It stinks that the abusers are affecting people who are truly in need. Around here, pharmacists are overwhelmed with abusers and doctors are prescribing it frequently. In my own family, we have had to refuse narcotic prescriptions four times. Doctors are afraid of people being in pain and blaming them I guess? Once for a gum graft and once for neck pain for myself, I had to finally say I will not accept that prescription because I won't fill it and the street value is very high - I didn't even want the prescription in my home. My husband had back pain and they kept trying to give it to him and he refused. He had to insist on an epidural, which he had before and it worked great. My son had his wisdom teeth out and they would not take no for an answer - they insisted he take it in case he changed his mind so "the doctor wouldn't have to get a weekend call to prescribe it". So we accepted it then tore it up. They didn't like it. But they push it on people around here. We have a family member who got addicted to a narcotic after neck pain and ruined her life and her husband's and children's lives too. It has a valid purpose, but it is so unbelievably over-prescribed here, it is crazy. Why try to push it on us when we are saying our pain is manageable? The doctor with my neck injury argued with me about my own pain! I just wanted a prescription for physical therapy. If it were my mother, I would try a different pharmacy - they all have different rules. I hope she gets the relief she needs. It's a crazy world...

Ok this is interesting. These "Byzantine Christians" who preserved the texts for us were also great missionaries and translated the Bible into many languages, some of which they invented alphabets for so the people they were sharing with could have Bibles in their own languages. This group still exists today and is called (in the West) the Eastern Orthodox Church.

I vote genetics. All the women in my family have huge babies, working or not. Doing genealogy research, I wondered if that was why so many women on my maternal line died giving birth...

Looking at the Greek Bible, you will see that the word used here for "are saved" or "are being saved" is σωζομενοις, which is a present passive participle. That means it is an ongoing present passive action. Therefore "are being saved" is a perfectly acceptable - arguably preferable - way of translating it. To say that "are saved" avoids an "unintended" theological distinction is to add personal interpretation. How do we know Paul didn't intend it to mean that? Either translation is accurate, but the interpretation that it is fixed is not. It is ongoing in Greek.

He is an Orthodox Christian now, I believe.

In my church (Eastern Orthodox), the entire service is sung/chanted. An hour and a half minimum. That's a long time to listen to something jarring. I'd speak to my priest about how distracted I am and ask for spiritual advice on how to overcome it myself. If you think it's that bad, and others do too, it's likely the priest knows as well and he is allowing it to continue for some reason you may not be aware of. But he can give you advice on how to overcome and focus yourself.

My kids have had to use it in factoring. It's a quick way to see if 9 is a factor of a big number, along with the other tricks for other numbers, and I don't allow calculators until algebra 1, and then only for super messy numbers. There are lots of times a calculator is slower than mental math, in real world problem solving. Just my two cents, I know I am pretty old fashioned. But my father can solve most complicated math problems in his head faster than I can get out a calculator and plug in the numbers, and it keeps one's brain exercised as well. My dh is faster than my calculator too, though not quite as fast as my father. I didn't get quite that good an education in mental math, but I want that for my kids. He was in one of those tiny country schools a long time ago where they had to do compound interest problems in their heads and such. Amazing.

Yeah, I once had someone that I had just met tell me after talking to my children, "I can tell you homeschool. You know why? Your 13 yos looked me in the eye while I talked with him. Young teens don't do that!"

Can you make some of the books required, but not require them to do anything other than read them? I do that with books I want my kids exposed to, but I just don't have time to study them in depth, and I don't think they'd pick them up with out being assigned. My oldest just finished 8th, and I did that this year with him. He is going to a brick and mortar school next year for high school, and there were some books I wanted him to have read first, but I didn't have time to study them all with him. So for some I said "read these" and just asked him what he thought, some I said read these and merely required a one page summary to make sure he understood it, and some we went over more in detail.

1. Six weeks on, a week off. This has been essential for my sanity. On the off week I can catch up on appointments, house cleaning, whatever, but mostly just take a break. 2. School hours. Not planning music lessons or volunteering for things during the day. Not checking email or answering the phone. Along with this is no screens for kids during school hours. 3. Seeing myself as a professional. This has been harder, and may sound weird. But at one point I realized that if I wasn't teaching my kids, whoever was would be making money doing it, and would be seen as a professional. I try to engage in professional development, reading and learning more about teaching or specific subjects or methods. This helps me to stick to #2 also, I can without guilt say to my neighbor who shows up at 1:30 to chat, "I'm sorry, I can't talk now, I'm teaching." 4. Stick to the plan and the schedule. Unless something is counter-productive, just keep plugging away. Also planning from early spring to early summer and then taking a total break for a month, not doing any school work or planning. 5. Plan with room to move things around, because things will change. 6. Learning that tools that help me to be a better teacher are better than the best curriculum. An imperfect curriculum taught by a good teacher is much better than a "perfect" curriculum taught imperfectly or not at all. A good teacher who knows her subject well can teach from a white board better than the "best" curriculum. 7. Keep up with correcting work or checking on work daily. 8. If I knew 10 years ago what I know now, I would have had a much stricter routine, but with less subjects. The way I'm teaching my youngest that is different from my oldest is I am holding her to a higher standard, but with fewer things. I'm not trying to teach her all about the different types of landforms, for example, but I am insisting that she learn cursive well and efficiently. Do it right or do it over, but with fewer things. I think with my oldest, I tried to do too much too fast and a lot of it didn't get done very well.

With a June birthday boy, you might want to consider giving him that extra year. It's generally better to be older than your classmates than younger, especially for boys, and it doesn't always show up until middle school. For my summer birthday boy I called it K when he was 6, but did whatever 1st grade stuff he was ready for. (I didn't want him to graduate from high school at 17, and handwriting and sitting still were difficult for him then.) Now, he is in 8th and is confident and ready to start high school -- he would not have been a year ago. He was still advanced in math (he's taking geometry now), so it's not an academic thing, it was a maturity thing. I have several friends, however, who did not hold back their summer birthday boys, and when they got to 7th grade regretted it. They wanted that extra year of maturity before high school but couldn't do it at that point without it being a big deal. However, I had another friend who did as I did and officially held back her summer birthday boy, and when he got to 7th grade he was ready to go on so she skipped him a grade.

:iagree:I'm with Lewis and Tolkien... That article freaked me out a bit. Was she serious? We have to stop saying good luck and tear down our statues of heroes? And Shakespeare is evil? How do you teach your children about the Bible WITHOUT teaching mythology? Paul's brilliant preaching in Athens is totally lost. THere is no context for the Ten Plagues, it just looks like God is picking random things to hit them with, rather than trying to show them their gods were false so they would repent (which the Bible says many did and followed Israel into the desert and were counted as Israelites). Hundreds of other examples, where things seem random until you learn the context.

Harcourt Science 4 -- you can get it from Kolbe with lesson plans and tests and everything. Or you can just get the books from Amazon. (Kolbe is a Catholic homeschool academy, but Harcourt is secular.)

:iagree:

What in the tarnation are you talking about? :lol: Your turn!