Things I did/do with my likely stealth dyslexic kids: *after finishing up phonics (a homemade WRTR-style approach), I go through it all again in cursive. In addition to being the only way my oldest could even *learn* cursive at all, it also was really great for breaking her of the sight reading habit (my eldest exited phonics lessons as a near-total sight reader <sigh>). And in general learning cursive has been really good for their reading skills - it was worth doing for that reason alone. I've read that writing in cursive requires people to be able to work through words in syllable chunks, not by individual letter/phonemes, and learning cursive uncovered that my oldest couldn't do that. And learning to read cursive required them to work through the words using their phonics, because it was different enough in appearance that they couldn't recognize it by sight anymore. *Rewards Reading - it builds multi-syllable word attack skills. There are ten activities per lesson, 20 lessons total, designed to be done a lesson at a time (I split it into two chunks to avoid tiring my kids, but they were younger than yours, ~5th when we did it). The activities: blending oral syllables into words, reviewing vowel sounds, breaking words into syllables, hearing words pronounced wrong and correcting them, learning prefixes and suffixes and using them to break words into chunks, some vocabulary building with prefixes/suffixes, and some practice spelling long words using the above skills; later lessons have a passage to read. I got a previous edition used several years ago, along with blank workbooks bought on the used market, for not too much. *Spelling Through Morphographs - extends the skills built in Rewards to spelling. More detailed/intensive than Rewards - 140 lessons or thereabouts - you could do them doubled up. I really like it, but since it's been awhile since I used it with middle (and haven't yet gotten to it with youngest - he's in Rewards rn), I have less on the tip of my tongue to say, esp since it can be pricey even on the used market (I paid $90 several years back, but I've seen it for less as well as more since then - price fluctuates a lot). I required the kids to do it in cursive. *Concurrently with the above, I did studied dictation using Spelling You See's visual marking system to do the "studying" part - it was great for helping my oldest learn to see the insides of words, and it was the only way either girl could be successful with dictation for quite a while. *After StM, I did Touch Type Read & Spell, which is an O/G approach to typing. It was pricey but it was a third run through phonics and it was also likely the only way my oldest could have learned typing. It took my oldest 1.5yrs and my middle a full two years to get through it (they repeated so many lessons, plus they each restarted the whole thing once, when they really hit a wall), but they are really solid typists now - they constantly write on the computer. It's 24 modules of 30 lessons each, iirc, and each lesson is about 5-10min. I had the kids do three lessons per day, and they could be repeats. It could be done even after your ds is back in school. After all this, my oldest could spell fairly well (no more than one average error per handwritten page, and close enough typing for spellcheck to figure it out), and my middle could spell okayish (close enough for spellcheck usually, but quite a few errors per page handwritten; she's 8th and could use another run through spelling), but they are both really, really solid on reading. ~*~ In your shoes, I'd rec Rewards, TTRS (if not solid on touch typing), and learning and/or practicing cursive in an O/G way through whatever spelling you do; StM is a solid spelling program if you can find it used for not outrageous prices.

Two useful types of clips, one cheap and one pricey: Cheap: Goody claw clips. Except not the big ones, but the small or medium ones. When I was a teen, i thought, lots of hair = biggest clip available. But i was wrong - you cant brute-force holding up long, thick hair - no clip can stand up to that. You have to finesse it - and one easy way to do that is to use several smaller clips at key points. Three or four of the small claw clips hold up my girls long, thick hair for dance, rock solid. Two hold my bun all day. And they are the most convenient way to hold up a braid (or pair of braids) wrapped around my head. They are fairly unobtrusive and very versatile - and pretty cheap ;). Eta: they are also good for holding hair during the intermediate steps of a style. Also, scunci octopus clips are good, too. Pricey: https://www.ficcare.com/maximas Beautiful and very strong. A medium would be a good starter clip - works for a lot of styles. My sister has very thick long hair, and she can put all her hair up with it, and I've also used a medium on my girls when they were younger and had lots of baby fine hair. Super pricey, though - I got most of mine 10-15 years ago when they were half the cost of what they are now. Still, great clips and very long-lasting.

Wrt putting my hair up without getting a headache, it's key for my to have it all flat against my head, not sticking out at the back of my neck. And it helps to have the clip anchoring it up past the crown of my head. The problem is that it holds better when the style is all around one anchor point (like a bun), instead of starting low and clipped high (like a stretched out bun or a fake french twist) - it sags and I have to redo the clip every few hours. But all low, though it holds well, gives me a headache. My current way of dealing with it is to do a bun right on top of my head - very easy, holds great, and no headache. But another way is to do a half-up bun at the crown of my head or higher, and do a start low, clip high style on the rest of it, anchoring the lower part to the half-up bun. Looks fancy and holds great - I can use very small clips to hold the whole thing. But it takes a bit more time.

I too love Lilla Rose/Flexi-8. Extra-large is my preferred size for putting up all my hair in a bun, although I can use a large for it; I have a small I use to hold part of my hair in a half-up bun, and I inherited an extra small, but don't really have a use for it (my hair is thigh length, medium thickness). Sizing kind of depends on what style you want to do - the xl is great for buns for me (ie holding all of it), but not good for twisting it up and holding one or two twists - it's too big for that, though I still do it when I'm in a hurry, but I have to redo it every hour. With the right style, I could do a full updo with the small, but i would just have it hold a small twist or two, not all my hair. Eta: tested on my oldest dd, who has very thick hair past her bottom. An actual bun was too much hair even for an xl, but the large was almost too big for the folded-over bun we do for dance. Probably get a medium if getting just one.

Both my dad and I really enjoy the Nero Wolfe mysteries, by Rex Stout.

Did your church disagree with their denomination's theology? Or were you using a hymnal not put out by your tradition? (I'm so used to the idea of having an "official" hymnal, though churches sometimes also use others, but there do seem to be a lot of non-denomination-specific hymnals out there, so I guess they must fill a need somewhere.)

It's interesting how many of the hymns in our hymnal were altered from the original in some way or another. (I do the slides for service, and in writing up the authorship info, I'm surprised by the number of times I type "alt.")

If anyone else is curious, I found the lyrics to all 18 verses of Oh, for a Thousand Tongues to Sing, along with a history of the hymn: https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/resources/o-for-a-thousand-tongues-to-sing-18-original-stanzas ETA: I looked up how many verses are in our hymnal - there are seven. Might have to look and see which ones they are, and if any were combined. ~*~ And I've always wanted to sing through all 29 verses of "On My Heart Imprint Your Image" for a personal Lenten devotion: https://steadfastlutherans.org/2016/03/29-stanzas-of-greatness-for-our-readers/

I think dh did that one Advent. He's also broken up a hymn over a single service. We've done each verse of O Sacred Head individually as responses to the seven Good Friday Gospel readings, and we've done half of O Dearest Jesus before the reading and half after.

That is so awesome - I had no idea there were so many verses to that hymn! I strongly prefer it, too, and so do my kids - I've taught them well, lol. Fortunately, so does my pastor dh, so we do as much as he thinks the congregation can bear 😉.

You know, I just learned today, messing around on Hymnary, that there are more verses to "O sacred head" than the seven in our current hymnal. And for both the German and the most common English translation being in the public domain, the internet did *not* want to cough up those verses; it was hard enough to get a solid-ish answer on how many are there (either 10 or 11, it seems). I was able to find ten verses in a translation of an older hymnal I own - it's usually my go-to for seeing if there are any missing verses - but otherwise I'd have been out of luck. It's interesting how many verses in that hymnal were either dropped or combined in new hymnals (which I only know because the translator pointed it out, and usually the hymnal editors don't).

Sounds like it's just a lot of work, then <shrug>. Especially as dd is just doing this on her own time - her lessons (and lesson-related practice) are working toward preparing her for music school. Right now my little perfectionist is refusing to simplify anything <sigh>, but I bring it up when she gets frustrated, just to remind her it's an option (she's so quick to help her younger siblings find ways to simplify music to make it manageable, but resists doing it herself). She sounds like your student, Dmmetler - learns quickly and has a lot of drive and determination. And it definitely helps that she is familiar with all the music. We've been getting into a groove with practicing, figuring out just how much work - and what kind of work - is needed. It's been helpful to do a "dress rehearsal" of sorts the day before the service - going through all the music exactly as in the service, with me singing along. It's also been helpful to go through all the verses when *starting* a hymn, instead of just playing through the first verse repeatedly until the dress rehearsal - more hymns than I thought have slight variances between verses, and it's good to know about them with plenty of time (looking at you, "For All the Saints"). And we made a schedule for Nov/Dec working in the new setting and the extra hymns, to spread out the work and make sure nothing is overlooked. Overall, I think she's starting to settle in. And wrt the time investment cutting into school, once she starts getting paid (hopefully at the start of the year, they are discussing it ahead of the budget meeting), I've told her it will have to cut into her free time, not school, just as if she had gotten a job at the grocery store or something. She agreed that was fair, albeit grudgingly, so we'll see how it goes.

WRT worship music, about how long per song, would you say? (I know that's hard to quantify without measuring on purpose.) I'm curious, because a common objection to "too many verses" is how much time it takes, but when you look up worship songs recorded live, many of them are 5-7 min long, and some are even 10-15min or more. When I looked up Waymaker, the shortest was the original recorded version at 5min, the next shortest was 8min, and from there it went up to 15min and even 27min!?! Given that we sang all 15 verses of O Dearest Jesus, counting the intro, in 9min (and that 5 min is enough for all 12 verses of "These Are the Holy Ten Commands"), some worship songs are at least in theory even longer wrt time spent. But probably most churches don't actually spend that long per worship song, any more than most churches sing 15 verses of a hymn. (And, of course, the effect is different.) But in general worship songs seem to take more time than hymns, what with all the instrumentals and pauses and such - I was curious just how long actual churches in actual services spend per worship song.

Also, what's the usual or average number of verses your church tends to sing? Do you tend to sing all the available verses in your hymnal? Or does your church tend to just sing selected verses of longer hymns? Or does your hymnal not tend to have too many verses per hymn in the first place? My dh is our pastor, and he usually sings all the verses, but sometimes does selected verses to avoid going over 7 or so verses (he's been doing that less recently, possibly because I complain when he does <shifty>). We just broke our record for most verses sung for a service: 15 verses of awesome for "O Dearest Jesus" (breaking the previous record of 10 verses of awesome for "Salvation Unto Us Has Come"), which accomplishment is the reason for this post ;). Our current hymnal (Lutheran Service Book) has quite a lot of verses, more than the previous hymnal (Lutheran Worship), but on average less than the one before that (The Lutheran Hymnal). Even so, most hymns are probably 3-5 verses; the ones we are doing this Sunday are 4, 4, 5, and 4 respectively. (The following Sunday, though, is 4, 8, 4, and 6 respectively - so glad dh isn't shortening "Savior of the Nations, Come" <woo-hoo>.) I'm curious for lots of reasons. One, I've heard that my tradition (Lutheran) tends to have more verses in our hymnals than do other traditions. A quick spot-check of Hymnary.org suggests that might well be true - most non-Lutheran sources don't go over 4 verses, and I didn't see any go over 5 on the two hymns I checked ("O Sacred Head" (10 or 11 possible verses) and "O Dearest Jesus"/"Ah Holy Jesus" (15 possible verses)). (It also suggests that the LCMS hymnals have more verses on average than either ELCA or WELS.) Even so, my sister complains that her church (also LCMS) rarely does more than 3-4 verses per hymn, so just having the verses available isn't enough.

Curvy-cut jeans have been a game-changer for me. Unfortunately particular ones come and go so rapidly that the only ones I've ever been able to buy more than once is Levi 529s. The tolerances are such that I have to try on every one in my size in store to find the one or two that fit just right, but it's worth it because then I don't have to worry about the back gaping, even without a belt. (I've had actual salespeople tell me to "just wear a belt" to deal with it, when trying on jeans.)

Yep.

I'm not sure how much is MM introducing them early, and how much is the typical US progression introducing them earlier than SM does (there's a common core edition of SM that puts things that that in so as to match current US ps progressions). FWIW, I just let our Pre-Algebra (old school Dolciani, for us) be our introduction to those sorts of things (another big one is negative numbers). Since we weren't going back to ps in middle school, nor did we need to do testing that assumed a ps progression, I decided it didn't matter if we got to it "late". So far it hasn't - oldest dd and middle dd picked those things up fine. And Hands-On Equations will cover both variables and negative numbers, which were the ones I was most concerned about getting to late.

Being proactive about managing my own stress is probably the biggest thing I can do to increase my ability to handle it. Negative feelings I can't fix cause me stress, and I can handle it better if I'm not at red alert from a bunch of other stuff. For me, that means being proactive about physical stuff - twice-daily stretching and daily walks. Also watching what I eat - not eating a bunch of sugary, carby crap (which, of course, is my favorite way to deal with stress, even though it's ultimately counterproductive <sigh>).

I am Person B, but I'm not sure it's an unalloyed good. Sometimes I'm reflexively looking at the positive because I can't handle negative feelings - it allows me to avoid having to learn how. And that's been a problem, because I'm fairly empathic (in the colloquial sense of feeling others' emotions as if they were my own), and for a long time I couldn't handle people being sad at me. My toolbox was limited to "trying to help/make them feel better", either by solving the problem making them feel bad or by solving the feeling bad (aka hugging it better - which does work surprisingly well). Letting them just feel bad about a bad situation wasn't on the table, because I couldn't handle the emotions, even by proxy. And, secondly, I think reflexively looking for the silver lining, to make the cloud something I can live with, sometimes leads to me minimizing the cloud as "not that bad". And sometimes that's not really true - the cloud *is* bad, is something that really should not be, and focusing on the 5% silver lining and dismissing the 95% bad as "not that bad" - well, it's a distorted, false view of reality, and it causes me to be blase about things that maybe I really shouldn't be blase about. That finding the silver lining is good, but it is also good to acknowledge the bad for what it is - and that feeling bad about bad things is perhaps *more* appropriate than ignoring/minimizing the bad in favor of a laser-focus on the good. So, in good Person B fashion ;), maybe try to reframe things a bit, to think of the strengths that Person A's approach brings to the table. It helps me to separate my own big feelings from theirs when I can acknowledge that their feelings, though painful, are nevertheless a reality-based response to the situation. (And with kids whose big emotions are maybe an overreaction, I do try to gently help them calibrate the intensity of the emotions to the intensity of the problem, while also considering whether the problem they are dealing with is in fact more intense than it looks to me from the outside. And I tell myself the very same thing, when it comes to how upset and panicky other people's big feelings make me feel - it's *not* the big problem it feels like, I *don't* have to go into overdrive trying to make it go away.) It helps me deal with it when I can remind myself that their feeling bad *isn't* my responsibility to fix, that helping someone doesn't have to mean making them feel better - that feeling bad about bad things is painful but *good*. But that said, sometimes it's still really painful for me to deal with. When it comes to small-ish things - ranting about computer problems, for instance - I've come right out and said that the unproductive ranting is very hard for me to deal with, and asked them to not do it around me. Ditto for silently making it everyone else's problem. For bigger things - where it's just bad, and there's nothing to be said for it - I do what I can to help and quietly go hide when I need to. Ditto if it's small but they are just being upset without trying to inflict it on the rest of us. It's ok for them to be sad - and acknowledging that helps me separate myself from their feelings - and it's ok for me to take a break from feeling their sad when I need to.

I grew up alternating between doing three Christmases the years we traveled 1300mi to do Christmas with extended relatives (ours before we left, Dad's side on Christmas Day, and Mom's side on whichever non-Christmas-Day day everyone could come - it was so. awesome. having three Christmases as a kid, let me tell you), and doing one Christmas on Christmas Eve/Day the years we stayed home and Dad's parents came to visit us. The idea of celebrating on whatever day you could, not just The Day, was very normal to me, and that flexibility seems pretty helpful; also, the idea of doing different things different years. I remember wishing we could travel every year, but Mom and Dad said it was too stressful to do every year. Dh is a pastor, and that means we have to be home for Christmas Eve/Day. As a result, we have a pretty low-key Christmas Day with just immediate family that's really nice. Then (coordinating around being home for church on Sundays) we travel to dh's family for a week, usually celebrating New Year's with them, and then to my folks for a week, usually celebrating Epiphany with them. Before we moved back to the state we grew up in, we didn't have any extended family Christmas - the whole season was just a low-key 'us'. I like what we do now - having Christmas Day to ourselves, but also visiting family. Like me growing up, my kids are used to not living near family, so we've never had to really negotiate competing holiday expectations (and growing up, my mom's family short-circuited problems by always doing Christmas *not* on Christmas Day, picking whatever day everyone had off). The kids love getting to see extended family - it's a rare treat, like it was for me growing up. IDK, I hope they continue to value it, and that when they grow up and move out, we can continue the family tradition of both visiting and being visited, celebrating whenever we can get together.

My oldest loves to write fiction; she spends the majority of her free time writing (she's currently aiming for 20,000 words in November to get a rough draft finished). But she's pretty resistant to non-fiction writing. In fact, she acts very much like a reluctant writer: resists starting, is slow coming up with ideas, and writes the bare minimum length. If I drag her through some kind of writing process involving brainstorming and organizing, she can turn out a decent piece, but if I leave her to her own devices, it takes forever to come up with something barely adequate. You'd think she hates to write, but then she'll spend hours on her stories; she's still not excessively fast, but she cares and can write something genuinely worth reading. But it's probably fair to say that she hates to write non-fiction - and it shows. Right now I'm trying daily timed writes on AP literature prompts (it's higher level analysis than she is really capable of, but she disdains "stupid" prompts and loves literature, and honestly I'm at my wit's end, here - she's hated every non-fiction writing program we've done). But it's going so-so. Some prompts she can generate a decent thesis and paragraph on, giving us a base to build on, while others (like today) she gets nothing. But on the plus side she at least doesn't accuse the prompts of insulting her intelligence, so there's that. She's a very intuitive learner - she either gets it or she doesn't, and when she doesn't get it, she really resists being guided (dragged) through the learning process until something clicks and she gets it. Steps and organization are either opaque torture or stating the bloody obvious to her (depending on whether she gets it or not), but when she can't get something, the only successful solution I've ever found is dragging her through the steps, trying extra hard to connect the process with her intuitive sense of things, till it clicks and becomes blindingly obvious; leaving her to her own devices just results in either avoidance or wailing and gnashing of teeth, and an unfinished assignment either way. I've done years of haphazard attempts to drag her through some writing program or other, and I admit, I've let non-fiction writing slide more than I should have because of her resistance, using the justification/hope that with how much she writes in general it wouldn't hold her back too much. (And last year I just let OYAN be her writing, which she absolutely loved.) IDK, I guess now is the time to buckle down and drag her through it till it clicks, but I was wondering if the Hive an any ideas on the best sort of thing to drag her through (my default plan is either working through Writing Revolution on the AP lit prompts, or pulling LToW back out), or other thoughts on how to get strong non-fiction writing out of a resistant-to-non-fiction but *very* enthusiastic creative writer?

I got it in July (had original two shots, but no booster), and it was no worse than a moderate cold, symptom-wise (no one else in the family got it) - it genuinely wasn't a big deal. I took the usual rec'd immune-supporting vitamins, and I nasal washed 3-4 times a day, which helped keep my nose from completely clogging up. I also used breathe-right strips on my nose when I slept, which also helped keep my nose clear enough to breathe through. I did have to prop up pillows for 4-5 nights. I only had a mild fever for the first few days, and was tired but not ridiculously fatigued. I could have worked from home, if needed (I did continue computer-centric church work). I didn't cough much, and didn't go through too many kleenexes. (I coughed more out of quarantine than in it - took a couple weeks to be able to talk much without coughing.) No change in smell or taste. After I was out of quarantine, I took naps for the first week, but still wasn't stupidly tired. The one thing I did notice that was different than a cold was stamina in walking. Two days before I came down with symptoms, I was walking the neighborhood with my dh, and though I didn't feel particularly tired or winded, I just couldn't keep up - I was walking so. slow. It was noticeable enough that I thought I'd have to go to the doctor if it continued. (Honestly, I was relieved it was due to covid.) It took a week or two after getting out of quarantine before my walking pace was back to normal.

Hey @Dmmetler - how did it work out? I'm especially curious because my dd16 has started as our church accompanist a month ago, and it's a lot more work and time commitment than I realized. I just spent several hours making up a practice chart through Christmas, because with all the extra services and the new service setting to learn (itself the equivalent of about 10 hymns), we've got to plan ahead (there are 14 unique hymns between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, for example, and that's with dh deliberately repeating several - most years he tries *not* to repeat, and there are over 20 unique hymns between the two services). She's currently spending 30-60min a day, 6 days a week, working two weeks ahead, for three hymns a week plus one liturgical setting, with no preludes/postludes or other special music yet. She'd rather practice hymns than do school <sigh>, but I'd rather she didn't eat up school time with it. I can't figure out how much is just the brutal learning curve when she has no hymn repertoire at all, how much is that we need to work smarter, or how much is that it's just plain hard work <shrug>. In any case, I can't fathom how your student was able to fill in at short notice - how was she managing?

The podcast is specifically talking about three cueing - the theory that good readers don't process the individual sound/letter correspondences but instead use various cues to make predictions about the text, namely context/meaning cues (does it fit with the meaning of the sentence/story/picture), grammar cues (what part of speech are you expecting to go here), and visual cues (does it fit with the letters). Per the podcast, three-cueing came about in the 50s and 60s; prior to that the main options were phonics and the look-say method of whole word teaching (Dick and Jane, for example). The podcast descibes the difference between three-cueing readers and look-say readers (namely, three-cueing uses much longer and phonetically complicated words much earlier, because they are conceptually easy - "elephant", eg.) WRT relevant research disproving the three-cueing theory about how good readers read, the timeframe was 70s and 80s, but even into the 90s it wasn't well-known in elementary education, even though it was well established in cognitive science. WRT people who have difficulties reading supporting whole word teaching, my mom's not in education or anything, but her personal experience was that phonics makes no sense to her (she can't use phonetic pronunciations in dictionaries) and that if she'd been taught phonics instead of whole word (of the look-say variety), she'd never have learned to read. She actually reads and spells very well, but there's several words that she never connected the spoken word with the written word for decades (such as awed - she read it as a-wed). But I have the same auditory processing issues she does (I learned whole word very young, and used my reading ability to work backwards with phonics activities in school), as do my kids; the kids all flunked the Barton pre-screening, indicating that they didn't have the auditory processing skill necessary to learn to read from phonics teaching. I had to work really hard to remediate them and build up those skills (remediated myself in the process). AKA my mom might not have been wrong in her self-analysis - regular phonics teaching very well might have been a disaster for her. My mom remembers being taught, via whole word in school. I do not remember, probably because my mom taught me very young (using the Teach Your Baby to Read flashcard method), probably 15-24mo. Per family stories, I was reading words I hadn't been taught before I turned three. I remember reading chapter books when I was five, but as far as I'm concerned, I've always known how to read. I'm not 100% certain what all was done in school. In 2nd grade we definitely did all these phonics sheets, and I remember not understanding how you could do them if you couldn't read already (in retrospect, because my auditory processing was so bad - I just thought I "wasn't an auditory learner"). But in 1st we had reading groups, and I was in the group that already knew how to read, so we just read through readers together - Frog and Toad, and such. I don't know what was done in other reading groups. Interestingly, though my oldest was 6 when we started reading lessons, and they were extremely hard work for the both of us, she doesn't particularly remember learning how to read. Even more interestingly, despite the fact she was *horrible* at spelling throughout elementary, and we worked so very hard at remediating auditory processing as part of learning to spell - years of hard work - she's practically forgotten all that, too. She's actually good at spelling now, and all the blood, sweat, and tears that went into getting there, well, it hasn't stuck in her brain at all - she's forgotten all the emotions that went with and most of the details. And my middle cried in 2nd grade over worrying about reading in front of her Sunday School class, and she doesn't remember any of that, either - having successfully learned to read in the end, and not really experienced any trauma other than hard work in the process, it's like it never happened <shrug>.

I was able to find links to the transcripts here: https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/