I don't think all people have a clear genetic predisposition toward certain medical conditions, so they've probably never been in the position of having to make that decision. If you come from generations of healthy family, it may not be on your radar to even think about something like that. I have a family history of blood clots so I have always avoided anything that would raise my risk further (hormonal birth control, smoking, etc). My husband is terrified of dementia and is always following whatever the current advice is for avoiding it. I've always found that very interesting and funny. I've never worried about dementia at all, but I have no family history. Everyone in my family has lived independently (& have been sharp as a tack) until dying at 90+, except for the few that cancer got. I do feel concern about cancer, and I consider that in making lifestyle choices.

With my highly verbal child, I used less curriculum than I have with my other children. She never used a spelling curriculum or a structured writing program or a literature program. Mostly I let her read and write and pursue her interests. Occasionally, I would give book suggestions or help her find resources or read over her writing, but mostly I stayed out of her way. When she was little, she went through a period where she made daily newspapers for dh, then she moved into a period where she was intensely prepping for Scripps spelling bee, and then she finally moved into serious creative writing. Summer writing workshops introduced her to a number of college-level resources that wouldn't have been on my radar for a middle schooler at that time. At this point she is studying two foreign languages, but most of her focus is on literature and creative writing. She has also won a number of writing contests, and that has been a huge confidence builder for her. The programs that we did use and like were the first 3 levels of MCT (while skipping most of the writing assignments), Killgallon, and Figuratively Speaking.

After Singapore, we used Lial's Pre-Algebra, Foerster Algebra, and Jurgensen Geometry. Lial's is super-easy to teach; it's set up really well. The Foerster and Jurgensen texts both assume there's a knowledgeable teacher to help teach and explain, but there are also lots of videos and supports for the books if your own skills are a little rusty. If you're really feeling like you aren't up to teaching upper-level math, then you might want to consider outsourcing math to an outside teacher or an online class. Unless your child is extremely talented in math, he will need a teacher. Very few kids can self-teach higher level math.

I think that's a really interesting question. I had a really fortunate schooling experience myself where I was bused to a self-enclosed gifted classroom for grades 2-6. Our class was being used to test out reader and writers workshop when they were first being developed. The basis of the approach was that children choose their own books and writing projects. Combine that with no homework, Singapore-style math with manipulatives, a project approach to history & science, and more than an hour of daily recess. None of us had any trouble transitioning to a more traditional junior high approach in 7th grade with class periods and homework, but our junior high still had an hour of daily recess! All of those kids I came through the program with wound up at good universities (most on academic scholarships), but we were all bright to begin with. I think it makes sense to have a very gradual transition from a play-based environment in K (and even 1st & 2nd) to more formal lessons. The research is all there to support having more recess and less homework in elementary school, but schools are under a massive amount of pressure to produce high test scores right now. So everything gets pushed down to younger grades even when common-sense and research tell us that isn't a good idea. I would love to see play-based instruction and self-directed learning make a comeback in elementary school.

This. Dh and I both had parents that wouldn't help (refused to even fill out the FAFSA). I was able to fully fund my college, because I had an academic scholarship and was able to earn enough to cover my living expenses by working full-time in the summer and part-time during the school year. I don't think that would be possible today since living expenses have gone way up. Dh got through with a combination of choosing a lower-tier (cheaper) school, loans (once we got married & he could complete the FAFSA w/out his parents' info), and working full-time. It was rough, and dh was 29 with six-figure debt by the time he finished grad school. My lack of family support was understandable, because I grew up poor and was a first-gen student. But I still feel bitter about the way dh's parents treated him. Nobody owes their child a college education, but I don't have much respect for parents with advanced degrees and plenty of $$$ who refuse to even fill out the FAFSA for their kid. FIL put himself through school by working (back in the 60's), so he thought his son should be able to just go out and get a job that would pay for everything. But trying to put yourself through college in the 90's wasn't the same as washing dishes to pay your tuition in the 60's. And paying for college today is nothing like paying for college in the 90's. The barriers for first-gen students and kids without parental support are huge. I strongly believe that in today's world, parents need to do everything possible to help their children. For some families without $$$ to spend, that could mean just filling out the Fafsa and helping their kids to research colleges & scholarship opportunities. For other families, it could mean providing a place to live while their kids commute to cc or to a local university or paying for incidentals like travel, cell phones, med insurance, etc. For families with the $$$, it can mean paying part of the tuition or even paying all expenses. Dh and I weren't able to save early on, because we spent so many years paying off dh's student loans. But we will do everything we can to reduce that burden for our own children.

Seatwork: PK-K: 20-30 min 1-3: 1.5-2 hrs 4-5: 2.5-3 hrs 5-8: 4-5 hrs Currently I have 5 kids homeschooling, and I spend 8-11 am actively involved in teaching before taking a break (for me) to take littler kids to the park. I check and discuss work with older kids at noon and again at 3 pm (before & after the littler kids have silent reading). So I'm spending about 4 solid hrs interacting with the kids plus another 2 hrs where the older kids are working while I supervise.

Not always a popular opinion, but we chose to do nothing. Dd hit that growth spurt, and her mouth - which had seemed too small for her teeth - grew bigger and wider. The teeth that were coming in overlapping all magically straightened out. The canines that were coming sideways out of her gums slowly came down into the correct position over the course of 3-4 years. We didn't take her back in to get orthodontic evaluations until she was done growing and all her permanent teeth were in at 13.5 yrs. At that point there was no comment about a small mouth. We were told that her bite and back teeth were perfect and she just needed a short course of treatment (9-12 mo) for a few cosmetic issues with her front teeth (bottom front teeth were slightly crooked). We chose to wait with younger ds as well. And we can already see (at 12) how much his jaw has widened and his teeth (which overlapped in a crazy way) have almost completely straightened out. He still hasn't hit his big growth spurt so we will probably be waiting another year or two before we take him back in to get evaluations and estimates. But his teeth and bite look so good already. It's amazing what a difference a few years make. But every dentist and orthodontist I have ever seen swears to me that this never happens and that you have to intervene early. Maybe it's our family genetics, but I'm so glad I didn't pay all that money to put my kids through unnecessary treatments. I'm always on the side of waiting to see what happens as a kid grows versus the kind of aggressive intervening you describe in option number 1. And you spend way too much time at the orthodontist to deal with an office that is unresponsive like option number 3. In your place, I would lean toward option 2. I like that she sounded flexible and acknowledged that she can't perfectly predict what will happen as your daughter grows.

:grouphug: :grouphug: Could you have a flower arrangement delivered directly to the funeral home? I've seen lots of funeral arrangements where the card has a message or tribute written directly to the deceased. A gesture like that might help your husband feel better without having to actually interact with the family or attend the service.

I think what I'm struggling with here is a mindset where the wealthy, educated parent carefully plans out a way to teach their teen/young adult about hard work and responsibility. There's a huge loss when the kid doesn't ever have the experience of figuring out what they would like to do and then setting a plan in motion on their own. I think there's a huge loss when they don't have the experience of working with other people outside their own family and social circle. And that doesn't have to be paid work, but the experience of actually filling out an application and working for pay is a great experience. Kudos for learning to work with your hands and for wanting your kids to "earn" in some way, but fixing up BMW's in the garage will never be the same as working an 8-6 job at an actual auto-body shop. I fear that it would give young people the impression that they know what it's like to work a blue-collar job or to be working class. As someone from a lower-class background, it feels like rich kids playing at being poor. Though I freely acknowledge that my view is highly colored by the fact that I know a real family who really did this, and it did not encourage their kids to appreciate working with their hands or the efforts of working-class people.

This still comes from such a privileged mindset. The parent must have the money to purchase the house, the skills & tools & time & money to work with the teen to remodel the house, and live in an economically viable enough area to actually make money by the time you flip it. I knew a guy who made money in high school and college by fixing up BMW's. As in, his rich-lawyer daddy would buy an older BMW, and then teen son would use daddy's tools in daddy's ginormous garage at the family mansion to fix the cars up before reselling them to other wealthy people in their wealthy community. And the son patted himself on the back for working so hard to pay his own living expenses through college. And rich daddy patted himself on the back for teaching his son hard work and car-building skills. He probably said more stupid, clueless, judgmental things about "poor" people (ahem, middle-class working families) than anyone I have ever known. And my question is why? Why would any college-bound teen need to learn "a ton of hands-on construction skills" or the skills to rebuild old muscle cars or the skills to build their own computer. Why? Some teens may have a special interest in that area and that's wonderful, but why would you make your kids do that? If you have the money to buy an extra house or a BMW, put that money in a college account to earn interest and use your upper-class connections to find your kid a real job working with someone besides daddy. Or, better yet, your kid could go out and find a job all by themselves at the local fast food restaurant or delivering pizzas or mopping the floor at Wal-mart. Because I don't think this idea of fixing cars or fixing houses is helping privileged kids develop the kind of character skills their parents think. Maybe if they got a job at an actual auto-body shop or a real construction site and met some real working-class people. But what's being described here? I really don't see it.

It was much easier for me as a first gen-student without support to accept a scholarship to an out-of-state college where I lived in the dorms than it would have been to try to go to community college "to save money" and then transfer. I always cringe a little when I hear people suggest that comm college is always a better & cheaper option, because it assumes a middle class upbringing where kids have access to some sort of transportation to get back and forth to the community college. I was very, very fortunate to have an academic scholarship and would probably have ended up in the military otherwise. Transportation is huge. Although times are a bit different now. Back in the day, I applied for a bunch of credit cards the moment I turned 18 so then I could buy my own plane tickets. I'm not sure how an 18-yr-old attending an out-of-state college would manage that sort of thing nowadays without parental support. I used to always laugh when middle-class kids would solemnly tell me that they were paying for college themselves when I knew that their parents were buying their plane tickets home and that they drove a car their parents had given them (& were paying the insurance on!). People can have some serious blind spots.

Yes, I was imagining that they lived in an upper-class district like we do. Years ago a woman told me very proudly that she and her siblings all had a wonderful public school education, because her parents made education a priority and always chose to buy a home in the best school district. I pointed out that not everybody can afford to buy a home in the wealthiest neighborhoods, and she seemed surprised. Apparently it had never occurred to her that she had grown up with the privilege of having parents with enough wealth/income to always buy a home in whichever neighborhood they wished. I guess she thought all those poor people wanted to live in dangerous neighborhoods with failing schools?! It's very easy to be completely unaware of your privilege.

As a child, I had allergic reactions whenever I wore metal jewelry. I was told that it was my imagination, so I just quietly stopped wearing any kind of jewelry. Then I got my ears pierced when I was about 8 or 9. I had an immediate, strong allergic reaction. But I was berated and told that it was my fault, because I must not be caring for my ears properly. It was only when one ear swelled so badly that it swallowed the earring completely that I was taken to the doctor. He took one look and said, "Looks like you have a metal allergy," and then whipped out his scalpel to cut the earring out my ear. I'm still waiting on an admission that I was allergic not lazy. I got the same arrogant vibe off the article as many of you. I'm guessing this guy passed his non-allergic, engineer genes on to his neuro-typical children. I feel sorry for the first kid who produces a disabled or otherwise less-than-perfect grandchild. It's fine to share your personal experiences, but sometimes a little humility goes a long way.

Our local high school has all club meetings during lunch and all sports/band/dance/drama rehearsals immediately after school from 2:30-4:30. The school runs several "activity" buses at 4:30 for kids to ride home. Some sports do have evening games, but there are plenty of sports with only Sat games. Even the drama program is only allowed to have evening rehearsals during the week of the performance. It seems like most of the big families I know are steering their kids into cross-country and choir. They seem to be the least demanding activities in terms of time and money. So it's absolutely possible here for a big family to have every kid in a sport, art, & club without anyone ever missing dinner at 5:30 or the parents ever having to drive or carpool.

Here's what we did: -We read through Grammar Town over the course of about a month. -Then we spent several weeks doing just Practice Town - one sentence a day - until they got the hang of analyzing the sentences. -Then we added in Caesar's English. We continued to do a sentence a day from Practice Town and also worked through about one lesson of CE each week. -When we were done with CE, we started Paragraph Town while continuing to do one sentence a day from Practice Town. -When we were done with Paragraph Town, we started Building Poems. Around the time we started BP, we finished Practice Town so we finished out the year with just poetry.

We were in a similar situation and wound up going with MCT. I think we used it a little behind the recommended ages: Island in 4th, Town in 5th, & Voyage in 6th. MCT was a very good match for my kids who love to read and write and all seem to have an intuitive ability to write grammatically. We did some creative writing beyond MCT and followed our own literature lists, but MCT was a very solid foundation for foreign lang study and for more advanced writing instruction.

What caused the shortfall? In most states, an individual school district does not have the power to shut down charter schools and force those students to attend their local, public schools. Charter schools usually fall under the authority of the state board of education. In our state, only the state board can shut down charter schools, and I can't imagine a situation where they would shut down charters due to a shortfall in just one district. I would guess the charter talk is just people complaining and shifting blame. It's easier to blame those charters taking money away from the local district than it is to accept responsibility for mismanaging your funds. I don't think we can really talk about solutions without knowing what caused the shortfall. I would be curious to know why your district has such poor, underfunded schools while surrounding school districts are doing better.

At that age, I would mark them wrong and have my kids fix all the problems. If it was an ongoing problem, I would give a verbal reminder beforehand, "Don't forget to write in the units!" I didn't start recording test scores until Algebra. At that point if they had the correct answer but forgot to write the unit of measure, I would mark off several points.

I've only had this happen to me at our State Fair, but it seems to happen every single year at the fair - sometimes multiple times. It's usually older people with a rural accent, but I always have people give my kids money and ride tickets. Once an elderly lady who was selling handmade sock monkeys and other animals chased us down to give my daughter a little sock kitty dd had been looking at as we walked past. Then she insisted on giving each kid a dollar. She said she'd grown up in a big family and remembered coming to the state fair with her siblings when she was a little girl. Very, very sweet. I can just imagine her parents in the 30's giving each kid a nickel and telling them not to spend it all in one place. I always assumed it was a rural culture thing. Most of the people comment about how they grew up in a big family or how they raised a big family, and they always comment on my kids being well-behaved. I think there's a lot of nostalgia there. I tend to be a giver. I give money to homeless people, especially folks hanging out in the homeless friendly sections of downtown near the big bus station or near the shelters. We have also given money anonymously to people we know who are in crisis or have a financial need. But I can't imagine just walking up to a random person in Walmart and giving them cash; that would be a little out of my comfort zone in terms of socially appropriate behavior. I just wouldn't want to offend anyone by making assumptions about their personal situation.

We have always (loosely) followed the public school schedule. All of the kids' activities follow the school schedule so it just makes life easier. We don't take all the half-days and random holidays that the the schools take. Instead we take a full week off at Thanksgiving, two full weeks at Christmas, and longer breaks whenever we're sick or want to take a vacation. I like having a schedule for our year. It gives us all a break to look forward to, and I can schedule appointments and stuff for a time when it won't mess up our whole homeschooling day.

I am generally a huge advocate of placing kids in their correct grade - which in your case would be preschool since he misses the cut-off. However, I wanted to address this: I have a little guy who is super intelligent and has always been several grade levels ahead of his peers academically. But he is socially immature for his age and has been slow to develop executive function and self-control. It's nothing out of the range of normal for little boys his age, but there is a glaring gap between his maturity and his academic level. Anyway, we had a situation at our church where he was placed in the higher Sunday school class due to a lack of children his age. I was strongly opposed to the placement, but wasn't really given a say. It was a disaster - a huge ongoing disaster. He was surrounded by kids who were a year or more older than him, and he seemed to be glaringly lacking in self-control when you saw him surrounded by older, more mature children. The teachers would get frustrated with him for completely age-appropriate behaviors, and he became more and more alienated from the other children over time. He had no friends. We finally got the situation fixed so that he was with kids his own age, and it was like a miraculous change happened overnight. He was exactly the same kid with exactly the same amount of self-control, but he no longer stood out. All the same-age kids were pretty close to his maturity level, and the new teachers gave the amount of guidance and support that kids that age need. He started to have positive peer interactions and make friends. Kids do not magically learn self-control or pro-social behavior by being around older kids. It is developmental. I have seen early-kindergarten entry and grade-skipping work out very positively for kids who are both academically advanced and have strong executive function and self-control. But I would think very carefully before moving forward with early-kindergarten entry for a little boy who is a spirited handful.

In my experience an intermediate tween really needs to move up to a 45 min or 1 hr lesson. The shorter 30 min lessons are fine for beginners, but intermediate and advanced students genuinely need a longer lesson to work through their material. I have a teenage daughter who is an advanced pianist, but it is not her main activity. She plays another instrument that takes up huge amounts of time. When she hit that point as a tween where she needed to move to a longer piano lesson time, she switched to only having lessons every other week. So she moved from a 30 min lesson each week to a 60 min lesson every other week. It took a huge load off for her. She was really needing the longer lesson length, but the weekly lessons were creating a lot of pressure for her - more than I realized at the time - to master new material quickly. A longer lesson every other week has been the perfect solution.

I was very poor growing up. The only reason I was ever able to go on vacations or to shows or to eat at restaurants or a million other middle-class things was because friends or extended family invited me along and paid my way. I never felt pitied or like I was an object lesson. Those families loved me and enjoyed having me along. So my natural prejudice is that an invitation is positive, and I wouldn't want my kids to miss out. However, when my oldest daughter was about 9 or 10, she became *best friends* with a little girl A whose family always had to have friends along for their kids. I was happy for dd to have a best friend that she really connected with, and I sent dd along without a thought. But they issued a lot of invitations and dd wound up saying no a lot, because dd had a life and activities of her own. She couldn't just move into their home for days on end. Then a new little girl B moved into the neighborhood, and dd was dropped unceremoniously for this new girl. The new girl was poorer. She had no activities of her own. Her family couldn't afford to take her on vacation. This family swooped her up and made her their daughter A's new best friend. She spent endless days at their home, tagging along to everything from family vacations to every.single.soccer.practice. that girl A had. My daughter was crushed, but chose to step back from both girls. At first I thought it was a tween friend dynamic, just one of those unfortunate things. And probably there had always been a gap in family culture between our two families since we don't feel that our kids need to be with their friends constantly. But as time went by and I watched the intense friendship between girl A and girl B, it became obvious that this family had never really wanted a friend for their daughter A. They had wanted a constant companion at her beck and call. And they did not care that the friendship and the whole world revolved around their own precious daughter. Anyone should feel privileged to stay at their house for days on end, tagging along to A's soccer practices and acting as an appendage to her life. They did not care what the friend gave up or what the other family lost. It was pure selfishness. A few years later, the family moved and dropped the friendship with girl B flat. They made no effort to maintain contact. Out of sight, out of mind. And girl B was crushed. So, I think that everyone is sort of talking past each other here. There can be situations where one family invites a child along, because they truly enjoy the child, and the relationship is healthy and reciprocal. But there can also be situations where one family selfishly pulls a child in with no thought at all for the child or for the other family. I don't know which it is here, but I do see some red-flags in what Quill has described. And I wouldn't let my 12-yr-old go on an international trip with non-relatives regardless of the dynamics in the relationship.

Apparently I'm elite. As someone who grew up very poor and lower-class (from many generations of poverty), I find that hilarious. I was the first person in my family to attend college; my mother was the first generation to graduate from high school. Does that mean the states have more social mobility or that the markers they're using to judge social class rely too much on your current situation versus your background? I know I did a different (and much more thorough) American survey a while back that marked me correctly as coming from a lower-class background. That one had very specific questions about the size of the town where you grew up, parental education and income (of your parents when you were a child), types of restaurants you frequent, movies and shows you watch, etc. I do think of myself as having a foot in both worlds (very lower-class & the new American elite) since I've spent a significant portion of my life living in each world.

This. Wasn't the song written in the 40's?