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caedmyn

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Everything posted by caedmyn

  1. I have spent quite a bit of time trying to give her tools. She generally chooses not to use them, so yes, at that point it becomes a motivation issue and consequences or incentives are the only way I know of to motivate, since talking is generally ineffective as a motivator with my kids. This is a kid who would probably shower twice a month if I didn't tell her (about once a week, after reminding her a few times to shower) that her tablet will be blocked til she takes a shower. This is a kid who's had a red crusty thing going on around her eyes for a good year and just will not consistently do what both the doctors we've seen for it recommend, which is put antibiotic ointment on 2x/day. I have tried reminders, motivators, asking her what she can do to help herself remember, suggestions when she can't/won't come up with anything, etc. At some point she just has to want to, and I'm not willing to have my carpet ruined while I wait for her to develop that on her own.
  2. And in the mean time I should just ignore the fact that the carpet may be ruined?
  3. They stink. "Want to" is definitely an issue here, as I'm good at organizing and spend a few hours 3-4 times a year helping her organize and declutter her room, and she simply won't bother to put stuff away rather than dumping it on the floor or nearest horizontal surface.
  4. DD15 is a slob. She leaves her clothes lying all over the floor of her room, including her basketball uniform which does not belong to her, and her school uniforms. She has a place for all her clothes--apparently it's just less trouble to drop them on the floor rather than walking 3 steps to the closet to hang something up or put something in the dirty basket. I get that this is pretty normal for teens, but we have a cat who is mostly DD's, and she wants the cat in her room at night. The cat has peed on clothes left on the floor a few times (maybe 4 total over the past year). He has never peed on the floor, just on clothes left on the floor. We don't know why he does this--he has a litter box in her room and it doesn't seem to be an issue of the litter box not being clean enough for him or anything like that). I've told DD in the past that she either has to keep the clothes off the floor or the cat can't be in her room. She isn't keeping the clothes off the floor but continues to let the cat in her room. She set out her school uniform on the floor last night and the cat peed on them (WHY she thought taking a skirt and dress shirt off hangers and putting them on the floor was the thing to do I have no idea). This can't continue. I don't want to have to worry about cat pee on the carpet, and if DH finds out the cat is doing this he's likely to insist that the cat has to go. Realistically I cannot actually prevent DD from letting the cat in her room, so I need ideas for consequences to motivate her to keep her clothes off the floor, or for other ways to handle this situation.
  5. I've said this several times before here...I see zero indication of executive function issues or ADHD in DH. They're just not there. Genetics-wise this is coming from my dad.
  6. My point was that personal experiences are naturally going to tend to affect feelings and behavior more than statistics, and that doesn’t make someone ignorant or stupid or worthy of contempt. I can acknowledge the rarity of stranger abductions yet still feel uneasy or extra cautious about some situations EVEN THOUGH I know stranger abduction is extremely unlikely, because of my personal experiences.
  7. One thing that bothers about this thread is a bit of an attitude (by a few posters, not all) of acting like people are irrational or stupid if their personal experience doesn't agree with statistics on a particular issue. Someone's close-to-home experiences, whether actual personal experience or geographically close or circle of friends/aquaintances, is generally going to have more weight in their mind than any statistic, and that's natural and shouldn't be cause for someone to be talked down to or criticized. Personally I'm aware that there are very few stranger abductions in the US. However, when I was in law enforcement before I got married, we had a case where a girl of about 9 was abducted by a stranger who climbed through her bedroom window, kidnapped her, shot her up with meth, raped her, and released her by the side of the road. All my knowledge of how rare stranger kidnappings are didn't make me not be always a little bit uneasy about the window location when we lived in a house where my daughter's bedroom window was at ground level (daylight basement). I also had odd experiences a couple years ago with my boys involving an older guy at my gym. One day I was getting them all out of my van to go into the gym, and a well-dressed, jovial guy about 60 years old came up and started talking to them and wanting to give them all high 5s. It was slightly weird but IME random older people are occasionally quite interested in a larger family of boys, so I wouldn't have really considered it unusual, until I realized that the guy had been driving through the gym parking lot and literally stopped his car in the middle of the lot to get out and come talk to my kids. We saw the same guy a month or so later at the gym--he walked out of the gym and stopped to joke with a delivery driver out front. We walked by them and the guy literally followed us back into the gym talking to my kids and trying to get one of them to shake his hand. I just kept on walking and he stopped after a few seconds. It was creepy. Now I don't really think he was trying to abduct one of my kids--I don't really know what he was trying to accomplish, but I'm convinced he was a pedophile. Those experiences have made me more leery of random strangers and a bit more uneasy about my kids going to parks etc without me than I'd otherwise be.
  8. I do think more constructive work would be really helpful for him, but DH needs to be the one to make that happen. DS12 could do all the mowing, and then look for mowing jobs in the neighborhood once he’s had some practice like one of his friends does, but DH was supposed to teach him to mow last year and he only let him mow part of the yard maybe three times total. DH just doesn’t seem to want to take the time to teach him or deal with a kid just doing an adequate job instead of one that’s up to his high standards. It’s frustrating. DS12 does have chores every day (vacuuming and kitchen cleanup), but he could do a lot more if DH would be willing to make it happen.
  9. I can ask him if he’d be interested, but idk if I can handle another traveling sport. DD’s basketball season is four months of 5 days a week practices plus games and that’s exhausting. I definitely don’t want to be doing that much driving year round.
  10. I ended up having my hand x-rayed at the chiropractor’s office and it turned out to be a hairline fracture, which is what I was thinking it probably was since it wasn’t all that painful. That was much cheaper than an urgent care or doctor’s visit for sure. I’ll keep buddy-taping it and being careful another couple weeks and it should be fine (assuming I don’t whack it anything else while it’s healing!).
  11. I appreciate all the suggestions. Most are things I’ve thought of but am not sure how to implement. We’re thinking of getting a dog in the spring (though I’m not sure I can handle a puppy and DH doesn’t want an adult dog, so we’re a bit stuck there). He definitely needs an interest to involve himself in. He used to play Legos tons but rarely touches them any more. I’m making him do 4-H so he has some activity but he doesn’t want to. Currently his only real interest is video games. I do limit his time on those to 30 mins on weekdays and a couple hours total on weekends. He likes to run but there’s no serious kids’ running clubs here and he won’t run on his own. He did jiu jitsu in the past and enjoyed it, until he competed in his first meet and didn’t do as well as he thought he would and decided he wasn’t interested in jiu jitsu any more. My oldest plays basketball and my 10 yo likes it too but 12 yo has no interest. Maybe I should require him to choose a sport/physical activity to participate in? He does have a few friends, mostly kids younger than him. I know relationship-building and positive comments are needed but am struggling to make it happen between dealing with my health issues and constantly feeling overwhelmed when they’re all home. Overall I think he needs those more from DH than from me (not saying he doesn’t need them from me also). Really hoping my parents will finally move here this summer as my mom is really good at those things and I am not.
  12. My 12 yo has always been a very difficult kid to like. He spent most of his first year screaming. Once he was fully mobile he was a little tornado, climbing everything and generally leaving a trail of destruction around him. He’s very strong-willed and generally takes no responsibility for anything he does. He’s never been very nice to his siblings. Most of the kids in his small school dislike him (basing this both on things his siblings who attend the school report, and my own observations). Several of his siblings don’t like him. He’s just...kind of a jerk...in general. He deliberately does things to aggravate kids at school/church who don’t want to play with him—he’s admitted to doing this, and he knows what he does annoys them. Starting puberty certainly isn’t making him any more likable. I can see him having zero friends as a young adult and blaming everybody else for why they don’t want to be around him. Idk how I’m going to make it through another 6 years of parenting this kid.
  13. I was pretty surprised at the time that they didn’t want me to wear a walking cast or anything. Sorry your toe caused so many problems.
  14. I broke my big toe a number of years ago, and chipped a bone in my elbow also (fell off a horse), and went to the ER where they confirmed they were broken and said there was nothing to be done. So I took one night off then went back to working 8 hour long walking shifts. They both healed up fine. I’ve had quite a few experiences with doctors confirming what I already knew was wrong and then saying there’s nothing to be done about it, so... My PCP is a nurse practitioner office and they’d refer me for x-rays anyway, so might as well go to urgent care if I go anywhere.
  15. I accidentally whacked my hand against a cabinet quite hard last Friday and must have hit the drawer pull with my middle finger. It throbbed pretty good for a couple of hours and then pretty much stopped hurting, unless I pushed it against something or put more than very light pressure on it while picking something up. Saturday it had swelled up some and I was debating about whether to go to urgent care and see if it was broken. Sunday it was still swollen and I was still debating, but it felt less sore when I felt up and down the bone so I decided it wasn’t broken and didn’t go. Three days later I’m still debating about whether it’s broken. It feels achy off and on around the 2nd joint. Swelling is gone today but still some bruising going halfway around the finger. I can fully straighten it but will feel a bit achy around the knuckle for a bit afterwards. Same thing if I fully curl it up. It doesn’t hurt to use it normally for tasks that involve light weight or pressure. If it’s broken it’s the bone between the first and second joint that’s broken. I’d just continue being careful with it for a couple more weeks except for all the web articles I find talking about how untreated finger breaks can cause permanent damage (mostly articles on orthopedic surgeons’ websites, it seems). But I don’t really want to go spend several hundred dollars out of pocket to find that it’s not broken, or it is and they just want it splinted, which I can do without going to the doctor. Also it’s been almost a week so idk if it’s really useful to go anyway since it’s already started healing. WWYD?
  16. My kids got a couple of 4 yo ferrets from another homeschooling family a few months ago. The previous owners did not disclose that the ferrets had health problems but it became apparent after a couple of weeks that they did. I googled their symptoms and it appeared that the female has adrenal issues (is super skinny now and has lost most of her fur) and the male has insulinoma and also some sort of growth on his stomach. Both conditions could be treated but with a lot of expense and extra care involved and we choose not to. They don’t seem to be unhappy or in pain. The male mostly slept all the time but lately has seemed to improve and is awake a lot more and moving around better. He really wants out of the cage and spends quite a bit of time every day trying to shake open the door (apparently he did this at his previous home but hasn’t done it much here until recently...he managed to get the door open a couple times last month and was found sleeping on a jacket in the entryway so that probably has encouraged the door shaking). They get basic care here but no attention—kids don’t like to hold the furless one and the other pees and poops a ton and so they don’t want to hold him either. We’ve had a family crisis recently and we really need to not be taking care of these ferrets any longer. I put an ad on craigslist listing their health conditions and what they come with (cage etc) and asking if anyone wanted to adopt them. There was a pic of the ferrets but not the cage or anything else. I got a couple of responses from people saying they’d take them. DH says anyone who takes them just wants the cage and supplies and will put the ferrets outside to die (it’s about 15 below zero right now). He says it’d be more humane to put them to sleep. I’m not opposed to putting them to sleep since their health issues will necessitate that before too long anyway, but I’d rather they go to a home where someone would give them a little love for the rest of their days. But I don’t really see any way to screen random potential adopters to see what their intentions are. Would it be better just to put them to sleep? There’s no ferret rescues here so that’s not an option.
  17. I'm considering have my 10, 12, and 15 yo's each make dinner for the family one night a week. They're all capable of making a simple meal like tacos. I'm not sure whether I should choose the menu for those nights, whether they should be able to choose it, or whether I should come up with a small list of choices and they can choose one to make each time. Wondering how this works in other homes when the kids cook dinner for everyone.
  18. If it makes you feel any better, a large study from China found 0 cases of covid spreading through asymptomatic people.
  19. I’m done making kid lunches. DS12 basically won’t eat anything I make for lunch and I’m over the drama. I can’t let him make himself lunch without allowing everyone else to do the same thing so the older ones can all start making their own lunches every day. I need to come up with easy, relatively low mess lunch fixings to keep on hand. I refuse to buy TV dinners and fried food (taquitos, tator tots, chicken nuggets, etc). They are all perfectly capable of making themselves a basic meal. I have sandwich fixings but they’re not much on sandwiches. What else makes for good DIY kid lunches?
  20. My bath towels are all quick dry ones from JCP. I spent quite a while looking at different towels when we moved into our new house 2 years ago and settled on these because they feel nice, dry quickly, and reviews didn’t mention much of any pilling. I really like them, but JCP is discontinuing them. I’m seriously considering buying enough for each of our three bathrooms to replace the ones we currently have once they start wearing out. Would this be silly? I do lean toward minimalism, but we have plenty of storage space and I could just pack them away in a tub until we need them. It’d be about $100 total to buy replacement bath and hand towels for the three bathrooms.
  21. My 7 yo is dyslexic, probably severely (or at least a good bit more dyslexic than his three older siblings who are all dyslexic). I do not think he is dygraphic, but he does struggle with letter formation. We did two years of HWOT and moved on to copywork this year. He doesn’t struggle with the copying, but generally starts his letters at the bottom and writes them in the wrong direction (for example, with “a” or “d” he draws the line from the bottom going up, and then goes back to the bottom and does the loop from the bottom up). I don’t know if I should be coaching him on proper letter formation with every single letter, or if I should just let it go since his writing is legible. Picture is of the copywork page he finished today.
  22. My mildly dyslexic 9th grader is having problems with algebra. It’s almost like her brain doesn’t think in algebra, or grasp the concept of solving equations. She started going to a small private school in November and is doing Saxon Algebra. She was doing CLE Algebra at home and didn’t really understand that, and last worked partway through TT pre-algebra then did all the Keys to...pre-algebra and some of Khan Academy’s (because she didn’t seem to understand fractions and percents). I had wanted her placed in Saxon Algebra 1/2 at this school but they don’t use 1/2, only 87 over 2 yrs for their jr high students, so they started her at the beginning of Algebra I. One of yesterday’s problems was something like “if the circumference of a circle is 6pi, what’s the radius?”. She knew the formula for circumference of a circle but could not figure out how to solve the problem. This is an ongoing issue—she doesn’t seem to be able to think in the way she needs to think to do algebra. She also has trouble keeping all the different terms straight—they wanted her to write reciprocals for a few numbers, which she learned 9 lessons ago, and she thought they wanted her to write the opposite of the number (the negative of it). I figure it will take her two years to muddle through Algebra I, and I don’t think she has a chance of making it through Algebra II since she doesn’t even understand the concepts in basic algebra. I don’t see her understanding them at the end of algebra I unless she makes a giant leap in understanding somewhere, and that’s never happened in any subject for this kid, so it seems very unlikely. I’m debating about asking the school if they’ll put her in Saxon 87. I feel like she’ll probably be further ahead in the long run doing this (assuming she actually grasps the pre-algebra concepts) even if she doesn’t finish 87 til midway through her sophomore year. She’s only on lesson 12 in Algebra I. Her school does not offer any sort of remedial help. The only other thing I can think of that might help is sending her a local tutoring place. I’ve met with the head tutor before and he seems very knowledgeable and has experience working with kids with learning disabilities. I don’t know when she would actually be able to fit tutoring in though. She currently playing on the homeschool basketball team which has practices 5 days a week through the end of January. She’s already struggling to keep up with schoolwork and practices. When basketball is over she will hopefully get a spot in driver’s ed, which has a similar time commitment to basketball and will run through the end of April. DH and I are both capable of helping her with algebra, but she just doesn’t seem to get it regardless of who explains it to her.
  23. I’m looking for a basic free Android expense-tracking app where I can split transactions (ie enter one transaction for a Target trip and split the amount into different spending categories). I don’t want to have to set up a budget, link bank accounts, set savings goals, or anything like that. I don’t care if an app has these features, but I don’t want to have to use them to use the app. I just want a simple way to track how much I’m spending in different categories and in different stores, without having to enter a single Target transaction four times because I bought items from four categories. Does such an app exist?
  24. Generally me. We save and reuse gift bags and fabric gift bags from previous Amazon gifts, so wrapping is just shoving tissue paper and presents in gift bags and slapping a tag on the tissue paper so the bag can be reused for next time.. One of these days I’ll look up a YouTube tutorial for how to properly pack a gift bag so it looks nice.
  25. I’m having trouble coming up with an easy main dish for Christmas dinner. Googling is giving me a bunch of recipes that do not looking particularly easy. We had turkey for Thanksgiving. I’d prefer not to have ham or prime rib. We have roasts all the time. What is left? (I’m not a creative cook as you can probably tell!). I’ll have stuffing and mashed potatoes with whatever we have.
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