Triaging...yes...everything requires triaging. Everything and everybody requires SO much of me to get anything done. I thought my 12 YO would be a big help by now but she is so spacey that she's not. I used to have her help with cooking and meal prep, but it takes her so long and she needs so many reminders to focus that I've largely given up on that. I ask her to watch the 2 YO and she does for 10 minutes and then all of a sudden she's disappeared and he's running around without her. "Oh, I thought you were watching him now," she says. My 8 YO is actually the most focused and, in some ways, the most mature of my older kids! We don't school year round. I need the summer off. I do have them do some independent work like typing and math facts practice in the summer. LIPS/FiS might be a good thing to do this summer. It would be easier to fit it in then. If the K'er had been going to a brick and mortar school I would not have started him this year as he's pretty immature even for a 5 YO boy so I don't think it's a huge deal to wait on teaching him to read. I don't really see typing practice as being a help, at least not until several years down road. DD started typing the summer between 3rd and 4th grade and still types less than 20 words/minute and doesn't feel comfortable enough with it to do any writing through typing. I don't think my kids have narrative language issues. I think I can manage writing if I have him do IEW's student intensive writing program when DD is doing it. I have to watch the videos with her anyway so he might as well watch them too, and if I scribe for him it shouldn't take very long each day. My goal is to get at least halfway through it this school year and finish the rest next year.

My signature is a bit off as I can't figure out how to update it. Caboose baby was born last summer, so he's 4 months old. I don't think he's tried jump roping. I'll have to try that and burpees with him.

Yes, it would be so much easier if I had a list of things he could do himself. I've tried to come up with that myself but it didn't work too well. I guess next time we see his OT I'll ask if she can come up with a program that's less mom-intensive. I guess part of the reason I haven't been getting his sensory stuff done is because I don't see a clear difference when we do it. I hadn't thought of that before. There have been times when I've seen a difference in him because of sensory work, like the first time he saw an OT he was a different kid for a day afterward. But overall I don't see a difference in impulsiveness or focus. Maybe any differences after sensory work would be more noticeable this year since I am no longer doing Barton with him. Barton lessons caused a lot of hyperactivity and often a lack of focus depending on what we were working on (he didn't mind reading but disliked writing sentences), and the rest of his schoolwork is not as bad. I will have to try the name workout. Maybe he can do it with his sight words for the day. Doing sensory breaks is a good idea too. Hopefully we can get a good-sized indoor trampoline and a doorway gym once we move, and maybe I can keep an eye out for an elliptical machine or stair stepper on Craigslist. I could maybe take him to the gym with me, but I only use the indoor walking track and I think he might tend to run off and find random things to try out if I left him using a stair-stepper while I walked around the track. (The track goes past the stair stepper area so he could be somewhat supervised but not fully supervised.)

Nm

The other side of this is that the 9 yo has a sensory diet for his sensory seeking that is mostly not getting done. He's probably going to need to do vision therapy. And the 5 yo needs to start speech therapy again. Somewhere I need to fit all these things in every day too.

Yes, he needs LiPS etc. I would go at a slow pace regardless, maybe 15 mins/day.

I'm having trouble figuring out which of these is most important. DS9 (4th grade) is supposed to start a writing program this year but that hasn't happened yet. And I haven't started a reading program with my K'er yet. He may or may not be dyslexic (3 older siblings are dyslexic) but definitely has some issues with sound discrimination and I will have to remediate that first. I don't know whether to make starting the writing program with a higher priority, or starting the K'er with reading. There's no guarantee I'll fit them both in this school year.

Probably not the type of answer you're looking for, but we just don't do it. My 12 yo doesn't have a phone, and she doesn't have any social media accounts. If we feel like she NEEDS a phone at some point, she'll get a flip phone. At some point I suppose she'll get a social media account of some sort so she can learn to handle these things before adulthood, but "because everyone else has one" is not a good enough reason in my book for her to have any. There's too much potential for harm vs too little potential benefit.

Thanks, Peter Pan. I do feel like a failure quite a bit. This thread has been quite helpful overall though, once I got past the initial "how am I going to fit one more thing in" reaction. I am actually not doing Barton with anyone currently. DD and DS9 finished it through Level 8 last spring. DS9 needs spelling review but is doing that with an online tutor. DS8 has been doing Barton with an online tutor for nearly a year because he wouldn't cooperate with me. I am not sure if DS5 is dyslexic but he does have auditory discrimination issues and I need to do Foundation in Sounds with him. I think the writing program I ordered (IEW) has grading checklists so hopefully that will be helpful. DD did a grammar-in-a-year program last year (Get Smart Grammar) after 6 years of incremental grammar programs so she's supposed to be done with grammar. She doesn't talk the way she writes so I'm not sure what the hangup is there. I downloaded a voice recorder for her tablet and she recorded her own oral narration today and it was a long one, way longer than anything she's ever written. I need to find a speech-to-text app to get them down on paper and then get some feedback on one. She doesn't listen to audiobooks much but reads a ton, always has. She is more of a stealth dyslexic I think.

I understand that speech-to-text would not be a cure-all. I do think it would at least show what she is actually capable of, and allow her to work on improving her writing without fighting the getting-words-on-paper process itself. I do plan to work with her. And I have worked with her writing in the past, but I've followed a more Charlotte-Mason approach to teaching writing and perhaps that hasn't been enough for her. Also, I'm a more natural writer but didn't have much writing instruction myself (A.C.E. school), so while I recognize good vs poor writing, I don't know that I have the words to analyze everything that's wrong with poor writing. I think having a scripted, incremental program will help me there. She has had remediation for reading and spelling. I have ordered IEW, the writing program recommended by the author of the dyslexia reading program we used. We'll give that a go for a few months and then I'll post another paper of hers for feedback. I hope IEW's what she needs because I don't even know where to go if it's not.

She does tend to assume her reader knows what she's talking about. We've had several talks about the need to identify who you are talking about before using a pronoun. As for the length, that may be related to the dyslexia. I have read that the writing process is very difficult for dyslexics. Maybe I need to have her try a speech-to-text program and see if that helps. I know she often spends quite a bit of time trying to figure out how she can write as little as possible.

I think this is a little more representative of my 7th grade DD's actual writing abilities than my previous post here, so I'm looking for feedback on it. This is a written narration that she wrote last year about a chapter of Animal Farm. It could have used a little more editing (I haven't been making her correct every single thing because she gets overwhelmed so I tried to increase the expectations over time) but I don't think it's terrible. She generally tries to keep any writing assignment as short as possible so there's not a whole lot of detail. She's quite a bit more detailed in oral narrations.Mollie was acting strange. She complained about aches and pains, but her appetite was excellent. Then one of the pigs thought he saw her letting a person pet her. She denied it though. The next day, however, she disappeared and was seen by some pigeons happily living with some humans. In her bedding they discovered some sugar and ribbons she had hidden there. Sadly, Molly had missed her human life greatly, and she was never seen again.

I am hoping the new house will help a lot. I'm planning on putting her in the main floor bedroom where I can check in on her more frequently and supervise her more closely . Having everyone all together yet with a larger space should help a lot with the school supervision aspect. And if I cut things like Spanish from her schedule, I can spend less time trying to make sure she gets everything done (because there won't be so much to get done) and less/no time checking over and having her correct the things that aren't so important. Then I'll have more time to focus on things like writing. A reward system has been very motivating to her in the past. I do think telling her exactly what needs to be done by what time will be helpful to her. I was trying to give her more control over her schedule and her time this year but clearly that isn't working. Her writing is not as poor as it appeared from that one sample. She is not the greatest writer but she is capable of constructing coherent sentences. This is a written narration from last year on a chapter of Animal Farm. It could have used a little more editing (I haven't been making her correct every single thing because she gets overwhelmed so I tried to increase the expectations over time) but it's not terrible. "Mollie was acting strange. She complained about aches and pains, but her appetite was excellent. Then one of the pigs thought he saw her letting a person pet her. She denied it though. "The next day, however, she disappeared and was seen by some pigeons happily living with some humans. In her bedding they discovered some sugar and ribbons she had hidden there. Sadly, Molly had missed her human life greatly, and she was never seen again."

The suggestions thus far that I think would be helpful and that I can probably actually implement are: Have less subjects/drop some things (starting with Spanish) Have set check-in appointments and let her know she needs to get first however many things done by first appt, etc Have the same schedule every day Look into Physics 101 DVDs Have a reward/incentive set up for finishing her work Minimize transitions Keep the kids separate but within sight (we're moving to a new house next month and I think the new layout will work much better for separating them yet keeping them all relatively close) Get a second laptop Drop the narrating since it's not working and use some other form of feedback instead such as notebooking

I cannot find a place to change it.

The 4th grader clearly has ADHD and he would get absolutely nothing done if a sibling was sitting next to him. I tried having him and the 4th grader work at our dining room table at the beginning of the year. They sat at different sides of the table and the 2nd grader had a partition to keep him from getting distracted (ha ha) and he basically got nothing done until the 2nd grader finished his work. I gave up on that idea. More structure would help but I don't think I can make that happen. I've been trying for literally years to be more structured. I am great at planning it out but largely a failure at implementing it. We have a loose routine of what comes next that I mostly manage to stick to in the mornings, and that's the best I've been able to do. A time blocked schedule is utterly impossible for me to stick to.

I am easily distracted and have a lot of trouble dividing my attention, like with trying to watch multiple kids and focus on something else (though in my case this happened after my health tanked about 5 years ago and I've never fully recovered from that). It is very stressful for me to try to keep multiple kids working and divide my attention between them. Right now I make homeschooling work by dividing it up into chunks of time throughout the day. 4th and 2nd graders do their math in the evening after the younger two are in bed. I need to have DD do her math then also although she and the 4th grader use Teaching Textbooks and we only have one laptop. Maybe she can do other schoolwork then. 4th and 2nd graders do 30ish mins of schoolwork in the morning before breakfast (we tend to eat late, around 9 a.m.). DD is supposed to have about 60 mins before breakfast to do schoolwork but drags everything else out so much that she rarely has that much time. Either she doesn't get up on time, or she gets up and lays in bed and reads instead of getting up and getting moving, or she takes forever to get dressed, or some combination of the three. After breakfast and group morning time the 2nd grader has 30 mins of online reading tutoring, and 2 days a week the 4th grader has online tutoring after he is done (both are dyslexic). I try to work with the K'er during this time. I have not started any sort of reading instruction with him yet and I need to add that in somewhere. The 2nd grader usually only needs me to check his work, supervise any corrections, and help him with memory work after that. The 4th grader mostly needs to be kept on track after that til he finishes which usually doesn't take too long. I check his work and help him with memory work. Then we do a group block subject with everybody but DD (history this term, science the next, grammar the last term). I try to work with DD after that.

She is probably mildly dyslexic. She reads fine but has some problems with spelling. I imagine she could be diagnosed with ADHD but that hasn't been pursued. She has always worked largely independently, between the A.C.E. school she started in and the curriculum I've chosen for hs'ing as I've never been able to do a lot of one-on-one with her. Just seems like things get worse and worse as she gets older.

My 7th grader is struggling this year to get her schoolwork done. She does NOT have a heavy load by any means. She is doing Teaching Textbooks 7, a state history study, a very light intro to physics, Mapping the World with Art, literature, Getting Started with Spanish, writing, daily Bible memory work, typing, and a couple of one-day-a-week electives. Not all of her subjects are assigned every day. I figured this should take her around 3.5 hours if she works at a steady and reasonable-for-her-pace. We do around 20 minutes of morning time as a family also. The problem is that her schoolwork is not getting done, or it takes her for.e.v.e.r. I've already tweaked her science to make it lighter as she hated what we started with and balked and balked at it. I've just scrapped the writing program we started with (Jump In) for IEW as she apparently needs something very, very incremental. She's having trouble with Getting Started with Spanish. Some of the little things are just not getting done though it varies from day to day and week to week...last week it was Bible memory work. This week it's Spanish. She tends to balk at anything that involves writing more than individual words. She just does not like to write, does not like to search for answers, doesn't like to think or put in effort overall. She has a checklist that stays the same for an entire term (12 weeks), and she'll tell me she's gotten everything done, but when I look through everything or go down the list subject by subject, there's things that aren't actually finished. She is NOT a self-motivated or persistant child. If something's difficult she will give up or balk at it endlessly. She's a relatively compliant child overall but very spacey. She would much rather give up or try to get me to give her the answers rather than problem-solve (this applies to anything, not just school...choosing a size of Pyrex container to put leftover food in, for instance). Part of the problem is that I am not checking her work every day. I try to check it all at least every other day. Part of the reason I don't get it checked every day is because when I am ready to check it, she still has a lot of it undone, and then she goofs off and doesn't get it done and I don't remember to ask after "school time" is over for everyone else. Or I ask and X is not done so I tell her to go do it and realize later, or the next day, that she never got around to doing it. She is also not doing the things she is specifically supposed to do, like come narrate after her state history reading. It's marked right on her checklist for her to narrate, but she "forgets to look at the checklist" or "forgets to do it" or whatever the excuse of the day is and by the time I review her work before lunch, it's been two hours since she read and she claims she can't remember anything. I don't even know what to do about that. I just don't know where to go with this. I try to give her a little grace because of all the horror stories I've heard about puberty stealing middle schooler's brains, but this has been going on for at least two years so I'm not sure I can continue to chalk it all up to puberty. She has never been self-motivated, persistant, or a problem-solver. I can't hold her hand through her schoolwork all day as I have 5 younger children to manage, including a 4 month old who wakes a lot at night, and there is only so much of me to go around. She can't focus when there's noise or lots of activity around her anyway so it doesn't work for her to do her schoolwork in the same area as everyone else. How do we make it through this year? Should she drop something (and what?)?

What programs have you successfully used to teach a dyslexic child (12 YO) a foreign language? DD is doing Spanish this year with Getting Started with Spanish which is very incremental (one new word or concept per day), but she is getting overwhelmed and not remembering stuff from day to day. I don't know if she needs something easier, or more colorful, or more auditory based, or ...??

She is probably mildly dyslexic. She is capable of better writing than that but she's definitely not a great writer. I normally have her read her sentences out loud to me when we edit and she would catch a lot of the grammatical errors that way. She does seem to be somewhat anxious at times so that may be a factor. I would not say she's a perfectionist at all. She doesn't do a great job of written narrations either but they're better than this paper. I had her do writing on a subject of her choice once a week last year and she definitely preferred that and did somewhat better at it.

I think I just don't have a desire for a granite, tile, etc. I'm practical and often overwhelmed and while I like things to look nice, I will pretty much always choose simplicity and comfort over "looks nice but more hassle" (I have never once worn high heels. I don't wear makeup. I have never had a hairstyle that required more than about 8 minutes of styling.) Also, the house makes me think of DH's parents' houses, which are very elegant and upstyle and nice, but not at all what I would choose. And I like to be happy with the way something looks (though whether it's in style means nothing to me), and there's a lot of "looks" about this house I'm not thrilled with that aren't really changeable or aren't easily changed. The wallpaper, partial wood paneling in every bedroom and throughout the basement, dark countertops, a dark backsplash in the kitchen (super nice, but I'd never choose it...it's like small dark polished stones so not changeable without ripping out and redoing). DH was quite frustrated with me when we were searching for our current minivan as I wouldn't consider anything with a tan interior because I don't like tan and it would always bother me. We haven't had a schoolroom because of no space for one. Not sure if one is really practical because of our combination of noisy and active littles and very easily distracted kids. The bonus room would be ideal for one though. The main area could be a playroom plus have a desk, maybe even one built into one of the many closets, and the area with a half wall and built in desk would hold most of our books on the built in shelves and the two less-distractible kids could work there.

Apparently the counters are granite and not marble.

We put in an offer so we'll see what happens. I won't be broken-hearted if we don't get it. I hope I don't regret it if we buy it. I'm not sure why I feel so ambivalent about it. I think I wanted a house I love and I don't love this one but hopefully it will grow on me. DH doesn't want to buy the other one in any case so if this one doesn't work out we'll have to wait for something else to come on the market.

Yeah...it would bother me. Almost every house we looked at in this price range had either marble countertops or tile floors, or both, so there's a good chance we'd end up with them no matter what house we choose.