have older accelerated DC? :)
  14. S/O the fifth grade thread. I'm curious, what does your day look like? I used age instead of grade because I'm more interested in how long & how intensely your same age children work. I'm well aware that on this board children working at the same academic level as her could be younger or older :)
  15. But that was the point of my first post & what a lot of other posters have been describing - that some aspects of culture and even language are still lingering after a long time (seven generations in my case).
  16. I also wanted to say that I agree with the PP that brought up the idea that it is difficult for someone from a culturally homogenous background to understand how identity works in a "melting pot/veggie soup/culturally diverse" region. I started primary school in Melbourne in 1981, 1/3 of my classmates had Italian parents and another 1/3 had Greek. Malaka was the first playground swear word I learnt. I had one Chinese friend which was unusual because most of the Asian kids (around another 1/5 of the school population) were refugees from Vietnam. My best friend was Indian. Well, so she strongly identified herself & so her physical appearance and dress marked her. Her father was a university professor and they followed his work to Germany when she was still a baby and stayed till she was five. Her first language was German, second was Hindi, third was a local Indian dialect and fourth was English which she spoke extremely well but with a heavy German accent. Her story wasn't hugely a unusual one among my classmates all through school. If you live now as an adult in the country your grandparents were born in, which is also the country most of your childhood friend's parent were born in, and your teachers parents and your co-workers great-grandparents etc then it must be difficult to understand why someone would even bother saying something other than "I am Australian" or "I am American" (the friend I mentioned had citizenship by the way, she could have said that too).
  17. What does it mean to me? Well it's hard to describe exactly what it means to me but it definitely means something strong. I am by a direct female line seventh generation Irish Australian. Seven generations is a very long time in a very young country yet because my great-great whatever Grandmother Brigit McNamara from County Clare settled in a particular part of this country, my own grandmother had an aunt and some cousins whose branch of the family were isolated enough that they spoke a Gaelic-English pidgeon (pidgen? Autocorrect insists on the bird). So my maternal family is still HUGELY influenced culturally by their Irish roots. My mother is actually the first to have left the region Brigit settled in. Add to that the history here of the persecution of Irish Catholics (anything more than a cursory Google on Ned Kelly will show you some of that) & you have a strong feeling of identification. That's without those feelings of "these are my people etc" I experienced when I started playing Irish music or learning a few words of Gaelic. Interestingly, despite all the above I wasn't aware just how much my family culture is "Irish" until I married DH who is first gen & his parents are "ten pound poms". He identifies completely as "Australian", yet we have discovered many areas where his upbringing has left him very British. Of course I would never claim to be Irish, I'm not. But I have a lot more in common culturally with my friends who are actually from Ireland than I do with DH who was born & raised in the same country as me.
  18. Oh gosh. I agree, she's sweet and has been a good sport but I'm disappointed they didn't pay her. If there was even a vague mention of it previously then they should have followed through.
  19. The prize money really does change everything I think about this situation. Were it not for that, I would think that performing as a guest artist would be a perfect solution. However if there is prize money involved it seems to me that your DD has as much right to compete for it as anyone else. I'd be upset too.
  20. Yes, I agree that is generally what they're asking. I much prefer it when they just have a check box for that.
  21. I find this stuff really interesting. Here we often have "Australian" as an option. WT does that mean? I'm seventh generation so anyone from Ireland would laugh at me if I said I was Irish, but I'm not "Australian" either :/
  22. I "liked" this, but actually I love it <3 mom2bee - here's a big cyberhug for you. Placing boundaries around family etc in neccessary in your 20s (imo) and also really, really hard.
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