So, I must also be a mean wife, because I get frustrated a lot because of this exact thing! I feel like small talk should not require a dissertation from me. Like, I'm just trying to have a normal conversation and instead of just replying in kind, I have a million questions and all sorts of (in my mind) ridiculous misunderstandings and I am just like "Oh good lord, forget I said anything!" And maybe I was ambiguous with a pronoun...but also..maybe...he could just let me tell him about my day without me having to provide a powerpoint presentation with footnotes about all the possible ways my day could have also gone. We have a whiteboard in our dining room and I am often having to literally diagram what I am talking about. He's also very visual. And it's about the craziest stuff. So, I totally understand your frustration. What great news that the appraisal came out in favor of your parents as they try to sell their house. I hope that made their afternoon even if sharing that news caused such frustration for your afternoon :D

Thank you everyone! I am releasing the guilt and am going to focus on fun & family (and painting) for a fresh start in September :D

For my sanity, please JAWM :D We have about 3 weeks of school left for this year. I need August off in order to plan for next year. My sister, her 4 year old twin boys and her 1 year old son are coming to visit all next week. My husband needs a break from work so is taking a week of vacation the last week of July. I am redoing the main entrance room for my house. So, I have paint materials, books, furniture and rugs all over the place while that's being done. My 7 year old broke her finger (while sitting on the couch..not because of the disarray of my house) and is in a splinted cast for 2 weeks. So....it's totally ok to call this year done, right? And just plan on taking fewer scheduled breaks next year because the unscheduled ones will take up all our time??

For me, I have a blog to review the books I've read and that is a good place to log them. For the kids, I only track what we get from the library. I have a notebook and I just write the date and the title of the book before I put it in the library tote to be returned. It takes 2 seconds.

This is the worst time to give up! You are so close to having everything sorted and put away and then maintaining should be fairly simple. Or, if nothing else, you could be like my DH, and as soon as we organize a space NOTHING is ever allowed to be bought for that space for all eternity, lol! The end is in sight!!

I say go with it :) If she isn't rushing the work, I see no reason to only do one lesson a day when she is clearly motivated to do more. Enjoy your early reward with her and spend the rest of the year reading some good books together in place of phonics :D

The best curriculum is the one that gets done. Say that over and over and over again to yourself if you start thinking of buying everything in advance, lol! I can personally attest that the "bought, paid for and sitting on my shelf" curriculum is not necessarily the one that gets done. And since it's such a specific problem in such a specific situation, I'd let go of worrying about this completely.

I know of so many similar situations. My parents were the legal guardians of a teen girl they knew from church when I was really little. She was only with them from 16-18 and she still had quite a bit of contact with her parents. She has never gotten her life together. My parents don't understand at all when they tried to do so much for her. I keep reminding them that the reason they went to court to get guardianship of her was because she tried to kill herself. Because she had an abortion. Because the child was either her dad's, her brother's, or one of her dad's friends as he had a habit of passing her around. How do you "get over" that? So, sadly, I understand where you are coming from. And it breaks my heart.

I have a super simple system. I take a notebook and write the month and year at the top of a page. On the first line I write "Books Read". On the second page I write the same month and year on the top of the page and "Places Been" on the first line. I do this every month by writing the books we read in the notebook before I put them in the library bag to return to the library. Then, I look at my calendar at the end of every month and write down lessons, social events, family gatherings, therapies, etc. Then I assign a subject to each event and the time spent. When the notebook runs out of paper I write the months and years on the cover and store it in the rubbermaid bin in our basement. I also have a 3 ring notebook for each kid and a 3 ring hole punch. After tests, big writing assignments or anything else I want to keep, I have the kids put it in their "portfolio". At the end of the year, I take everything ok, put a rubber band to keep everything together and include a sheet of paper that says "child's name, year". Then I keep it all in a rubbermaid bin in the basement. It takes seconds a day to keep up with and the kids do the hole punching :)

My white sister married a man who is 1/2 Japanese. My family has quite a bit of red-headedness. They always joked that their kids could be ginjas (ginger+ninja). :laugh:

This is one of my favorite party games! The art work is amazingly beautiful. The game play itself is kind of like Apples to Apples. Each player gets a certain number of cards (I think 8?) and take turns being "it". The first player looks at their cards and says an adjective, sings a song, recites a poem, states a feeling...basically anything they want to do to express the art they see. Then every player throws in their card that they think matches that word, song, poem or feeling. You can get points for guessing the correct answer and also for people guessing your card when you aren't "it".

I bribe myself all the time to get stuff done. I think the danger in demotivating kids with the use of rewards is if it surpasses the effort put in. Memorizing multiplication tables is made more fun by competing for the chocolate chips. If you already had the chocolate chips in the house, it's a perfectly acceptable reward for the amount of work put in. In my opinion, when the reward is out of sync with the effort, that is when problems can arise. For instance, memorize your multiplication tables and I'll buy you a car. I think there's a difference between making things fun and enabling entitlement.

I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was 9. I was on meds for a while, but at some point I realized "Oh, this is what I'm supposed to feel like". I was able to be off meds for quite a few years with the help of OCD level habits in order to not forget things. Fast forward many years and my OCD level habits were no longer helping so I went back onto medicine. There's this scene in Limitless that kind of shows what happened when I went back on**: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3Krd0qYwnQ **May be slightly dramatized Medicine has certainly helped me be the best version of myself. So, talk to your doctor if you think it might help you as well.

Also :grouphug: :grouphug: :grouphug:

How old are your other children? I ask only because that will make a big difference in what can be reasonably expected of them spending the majority of time in a hospital waiting room. If you have older kids, I would pare down to math, a library card and some independent craft projects. If you have younger kids, I would expect to need to find alternate child care for the majority of the day. Whether that's a public or private school, or family/friends would depend on what you can expect from your support systems.

I deactivated last night. I found (for myself) the only way I could continue to respect people I see in real life was to not be subjected to their political views boiled down to a meme at 2 am. Haven't missed it at all! Since you need it for a group, maybe uninstall the app from any portable devices and log out instead of deactivate? That way you can log in when you "need" to, but otherwise the temptation isn't quite as strong?

Since your daughter is the one having to navigate the friendship, I would defer to her. I would also encourage her in speaking up about how she expects to be treated by the people in her life. Your daughter cannot (and shouldn't try) to control her new friends' feelings or behavior, but she can absolutely control how much misdirected anger she is willing to tolerate. If both girls decide the friendship is worth saving, they will work it out. Your daughter did nothing wrong. You've offered your condolences and there is really nothing more you can do.

I have a really bright kid who also tests the poorest in Reading Comprehension (which isn't to say he tests badly there, but it is certainly his weakest area!) Some of the things we've tried to help with this are: 1. Let the child listen to the audio book while they are reading along with the physical book. Just reading or just listening would cause his mind to wonder but the combination of both gave him fewer avenues to get distracted. 2. We got a white board and a dry erase marker and I would read aloud to him while he would draw simple pictures to show what happened. This helped him to solidify a little more strongly what was happening and it forced a movie into his head long enough to draw something on the board. 3. Let the child read on a kindle. Sometimes the length of the chapter or the text of the page was overwhelming so we would make the print extra large on the kindle so it wasn't so daunting. My kid has a lot of different issues happening all at once so depending on which is the most prominent at the moment, we'll bounce between those to see if it helps. That's not to say that some of the time he just isn't putting in the focus he needs to. And we do address that as well, but sometimes changing it up and applying one of the above is (for lack of better word) interesting enough (maybe?) that it gets his brain back in the right gear. YMMV.

We live about 15 minutes from an art museum. We utilize this to the fullest by studying the artist who is on the special exhibit or a regular exhibit once a month. We live about 15 minutes from a pretty active theater. We utilize this to the fullest by going to as many events as we can (at least with my youngest 2, my oldest can't handle theaters of any kind). We subscribe to Wired magazine. We utilize this to the fullest by taking an article a week and diving into it as much as possible for geography, music, literature, technology, etc. For the kids science, I try to make sure I include "Science in the News" every week so that all the sciences are seen as fluid and changing. We also get great debates when we talk about quantum computers, creating life on Titan because of the methane cycle or whether or not DNA sequences should be able to be patented. My point is that whatever is around you and grabs your interest, THAT'S where the excitement is. Your mileage may vary, but no matter where you are, opportunities abound to really dig deep in philosophy, art, music, etc.

I don't have any BTDT yet, but my son is starting Connections Academy in the fall. In our state, dual enrollment starts in 7th grade. But, homeschoolers get zero funding. He was accepted to the college, but we would have to pay 100% because you can't fill out a FAFSA for scholarships, grants or even loans until you have a legit "incoming freshman" (ie graduated from high school). So...off to Connections we go. So far I've been impressed with the organization of the school. They've been great at getting back with me even in the summer, have had the application process spelled out and have been timely with sending the materials and setting up the classes. His first day isn't until Aug 29 but I can report back later. Who knows, we may do it for 2 weeks, decide it's not for us and instead wait until he's a legit incoming freshman before pursuing college credit, but the free college credits is just too tempting right now with how expensive college is that we thought it was worth at least giving it a try!! Now, if only my state would fund homeschoolers post-secondary options the same as those who are in public school and I'd be tickled pink!

Lori, I didn't want to re-quote your whole post, but I did want to thank you profusely for all the time, thought and help you provided with it. That was exactly what I was looking for, but thought I'd have to put it in that type of format through multiple posts, lol! Thank you again so much!!

This. This is ultimately what makes me want to pursue this path. It might be the "thing" that really gets him excited about his future. ASD/ADHD are problems when it comes to what I want him to be doing. They are not all problems when it comes to what HE wants to be doing. Or what he sees value in. The only college classes he would have the first semester would be Freshman Seminar & Advanced Reading (a remedial class). I really think those 2 classes will be well within his capabilities and will be a good gauge on what the second semester would be like.

He's been doing Khan Academy & Coursera classes online for years. He's also very intuitive with math. It's also in-line with how he tests on his annual assessment where he has college-level scores for everything but reading. ENG 101 is not a class he would be taking for this degree program.

I do appreciate all the advice. You all have certainly given me some things to think about. We don't have a lot of homeschoolers in my area after age 9, so that has hindered some of the group class opportunities. Lots to think about.

He tested into Composition I & College Algebra. He needs to take the remedial reading class-Advanced Reading.