<hugs> In my not-so-humble opinion, the associate pastors certainly *ought* to do that. I mean, I get that in a large church the senior pastor simply can't provide pastoral care to all the members - that's why they *have* associate pastors in the first place. But no matter how huge a church is, providing one-on-one pastoral care is a core, fundamental, non-negotiable part of the church's mission. It's one thing to have lay volunteers to *help* with the pastoral load; it's another thing entirely to offload all pastoral care onto lay volunteers - that's just not right. I really loathe the model where the pastors train the volunteers to care for the parishioners, but the pastors don't actually do any of the pastoral care themselves. Parishioners *ought* to care for each other, but that doesn't *replace* pastoral care (just as pastoral care doesn't replace parishioners caring for each other). I recommend asking, though I know it's easier said than done. FWIW, I definitely 100% think it's a totally legit thing to ask - people *ought* to be able to have one-on-one discussions with their pastor. If for whatever reason it doesn't work to ask at your church, then I'd definitely recommend asking at the Lutheran church.

Idk if it possible, or if you are interested, but could you have regular spiritual counseling-type discussions or more informal discussions with one of the pastors at your church? I know dh has had regular discussions with members who are doubting, or who hold different beliefs. It would both be more private than a small group, and with a more knowledgeable, more experienced discussion partner.

Mine too. I'm really enjoying my dh's Sunday morning Bible study. We just finished Daniel and have started Matthew (he likes to alternate between OT and NT). I never understood the prophecy part of Daniel - seemed so esoteric and impossible to make sense of - but working through it, it started to make sense and to come alive - I got how it fits in with the big picture of the Bible. (At our old church he was the youth pastor, so his Sunday morning studies were with the high schoolers, where he went through a book of the Bible with them; he also had a mid-week adult study going through a different book, but with littles I wasnt able to attend. But there was no pastor-led Sunday morning adult study most of the year, just lay-lead classes, so most adults never really had a chance to have that kind of in-depth study, which I always thought was a real detriment.) As well, I think it is really good for the pastor to be regularly teaching Bible studies, especially working verse by verse through a whole book of the Bible. I've seen how much dh has learned, how many connections he makes to the books he's taught. It's not just that parishioners are better off for having a regular pastor-led Bible study, but that the pastor is better off for it, too.

That might be a benefit of a small church. I mean, my pastor dh has a Sunday morning Bible study that has a small-group size and atmosphere - everyone freely asks questions and makes comments. But he's a lot more prepared than your average small group leader (pastors in my denomination have a four year master of divinity degree) - he can handle more difficult questions and issues. And in a small church, he's very accessible, probably far more so than the teaching pastor at a megachurch.

That's one of the things I really appreciate about our new church - the midweek lay-lead Bible study studies actual books of the Bible, using a study guide that goes reasonably in-depth (and that is actually faithful to our doctrine). I semi-jokingly told my dh that this Bible study has the least amount of heresy of any I've been in :shifty:. (It's also coed, but I think a women's group run the same way would be good, too.) It also is set up so that you really need to have done the homework, so people come prepared, and that adds to the informed depth of the discussion.

I go to a small Lutheran church - my dh is the pastor. (It's been quite a change - previously we've been at med-large churches, 500-800 members. Now dh is literally the only full-time staff member.) My three kids were a full third of the Christmas program cast. I too really enjoy traditional hymns and carols (and liturgy). Dh does both a Christmas Eve and a Christmas Day service, both Communion services, with the Christmas Day service being a lessons & carols service, which I really enjoy. (The kids are looking forward to it, too.) Idk, I don't really have much advice - I'm praying for you, though. I do know that even with the built-in advantage of being the pastor's wife - so that plenty of people *want* to get to know you - it's all-too-easy to keep things all surface-y and at-a-distance. And that once you've gotten into that habit, time alone isn't enough to build relationships - you have to change how you interact to change the results. But sometimes a change in environment helps, too. I'm able to use different talents here, including ones that matter a lot to me that I didnt really have an outlet for before, and it's a nice change.

I don't disagree - I think minimalism as a tool is a good way to consider it - but it seems to me that often minimalist gurus treat minimalism as a path to ethical living, or as an ultimate goal in itself. (It's like how unschooling can be just a schooling method or can be a whole philosophy of life or anywhere in between, but most of the vocal adherents are on the "path to ethical living" side of things.) I mean, heck, even the phrase "minimalist guru" says more "conveying wisdom for living a good life" than "a specific technique to use where helpful".

Thinking along "false belief" lines, Mindset, by Carol Dweck, was a game-changer for me. It's not directly addressing self-esteem, but the fixed mindset it describes has a lot of overlap with characteristics of low self-esteem, in that a fixed mindset can definitely contribute to low self-esteem. In a fixed mindset, a person assumes that their traits and abilities are, well, *fixed* - that either you can or you can't, and if you can't, there's nothing you can do about it. Who you are now is who you've always been and who you always will be. Dweck contrasts this with a growth mindset, where just because you can't do something *now* doesn't mean that you can't do it *ever*. Failing today is just failing today, not proof that you are inherently a failure at something. When I read the book, I realized I had a tangled mix of both fixed and growth mindset assumptions - it really helped me to get it all out in the open, where I could look at my assumptions, and explicitly get rid of fixed mindset assumptions and replace them with growth mindset assumptions.

The link didn't work for me, but I think this is the book you were talking about: Glow Kids by Nicholas Kardaras. The descriptions match.

Yep, it's a capital "I" followed by a lower-case 'L'. It's the fourth chapter in Aspergers and Girls.

With everything you have on your plate, I think I'd just get rid of the TV. ITU not being able to be on top of him every minute, so might as well get rid of the need to do so. Can't be constantly fighting over watching the TV if it's not there to be watched.

Queen Bees and Wannabes, by Rosalind Wiseman, might help, in that it describes clique dynamics. (It's an easy, fairly interesting read - I read it on a whim in my early 20s and it held my attention.) It occurs to me that the reason could be as simple as higher-status people can get away with stuff that lower-status people can't. I don't know if this is directly relevant, but it was a huge lightbulb to me wrt social dynamics - both understanding them *and* understanding how they could be a force for *good* (not just a stupid, catty game). It's "Girl to Girl: Advice on Friendship, Bullying, and Fitting In", by Lisa Iland - a chapter in the book Aspergers and Girls. It's based on advice that the author, a neurotypical girl, gave to her brother with Aspergers to help him nagivate teen social dynamics. It revolutionized my understanding of how friendship works. Also, there's a difference I think between someone getting away with *transgressing* the usual rules, and someone getting away with overtly *enforcing* the usual rules. People generally put up with bad behavior more than they do people reminding them to quit behaving badly. IDK that it's very *fair*, but it seems to be quite consistent. You see it all the time - the person blowing the whistle gets all the opprobrium, not the person who actually did the wrong thing. Even the "can do anything" girl might find that reminding people to follow the rules wouldn't go over well even for her. I think it takes a ridiculous amount of social skill and tact to tell people they are in the wrong and not have them get upset with you for it - that's far more rare than the "can do whatever wrong they want" people. I think the usual socially-savvy play is to try to get people to quit doing the wrong thing without ever making a point of overtly *saying*, "stop it, 'cause it's wrong". Often by making the wrong thing seem socially stupid/lowering, to remove the social cachet of being transgressive. Your dd might just need to accept people don't like wrong stuff being pointed out, and not be surprised when it happens. The world needs people who will say the hard truths. Honestly, the more I understand social dynamics, the harder I find it to speak up - *because* I have a better idea of how people will react. In my younger, less savvy days I spoke up a lot, in part because I was oblivious to the social pressure to not do it. I inadvertently offended people right and left. Now I offend less, and am more successful with the speaking up I do, but I do just speak up less. It's harder to be brave when you truly know what you are up against.

Inception, Paycheck, and The Italian Job come to mind, although idk about Inception for a 9yo. Inception is a wheels-within-wheels heist movie, with a twist ending. Paycheck is a sci-fi thriller, based on a short story, where the main character has a planned memory wipe but leaves himself clues so he can rediscover what he forgot. The Italian Job is a heist movie along the lines of Ocean's 11; not as think-y as the other two, but fun - standard heist movie brainy. Eta: Catch Me If You Can is another possibility - a LEO chasing a con artist. Eta2: The Thomas Crown Affair is another - LEO chasing an art thief.

I used to be that way. As a kid and through high school I always had a tube of Chapstick on me. My sister had commented that she didn't use Chapstick, because it seemed to make her lips worse - that the more she used it, the more she needed to use it. That seemed uncomfortably true, so in college I switched to Burt's Bees, but I still needed to have it on me at all times. Eventually I got tired of being addicted to lip balm, so I just went cold turkey (during winter, even). The first three or four days were truly miserable, but I was over the hump after a week. Since then my lips might occasionally get dry, even crack, but they never get that maddening "chew off your own lip to make it stop" feeling that I used to feel whenever I didn't reapply in time. Now I rarely do anything other than exfoliate with a natural bristle brush and drink more water. If it gets dry enough it hurts (a different sort of hurt than the "must reapply lip balm now" feeling of my lip balm days), or my kids complain of hurting dry lips, I mostly use olive oil. If it's really bad, I pull out some old Aubrey Organics lip balm - it tends to heal the problem in one application, and doesn't restart the lip balm addiction. I use it maybe 2-3x/year, if that. (Although I noticed that if I used it for a few days in a row, the beginnings of the "chew your lip off" addiction feeling came back. Once I noticed that, I made sure to use it only apply it once - no reapplying.) I have no idea if they make it anymore - I bought it 15 years ago and still have half the little pot left. But it is good stuff when used sparingly - and unlike others I used, I *could* use it sparingly.

When Your Body Gets the Blues talks about how the hormonal changes during one's monthly cycle can cause cyclical periods of mild depression. IDK if it's directly applicable to perimenopause, but the advice is pretty commonsensical and overlaps with what your friend is already doing. And what your friend describes matches the sorts of symptoms I feel with the hormone-driven, cycle-related mild depression. Anyway, there's three components to the book's solution: daily outdoor walk, increasing the amount of light you get in general (both sunlight and daylight-mimicking artificial light), and increasing six vitamins/minerals(Vitamin B1, B2 and B6, folic acid, vitamin D, and selenium). I never really did her particular set of vitamins, because they made me sick, but I do get some amounts of everything but selenium in my usual vitamins. I did do the other two things: a 20-30min daily outdoor walk and increasing the amount of light in my surroundings in general. (I also did a light therapy lamp because of Seasonal Affective Disorder.) The book rec's getting a clear umbrella so that you can walk in the rain and still get the benefit of the outdoor light; I never did that, but in my climate we didn't have too many all-day rains, so I could work in my walk around the weather. (I did walk in the snow, though.) Light-wise, I changed all the bulbs in the house to the brightest daylight LEDs I could find, and made sure to set up my usual "spot" next to a window. (I've noticed a difference between having my desk near a window versus having it in a spot that doesn't get direct sunlight.) It really did help regulate my moods and reduce the cravings for comfort stuff (food, vegetating, wanting to stay in bed, teA, online validation). I started to recognize the cravings for what they were - attempts to self-medicate to feel better, because my body really was feeling down. Recognizing that my slightly desperate craving for whatever form of comfort is not really a craving for food, or a craving for love/attention, etc., but is actually a more physiologically-based craving to feel better - helped me feel more sane and balanced. And the components of the program are meant to help solve the *cause* of one's body feeling down.

I realize this is kinda off-topic, but what would you say is the difference between Climbing Parnassus and Karen Glass wrt the purpose of Latin?

It sounds like you might have been *inspired* by Climbing Parnassus and its vision of Latin, but that when it comes down to it, you don't really *share* that vision - you haven't internalized it, haven't made it your own. From what you wrote about your goals, I'd be inclined to either call finishing FFL sufficient Latin, or finish out Latin Alive and call that sufficient. Then you have your Latin foundation for both English and for a serious study of a modern foreign language. (It might be worth figuring out what about Latin he hated, so that with your modern FL you can take steps to mitigate those things as much as possible, and prepare him for dealing with them wherever they can't be avoided.) Just going to get on my hobby horse for a moment, and point out that learning to *translate* Virgil, etc., is not the same as learning to *read* Virgil, etc., in Latin. If unserious Latin means you don't end up with the ability to comprehend actual Latin texts, and serious Latin means you learn to translate actual Latin texts, I'd say that "medium Latin" is the ability to *read* actual Latin texts, though not necessarily the ability to *translate* them well. I think there's a lot of value in medium Latin, even though it is less rigorous than full-on "able to translate" actual Latin texts. (And it's a sad, ironic thing that sometimes "serious Latin" study nevertheless somehow fails to develop medium Latin skills.) For us, I'm wavering between going whole-hog and aiming for serious Latin versus "settling" for a solid reading ability in Latin. Right now in our intro work I'm setting the foundation for serious Latin, but it remains to be seen if I keep it up till the end. I think serious Latin is a valuable thing, but it may be more work than we're willing to put in.

I haven't seen a remodeled Target, but the descriptions here make me wonder if they were trying to compete with Bed, Bath, & Beyond. All those little in-and-out sections, a layout I can never predict, no shortcuts to anything, having barely enough room for one cart in the aisles (there's no way for a *person* to squeeze by a cart, let alone get another cart by - I hate how squished it feels).

That might be a good pattern for this year's origami (ish) photo ornament. I started doing it a few years ago - picking a simple origami pattern and photoshopping a photo collage so that, when printed, I could fold the photo paper into the ornament and have the pictures all end up right where they should on the finished product. It's not easy to find a pattern, because photo paper doesn't work for anything but the simplest origami. I did a six-pointed star the first year (using six different strips of paper), holly leaves the next, and a Christmas tree last year.

Thank you for all your thoughts and encouragement! I know I haven't been posting, but I have been mulling over the thread and trying things out. A week after posting, I went through a lot of the ideas with dd12. I think she finally made sense of "of = multiply". (Working through @LMD's ideas was particularly helpful.) I agree with the people who've said that it's probably something to do with the fraction concept itself. I've been hoping that hitting it in pre-algebra would help - that seeing it more formally done would help us both. That's actually why I did an experiment with AOPS Pre-Algebra - nothing gets into the nitty-gritty whys more. But I had no idea whether it would work for her: on the one hand, she is generally a strong math student who loves a challenge, and the AoPS pre-test doesn't call for anything more than fraction basics, which she had down. But on the other, while she intuits most things to do with math, the few that do trip her up, *really* trip her up. In any case, AoPS was a fail - the detailed proofs weren't making sense to her (found out later that she wasn't able to intuit the jump from elementary math equations to algebra equations, when we did it explicitly in MM - took two days of her working it both ways before she felt solid), she may be all about having an intuitive understanding, but she struggles with explaining it explicitly (and generally doesn't see why she should have to). On the other hand, it was *great* for bringing misunderstandings to light, and pinpointing exactly where the problem lay. (Though we didn't work on fractions, I still got a lot of insight into her thinking processes, and it gave me a lot of insight into what might be going on with fractions.) But it made for long, hard math sessions, when every other day involved being brought to a screeching halt by yet another difficulty being uncovered. AoPS was hitting too many of her weaknesses - they expected students to intuit a lot of things that she just needed to see explicitly. So we did some pre-algebra-y MM, and now have started Dolciani. Originally, Dolciani (which I had on my shelf) looked both boring and intimidating to the both of us, but somehow after AOPS - and me figuring out the basic structure and point of pre-algebra - it looked downright friendly ;). So far she's doing fine with it - pretty straightforward, no difficulties. WRT evals, I do wonder. I've wondered about her for quite a while, but every time I was about to pull the trigger, she'd make a leap. It's easy to miss her inflexibility on stuff, because she's generally quite flexible - far more so than ds7 (who I'm *really* starting to wonder about, as he's just not outgrowing stuff). But on the stuff she's inflexible on, she is *really* inflexible on - more politely than ds7, usually, but just as strongly. But she's generally willing to talk about it, and listen to what I have to say, and I can usually persuade her to give it a trial go. And it doesn't happen on all that many things (as compared to ds7, who is stubborn and inflexible on what feels like all the things, although he *is* improving, be it ever-so-slow). And, before puberty, she didn't throw a fit over it, either (also unlike ds7) - we could discuss it rationally; now she cries a lot, although once I calm her down, she's willing to discuss. I do wonder whether, in our discussions, I'm giving her the words she needs to describe what she's feeling far more than I realize - that it's less a discussion than it is me throwing out words and ideas until something clicks - that I'm doing a lot more of the "putting it into words" work than I realize. Thanks again for all the thought and effort y'all have put into your replies - I really appreciate it! I'm working my way through all the links and resources and approaches.

I only seriously dated dh. We were both in college, so the more common lie would be neglecting to mention a boyfriend/girlfriend back home, although I suppose you could still neglect to mention a spouse back home, too. In any case, he presented himself as single, and I never had any reason to distrust it. I did no research or background check, nor did it occur to me to do so. Even looking back, I think I learned enough about him from meeting family and friends (both on-campus and back home), going to his home church, etc. that it would have had to have been a multi-person conspiracy to keep the existence of another "official" relationship from me. I mean, he still could have cheated on me with another woman, but it would have been seriously unlikely for *me* to have inadvertently been "the other woman". I knew too many people who had known him for years.

I don't particularly have troubles with food, but the idea that it's impossible to have a relationship with an inanimate object was really jarring to me. I mean, I'd say that food can nourish the soul as much as the body - and that that is fundamentally a *good* thing. It's a problem when people use food to try to fill a non-food hole in their souls - but imo the problem is trying to use food to solve a non-food problem, not the idea that food satisfies immaterial as well as material needs.

Related to this, I've noticed that for me there's a difference between using my alone time to do things that refresh and recharge me, and using it to escape. When I use my free time to escape from the stress and responsibilities of life, it doesn't equip me to do anything more than to want to keep escaping. The more I escape from life, the more I want to stay in my escapism, and the less I want to re-enter the fray. But when I view my free time as a time of rest, instead of a time of escape, I'm better able to use that time in a way that *enhances* my overall ability to handle life. "Time of rest" isn't quite the right phrase - it's more like a time where I can do certain kinds of good things that are only possible when I have a block of uninterrupted time. Sometimes that involves restful things (naps, pleasure reading, etc.), but sometimes it involves a different sort of effort-ful thing (research reading, writing, exercise, etc.) - so that I'm resting from hs'ing through doing other active things, instead of resting all of me. So my focus is more on "what good things can I do with this time", instead of on "what bad things am I escaping from with this time". I can really feel the difference between using my free time to do good and using it to escape from having to do anything. (Which is really, in effect, the difference between using it to to do good and using it to escape from "having" to do good.) (Which is why I hate the phrase "me time", too. It turns doing good things to/for yourself into an act of selfishness, and so turns selfishness into a virtue. And completely erodes the ability of people to understand the difference between selflessness and self-neglect.)

I'm only midway through with my oldest, but as of yet I have not experienced burn-out. I've been long-term tired, I've struggled with depression, but while those things all made hs'ing *hard* - and sometimes required changes in how I hs'ed - none of it led to burnout. I *have* experienced burnout symptoms with other, lesser, commitments, though. (Thankfully they were all short/medium-term commitments - I was able to power through to the end, and then stop, secure in the knowledge that *I didn't have to do it anymore*.) Which makes for an interesting question - why burn out here and not there? But I've never felt like I've been losing myself. I think that burnout and losing oneself don't necessarily go hand-in-hand. WRT losing oneself, I agree with a lot that pp said: *It helps to have a strong reason *to* hs (as opposed to just strong reasons to *not* use non-hs options), so that hs'ing a good you are pursuing, not something you feel forced into. As well, knowing *why* you hs can help moderate outside pressure - you aren't at the mercy of others' *It helps to have other roles in your life than just hs'er, to pursue good in other areas of responsibility, too. I think that burn-out can come even when you have the above, though. Sometimes hs'ing might require more of us than we have to offer, and sometimes all the other responsibilities of life combined with hs'ing can require more of us than we have to offer. If that state of affairs goes on for too long, if we burn the candle at both ends for too long, then I think burnout is the natural result. Doesn't mean you don't believe in hs'ing, doesn't mean you've subsumed yourself into hs'ing to the exclusion of other spheres of life - just means that everything has been too much for too long. The stuff I got burned out on were things I valued, thought were worth doing - and they were just one thing in my life - but they were just hard, harder than I was prepared to handle. I will say, they were a kind of hard that did spill over into the rest of my life - I felt like I never had a proper break from them. By the time I recovered from one day, it was time to prep for the next - they did dominate my life out of proportion to their place and their importance. I think a lot of the practical things you can do to help keep yourself from getting burned out - like eating well, getting enough sleep, etc. - things that help you stay ready to handle life and help keep life within manageable bounds - might not be as effective if you are losing yourself in hs'ing (or in any one thing). And I do think a strong sense of purpose and a generally balanced place for hs'ing can provide some help in not burning out even when things are hard.

With a 7th, 4th, and 1st grader, I feel like I'm solidly past newbie now, but nowhere near veteran. IDK, what's the next level beyond newbie? Disillusioned, maybe - when the reality of my actual children had well and truly overthrown my lovely hs air castles ;). But I'm past that, too. So what's next? Optimistic realism? Or realistic optimism? Where you've settled into teaching the kids you have, but haven't had any major crises or burnouts past the initial newbie disillusionment.