[Unhappy with Barton?]

I love Barton, it's been a lifesaver for DD13. I'd recommend it in a heartbeat for any dyslexic or even just extremely struggling reader.

 

But here are some negatives I've found thus far (we're on Level 4)

 

1. As someone said above Level 1 looks very short and light for the price and that could have been alarming if I wasn't prepared for it and already desperate enough to try anything :) So be forewarned, it's good stuff and necessary but it does look too small at first. The rest of the levels are very different.

 

2. The exclusivity of some of the materials. Like needing to buy a legit copy and the regulation on who can buy tiles (only if you've bought a legit copy of that one Barton level), etc. Kinda annoying.

 

3. The videos are DULL! Like I take a week or more to watch them because I either fall asleep or just get bored and want to gouge my eyeballs out so I turn it off and do something more interesting....like laundry ;) I suggest multi-tasking while watching them if you are not dyslexic yourself. 

 

4. The pace of Level 3 is a bit slow and it starts to wear on tutor and student. My DH's aunt has used Barton and she has also had the experience of Level 3 kinda being a slog to get through. I'm excited to get into Level 4 and more meaty things. 

 

I would never recommend the full Barton program for a non-dyslexic and honestly it goes too slow for many 2E dyslexics who are highly gifted. A faster program like Wilson or Bowman or AAR would be better for a 2E student because they cover all the bases but move faster and are more flexible with pacing. 

 

But for a moderate-severely dyslexic child, or a child who has a lower IQ Barton is magic. It's gotten through to my daughter when no other program the schools or I tried did, even with her language deficiencies because of being HOH and ESL. It's extremely thorough and rigorous but Susan Barton really focuses on and models a positive and gentle attitude throughout the tutoring which is a good morale booster for a student who is accustomed to failing at reading. 

[If you've brought caterpillars inside to watch them grow/pupate...]

Keep fresh parsley or dill in there and a sturdy stick for thr chrysalis and they'll do fine.

We caught a black swallowtail caterpillar on our parsley last August and apparently they sometimes winter over in their chrysalis, which ours did! We kept her on our porch in a safe corner and even being knocked over twice she emerged 1 week ago! We let her fly off after a couple brief pics and pointing out her colors to the kids, it was a neat experience!

[Georgia mom arrested for her child going over the unexcused absence limit.]

I would just like to point something out

 

these were UNexcused absences.  not excused.  it's easy to do an excused absence.  call the school, say my kid is sick, and viola you're done.   while I do think arresting her was over the top, it's not like she bothered to call the school.

 

This is fair, but I know around here they are very strict about what is considered an excused absence. Taking my daughter to visit her birth family (who are VERY hard to coordinate with and live 4+ hours away) would not be considered excused. A death and funeral in the family out of town is not excused. An educational family trip to Spain would not be excused. Basically only sickness and a death in the immediate family (parent or sibling of the student) is excused. 

 

I was once threatened with truancy if I had too many unexcused tardies for my daughter. This was because she was 1 minute late twice. The day in question it was pouring rain and I had 3 little kids and DD, who was new to our home by just 2 months, and clearly flustered. I refused to let the secretary make me lie in front of the kids and put down "car troubles" instead of the truth. I said "no, I'm not going to lie just to make it excused, I didn't have car troubles. I'm sorry time got away from us and we are just plain late. What's really going to happen if you put unexcused?" and laughed. She responded "well, if there's too many we'd have to call the police and truancy." Oy! Crazy Nazi secretary! 

[Am I turning into a helicopter parent?!?]

 

 

I just don't get why the school says they can't move the book series to an older classroom, which the book series is obviously meant for. Nobody seems to be arguing that the book is meant for 2nd or 3rd graders. They just are saying that the district has implemented the American Reading Company book program and they can't do *anything* about that. As if I was asking them to get rid of the program altogether. The way they were talking is as if if "Fifty Shades of Grey" were written at a 3rd grade level (which according to some reviews I've read, it about is), they'd put it in the 3rd grade-level bins inside a 2nd grade classroom. I don't get it.

 

And I know B&M school isn't for me. I knew that before I got pregnant. The only reason C ever ended up in a B&M school was because he was massively speech delayed at the same time that we were extremely poor, my wife was unemployed and unmedicated bipolar, and I was pregnant with B. And after that, C actually liked school. I'm pulling him out next year though. I'm just not used to seeing myself as helicopter-ish... we're not parenting them in a G-rated (or PG-rated) way.

 

The rigidness is part and parcel of B&M schools honestly, particularly any public school. Basically in order to educate so many students they need to be efficient, this is not the one-room schoolhouse with 1 teacher and 40 students where the teacher can decide what to keep in the classroom and change details easily. This is a large top-down school system where teachers must teach the approved curriculum that the school purchases for them and trains them in. To remove one book seems like no big deal to us as parents but for them they get this panicked mindset of "if we removed every book one parent didn't like we'd have no books!" There's also the fact that *just* moving the book to the middle school is way outside the principals' jurisdiction. He cannot do ANYTHING at a school not his own, not even share materials because then he'd have to record where the book went and why and the middle school principal would not want it because they likely use a whole different leveled reader program, etc. Even moving it to a higher grade classroom at the same school has the same problem, he'd have to keep track of why one of these classroom readers was missing and where it went and why and he'd need to convince the 5th or 6th grade teacher to take the book when he/she might not have a good reason to even have it around. 

 

This is one major reason my kids don't go to B&M, it'd drive me nuts dealing with the drivel and fluff they would be encouraged and required to read. It's like the cafeteria version of literature....small samples of tasteless and overdone junk that will technically keep the kid 'fed' but long-term isn't nourishing to them as a whole child. 

 

So I think you just need to alter your mindset for as long as he is in school and try to focus on the advantages. It's hard, especially with a younger child who obviously you're wanting to bring up with a taste for good literature and an appropriate sense of morality about the world. So I understand your concerns but I agree with PP's that the best way to handle it is to have written a brief email to the teacher about the book being more geared towards teens and use it as an opportunity for discussing discernment in reading with your 7 year old. 

[How to do you balance the needs of one with a LD when you have other kids?]

Honestly, for my 6 year old I throw loads good books his way, supervise his math, and call it good. He works independently really a lot and does fine that way. He's a freak of nature though (in a good way): very firstborn, self-motivated, naturally curious, and gifted. Next year for 2nd grade my goal is to spend more time on actual direct instruction in history and science with him. But honestly the kinda unschooly thing we did this year as I remediated DD hasn't turned out badly. He learns tons from books and talked DH into doing a few little experiments with him that he found. He's about finished with 2nd grade math too. I am not an unschooler at all but for this year with this kid it worked.

 

My 4 year old I'll be setting aside 1 hour just for him next year early in the mornings because he wants to read and now knows his letters and sounds. He's very bright but needs more direct instruction because of his age and personality. YDD will probably tag along with our 1 hour preschool time knowing how she is. My hope is to have ODD (the one who has higher needs) do independent morning work and chores during my time with the little ones. Then I can spend a good 2 hours just working with her one-on-one with Barton and Math U See.

[Swelling in Pregnancy?]

I'm dealing with this now too at 29 weeks and it's a pain! It's not very hot here either. My hands have lost feeling in the fingers entirely because I was typing up lesson plans for next year. It returns by morning then numbs again by evening.

 

I like the banana idea, that sounds easy :) i've got no other advice, my last 2 were born in November so this is new to me!

[S/O of NOOOO-----what foster parents really do, etc]

Thanks for sharing Ottakee! Your experience mirrors ours, though we only fostered for 2 years and had one placement who we adopted. But the system works pretty much the same here in PA. We do the same thing with lots of talk of "healthy and safe" when discussing why she was removed from the birth home and such.

 

I think what stood out to me as a foster/adoptive parent of an older kid was how sheltered they can be! We were expecting over-exposure to street smart things, too much freedom, bad language, movies, etc. but what was shocking was how little of normal everyday things the kids had been exposed to. Never been to a beach, never eaten outside (like a picnic), never been told where babies come from, never had a pet, etc. I always thought of helicopter parents as producing sheltered kids but didn't realize how neglectful homes can often produce sheltered kids too. One foster mom in our group had to teach the 3 school-age boys she had what a tooth brush was for! 

 

We're thinking someday when all the current kiddos are grown or nearly grown we'd like to do straight foster care, maybe for teens primarily. Right now DD's needs plus all the little kids keep us hopping :) We have requested though to be contacted if Ana's birth mom ever has another baby who is removed just so the siblings aren't fractured anymore (she has other birth siblings all in different homes). 

[Anybody else feeling foolish?]

Religion has nothing to do with the reason the Josh Duggar story shocked me.

 

I always found the Duggars to be an unusual family, but they always seemed to be basically nice, pleasant people. The kids seemed happy, healthy, and sweet.

 

That's why I was shocked to learn about Josh. I may disagree with the vast majority of his political and religious views, but I was under the impression that he was a good guy at heart, so I never would have dreamed that he would have done the things he did as a teenager. Never. He always seemed kind of innocent to me when he was younger (in the few episodes of the show I watched.)

 

I know there is no way to tell by looking at a person (or even by knowing them personally in many cases) if they have ever done something awful, but it's still a surprise when you find out about it.

 

:iagree:

 

I feel foolish, absolutely. Like Catwoman I disagreed with several of their political and religious views but I enjoyed watching the show and it was a nice, family-friendly show I felt I could watch with my kids. Another large (though we are not a big family imo, for our area we get called a big family) and homeschooling family was nice to see. I even have the girls' book because I was interested in reading it and I was thinking maybe if it was good (and it was fine except for maybe one chapter that was too fundie) that my DD could read it when she gets a bit older. 

 

I just feel like generally I have a pretty good creep-radar and while Josh seemed to be goofy and awkward like Jim Bob I never ever would have guessed that he had done this. So now I even feel suspicious of my own intuition about other people. Maybe that's a good thing, maybe I was too trusting before. 

 

And this whole event has had me following rabbit trails off of websites I'd previously written off as just hater-sites, like Free Jinger, and questioning each and every blogger/semi-famous family I've ever enjoyed reading about or watching on tv. The Alecia Pennington thing that happened recently plus that dumb Blessed Little Homestead fiasco has also probably fed into my embarrassment. I'd read the Pennington Point blog, just ignored the parenting stuff cause it's mostly not my style but I admit I was drawn in by the pretty pictures and design stuff (if I'm thinking of the right blog). I'd never heard of the BLH people before and given the state of squalor and lack of parenting in their posts I'd not enjoy their blog but what if I had? While obviously one big skeleton in the closet among a family of 21 people shouldn't negate every thing they do (homeschooling, having lots of kids, etc) the fact is that I do think the overall family culture could have fed into Josh's actions and/or the way it was handled. Obviously I'd really like to not be following any advice (parenting, homemaking, or otherwise) that might have contributed to this nonsense. Ugh, it just gives me the creeps to think of our lifestyle overlapping with this at all. 

 

We also get accused of "going for 19 kids" a lot, even though we're Catholic and not ATI people at all and our kids are clearly spaced 2-3 years apart very intentionally. This news story is going to make those comments very awkward for me, even more so than they already were, and I genuinely hope people stop using that as a knee-jerk reaction to big families and go back to "man, you have your hands full". 

[I'm apparently clueless]

Our OT works with teens and adults. I do not know how much formal OT is required for integrating things--my guess is that it has to do with how big the issues are and what they are specifically. A child who needs hard work and is born on a dairy farm is probably going to be set up pretty well! My son would never have had his vestibular issues integrated without therapy. Even the OT had to work at figuring out how to best do it and not actually make it worse. Ditto with sensory-defensiveness. Other stuff was better than it had been when he was younger (gravitational insecurity), but he still has manifestations of this, just not enough to worry about (lots of people don't like to be placed on their back and tipped). It was bad enough when he was little that I would have sought therapy if I knew what it was! If he felt in control though, he would try things to help (like learning to tip back more and more on the swing), and that is how his gravity issue was solved. He wanted to play with his friends on the playground without freaking out, so he kind of worked through some of the more important issues for playgrounds, lol! 

 

I have some sensory issues and fits and starts of anxiety as well, but I think I have other things (like gluten problems) that made it all worse. I had lots and lots of sensory play as a kid, or I would probably be a mess. We still had playgrounds with merry-go-rounds of all kinds when I was a kid, and my dad would make those things spin so hard I thought they'd start flying through the air like a frisbee. :-) We rolled down grassy hills like logs, wrestled, and played for hours in the mud or digging dirt. I also spent HOURS in the pool daily in the summer, and we used to play all kinds of spinning, flipping games, and the deep pressure was great. Same for the swingset--I was always flipping around, jumping off, and swinging from our playset. And jump ropes...lots of deep pressure for hours every week. I hate that my kids don't have good enough coordination to do this well. (As the OT says, if they want to learn it, they can, but unless they are highly motivated, it's not going to be easy for them.) The neighbor had (and we inherited) a spinning thing that four people could sit on (North/South/East/West style), and you pushed and pulled handles with your hands and feet to make it go. It was amazing. I think I could be better integrated, but I don't think the same stuff would've helped my son--he had too many things that were above and beyond a reasonable threshold, and his avoidant issues were sky high (playing catch was difficult because that meant something had to fly at his person in order to be caught). He also needed vision therapy, and I wonder if his eye teaming problems made integrating some things difficult until that was out of the way. 

 

I'm sorry your son has been so anxious, and that you've had an uptick in this as well. It's a total pain all around. :-( I used to feel like I was never in control about stuff like water in my eyes. If I could control it, that helped a lot. Maybe goggles in the shower?

 

Interesting, this has been my theory with SPD as well, that mild-moderate can be greatly helped by old-fashioned play that used to be normal but no longer is. That's part of why we pursued gymnastics...I felt that plus a water bed is why SIL, who is very like T, does not have any sensory issues now.

 

T has goggles and they make showers possible....before goggles baths/showers meant lots of screaming and fighting us every time. It was awful! But he still freaks at the idea of washing his hair because he's still worried about water in his face, he doesn't feel steady enough to lean backwards in the shower to get under the shower spray, and he struggles to use his hands hard enough on his head/hair to actually suds the soap and then to properly rinse it out with his hands and the water. It sounds ridiculously complicated typing it out, lol! But yeah, that's my kiddo :) We did TONS of fine motor and sensory activities (Montessori-ish) as a toddler plus gymnastics but I've slacked off the past 2 years because I kinda felt like he was doing well and no longer needed help but clearly that's not quite the case. So yeah, OP, you're not the only one who feels clueless sometimes! 

[s/o narcissism or just self- centered?]

MIL is like that. She truly believes what she's saying.  My sister (not the one who home schools) has a drug problem, therefore DH's mom thinks that myself and everyone I know must also be drug addicts.  She couldn't be associated with me because my sister had been arrested, what would people think!  Also the fact that i had been divorced made her look bad.  We haven't talked to her(or FIL who does as he's told) in over 10 years.  Just found out that they divorced last year..... I fell down laughing, literally.  DH is working up the nerve to call his dad (and NOT blame him for allowing MIL to do what she's done).  We'll see, the poor man might still be brainwashed, from all reports the divorce wasn't his idea.

 

I'm super impressed at you having no contact with your NPD MIL for 10 years, you're my hero :) 

 

My father acts the same, just does as he's told. I'm just waiting for them to get divorced, my mom has certainly threatened it enough times. I always wonder if when they do divorce he'll come around and see that he was brainwashed, but it's hard to tell. I hope your FIL is able to come out of his brainwashed state and maybe regain a real relationship with his son and family. 

[NOOOOOO!]

I'm beginning to think that the reason they don't have a specific list of things to fix is because CPS is investigating a whole lot more than just the living conditions. So Nicole is just looking at the original complaint, which happened to mention broken glass and an unfenced pond, and she's convinced herself that those are the only issues. So they spent a day cleaning up glass, bought some cheap chicken wire and fenced off part of the pond, and now they're going to sit back and wait for the kids to be returned. Then when they're not returned, she'll scream and yell about how they did everything CPS asked and still didn't get the kids back, and how this proves that Kentucky illegally kidnaps children for money. 

 

I don't think there's a chance in hell that they'll get the kids back without being required to get the kids BCs and SSNs, accept social services to ensure the kids are well fed and have medical care, and get counseling and attend parenting classes. And I seriously doubt they'll be willing to accept those terms. Can you imagine Joe agreeing to go to an anger management class??? I think he'd rather lose the kids.

 

I think her baby's due around September? I'd bet that by then all the GFM money will be gone, she'll be behind on rent & utilities at the grooming salon, they still won't have the kids back, and they'll do a runner rather than risk having CPS take the baby, too.  :sad:

 

I agree, I think that CPS is probably working on the details of what's required to get the kids back and she's just going off of the parts of the original complaint that stand out to her. Honestly given the seriously questionable intelligence of these 2 parents and the cultural craziness they subscribe to I think that while CPS is being as clear as they ever are (and let's be honest, any governmental bureaucracy is going to involve a lot of paperwork with obscure language) that she truly does not understand what is necessary to get those kids back. I mean, *I* have missed things in my daughter's records for months before finding it and my husband and I have 3 degrees between the two of us. They often give badly photocopied reports with tiny font and lots of legalese strewn about. Not sure why but I think CPS is allergic to 12pt. font and good copiers :) lol!

 

Anyway, so I can see how an uneducated birth parent could maybe be confused about the details of what's required. But the thing is the family should also have a social worker by this point who they could easily be asking about this stuff and get a straight checklist answer verbally or through email and I bet they've refused to do so for the same reasons you mention above....then they can claim that the state kidnapped the kids and they are really innocent and did everything that was asked of them. 

 

Btw her baby is due in November, and yeah I really don't think they'll have their stuff together by then either. I also don't think she has any clue (whether from ignorance or denial I don't know) that the baby WILL be taken from her immediately. CPS generally takes babies straight away when the siblings are in care and none of the original problems have been resolved. It's awful and heartbreaking but in the end usually far safer for the baby. I can't even imagine how this home birthing kinda mom is going to feel about her infant being removed at birth and given to strangers and fed formula only from the get-go! If she cared at all about that baby or her supposedly natural ideals she'd be speeding up this process to ensure she can keep it. 

 

This family is a train wreck, oy!

[Sorry, but the Guheerts are giving homeschooling a bad name...]

I write a silly little blog on our family and home organization kinda topics, whatever I feel like really. Once I posted about the movie Frozen and sarcastically listed 7 ways Tangled was a better movie/how Frozen could have been better. Totally just goofing off and venting about a silly Disney movie my kids were obsessed with. Someone called me brain dead or something and said they felt sorry for my kids that I wouldn't even let them watch an innocent movie because I didn't like it. (funny thing was my kids were watching it as I read that comment). It was ridiculous, I think they must have barely read my article, decided they didn't like it, and went on a rampage. 

 

So yeah, people will post hatefully about just about anything. And like others said above if someone is actually out there accomplishing something (like winning spelling competitions and having fun) then the lazy non-starters are even more likely to come out of the woods and try to bring them down. 

[I'm apparently clueless]

I've been told that sensory issues that are not remediated will not go away. We all have sensory differences to some extent, but when functioning is upset, they need to be treated. Treatment aims at integrating sensory responses. Whatever cannot be integrated should have a plan attached to it to help with functioning. 

 

I was told (by a pyschologist, not an OT), that sensory "matures" into anxiety--I suspect this goes along with what the OT said about issues not going away on their own. I see this pattern in people I know IRL. I see a lot less anxiety after OT with one of my kids (the other didn't have a lot of sensory symptoms, but that can change). Other people don't see this clear pattern. We used an OT clinic that is recommended as "THE PLACE" for sensory issues, and we started when my son was old enough to give them reliable feedback about himself and to take in advice about how to deal with things. We didn't want to go someplace that would not connect behavior and self-regulation to the physical part of OT and put off treatment until we could do that. If his sensory issues had been worse, we might have had to do whatever OT we could find anyway just to cope.

 

This is interesting. My ODS-6 has clear signs of sensory procession issues and always has but without anything extreme I didn't feel he'd quite qualify for therapy so I never got it diagnosed. Also, I realized *I* most definitely have sensory issues, probably worse than his and now as an adult I have developed anxiety that seems to get worse each year, which is annoying because I considered myself super laid back before and definitely not prone to anxiety. Too bad there's no OT for adults with sensory issues that I've ever heard of :)

 

Can things outside of explicit therapy help the sensory issues? I know I've noticed that doing gymnastics as a preschooler helped my son a lot since many of the activities overlapped with what OT's do in sensory integration therapy, but it's been awhile since he's done it and lately with our move he seems to be getting worse. Showers are a battle every night as the water 'hurts' his eyes and he keeps coming up with new things to be anxious about concerning our upcoming move (tornadoes, volcanoes, etc.) 

[s/o narcissism or just self- centered?]

Several people have shared stories of someone with NPD spreading vicious lies about an "enemy". This struck me because I know someone (with NPD or sociopathy or some form of mental illness) who did this. And while I knew the people involved and the situation well enough to not be fooled for one second, I know that others believed the lie.

 

But here's my question/comment about this. I really think that part of the reason that people believed her lie is that she was not "lying" in the traditional sense. I can't explain why, but I believe that she convinced herself of the truth of the story she had fabricated, and therefore when she tells this story she comes across as completely sincere, because she is completely sincere.

 

So, this could be my misconception. It could be unique to this person. But I was wondering if this is a characteristic of NPD. It's almost like she believes that reality itself must conform to her will and wishes. If she has decided that something is true, then it is true, and there's simply no other possibility.

 

Does that make sense?

I've realized that my mother most likely has NPD and I've wondered this too. I do think that she might just believe the lies and stories she concocts in her head. It's hard for me to fathom someone lying THAT convincingly without some underlying belief in those lies, kwim?

 

The story above (can't figure out how to multi-quote) about the MIL and not needing to go to confession had me just dying laughing! It's so accurate, lol! These people are crazy!

 

To me the big difference between just self-centered and narcissistic is the gaslighting, lying, manipulation aspect. Self-centered people I've known aren't ones to bother with overly complicated manipulation, they just don't think too much about others. But living with or even talking to my mother who is narcissistic had me convinced I was crazy for much of my teen years. Turns out my sister felt the same way. See, we'd mention something that SHE perceived made her look bad (whether we were viewing it that way or not) and she'd say "that didn't happen! Where are you coming up with this stuff?" and just assert over and over that what we remembered did not happen. She was so convincing and because she always did it while we were alone we'd start to think we were remembering it wrong. Later after she kicked us all out christmas day while drunk and tried to strangle my stepsister we all talked and put the puzzle pieces together. She also had a golden child (brother) and scapegoat (middle child sister). My sister hasn't spoken to her in like 6 years and honestly she's probably the smart one. I'm currently not speaking to my mom either because I did something she didn't like and she started making up lies in her head to explain my behavior...namely blaming my husband and his 'controlling influence' which is hilarious if you knew how mild-mannered and egalitarian my husband is. But she does that. She spread rumors my sister was doing drugs years ago for the same reason, when my sister most certainly had never even tried pot nevermind become a druggie suddenly.

 

But yeah, narcissists are hard to describe but it's a whole different level from self-centered although that is one element of it.

[s/o - inviting siblings]

For a special party in theory I'm cool with one of my kids being invited but in reality it's just never happened that they've been invited to a party like that. All our social group hangs out with everyone so whole families are invited vs individuals. Like someone said above the practicality is that i have all 4 kids with me all day so if someone wants me to stay I have to bring all the kids. A lot of our friends are homeschoolers and thus are the same, though even our PS friends still are ones to invite and come as a whole family. Maybe because we mostly know families with 4+?

 

We tend to be more, um, detached, as parents than most of our friends (many don't use babysitters ever) so we'd be fine with single kid invitations, but I still like the atmosphere of the more the merrier. It makes for big parties but all the kids seem to love it and everyone ends up with multiple kids their age to play with. And I love how sweet the big and little kids are in including each other in play and helping out. Nobody is too cool to push the toddler on the swing and no 4 year old is left out of the basketball game just because he can't reach the basket himself. It's probably my favorite thing about our particular area socially.

[wisdom teeth impacted local only?]

This bothers me even to think about it, but my husband said that the first time he ever got novacaine at the dentist was when his wisdom teeth were removed. His dentist never used novacaine for fillings!

My dentist filled 2 cavities without novacaine when I was 12. It was awful! My eyes were rolling in thr back of my head with the pain and it seemed to go on for ages. And I have a high pain tolerance and delivered 3 kids unmedicated so far. I'd take labor over unmedicated dental work any day. I had a cavity filled recently with local and it was so much better, barely a pinch at the start then no discomfort even! I had been terrified going in but now I wouldn't stress at all about a simple filling because the experience was totally different.

 

I vote to get general for the wisdom teeth, it's very involved as a procedure and the recovery is rough enough without having the procedure itself be any more difficult than necessary.

[Has any of our kilt loving members read this BOO yet?]

Sometimes we just let it go. He even has the red hair to go with his Scottish heritage and it's a sweet sentiment for his grandpa. The organizers need to get out more---like see Sean Connery online or something.

Yeah, he's clearly dresses formally and modestly and he even had a good family reason for wanting to wear it! This is disappointing to hear, now I know which homeschool group to avoid when we move to NC ;)

[NOOOOOO!]

 

 

*I am not a mental health professional. I can't really tell whether strangers on the internet are psychotic.

 

This made me giggle   :001_smile:  

 

And yes I kinda agree about the time spent maintaining a Facebook page like that, though I can kinda see why someone would want to what with posts and comments being deleted left and right on the Naugler's actual Facebook pages. 

[NOOOOOO!]

I am dying at the cover photo for that Nasty Little Homestead Facebook page, bahaha! 

 

But yes, it seems there's a lot more info there that is worrisome. Of course it is the internet so anyone can say anything but the straight screen shots of her own page and audio recordings and such seem legit. Plus it's the sheer # of people coming forward speaking against them and the total lack of local support that makes me suspicious of their stories. Well, lots of things make me suspicious of this family but that's one thing ;)  

 

[LMB's Visualizing and Verbalizing]

Oh Elizabeth, yes the calling people and picking their brains is what I do too, haha! I don't even care if I annoy people with questions anymore, I just try to push politely for as much info as they will share. I'm like a knowledge hoarder right now on special needs education :) 

 

Anyway, I agree that Barton is giving  a good foundation in grammar and we have talked about that a bit in real life, who and did what phrases and how you need both to make a complete sentence, etc. I'm considering starting Shurley Grammar next year school (should be done with Barton 5 or 6 by then) since that seems to be a similar approach and it's got the song element which I know works well for DD. 

 

My goals are multifaceted; to drive both vocabulary AND comprehension. Right now she doesn't comprehend what she reads or hears so exposure to audiobooks, read-alouds, and written leveled stories aren't helping because it's in one ear and out the other. My suspicion is that she's struggling to visualize a new word even with pictures and definitions but that if I could walk her through visualizing it she could then remember and apply it more easily. Plus the process of building a sentence to describe a picture would be huge in pushing her further to use and find new words to describe accurately. Right now she thinks "4 days" and "4 months" is like basically the same thing, no big deal if she says the wrong word there. Similarly she'd mess up and say "Tobias is in the couch" vs "Tobias is on the couch." because again, she figures they're close enough and people know what she means. If she could visualize what "Tobias is in the couch." would look like (ridiculous, lol!) then she could *see* why the sentence is ridiculous and needs to be changed. Also, just the sheer amount of practice with formulating sentences and playing with describing single words would help.

 

Right now she receives 30 minutes of speech therapy once a week and they only work on STR blends and attributes and low-level items like that. So not high quality skill-builder OR remediation of her actual mental processes to allow her to learn better in the future. It's basically 30 minutes of practicing some new words or words she already knows. When we move I'm going to get her in with someone better hopefully but this is her second speech therapist in 2 years and they're all the same so I'm becoming a bit jaded. Having seen her struggle to read with the wrong approach for years (reading at a 1st grade level at 12!) and seeing her come up 2 grade levels in a year with Barton I'm no longer content to take a wait-and-see approach with bad therapies or curriculums. So I'm still searching for a good speech therapist whose brain I can pick but so far her speech therapists when asked are unable to answer my questions or give dumb suggestions like "go to this website and print off stories she can practice reading for comprehension"

 

Crimsonwife, I'll need to look into Montessori grammar in addition to or in place of Shurley grammar. I love Montessori stuff :) We do a Montessori-ish environment for our kids from ages 18 mos-5 years and it's worked well.  I often wish I could have provided DD that same start. Alas, I have to pick up where she's at. On the plus side I didn't have to potty train her or teach her to tie her shoes  :lol:

[LMB's Visualizing and Verbalizing]

Fortunately her vision is fine, besides being slightly far-sighted which she has reading glasses for. Her prescription is seriously +0.25, lol! No other developmental problems like vision tracking issues or convergence. She was checked in 3rd grade because of her learning disabilities and hearing issues, they wanted to rule out any vision problems as well and the only thing that came up was the mild far-sightedness. 

 

I *think* her problem is just that she has such low vocabulary from low exposure to words from being 50% deaf for years before it was caught AND being in a low-language family that she hasn't developed a good ability to understand new vocabulary....it's all just random words being spoken at her, if that makes sense. We'll go over a new word but it will not stick, she'll still forget what it means and not be able to use it in context on her own. With our neurotypical kids a quick "oh, that means ............." is enough for them to get a basic understanding of what it means and after several exposures to a word they'll be using it correctly on their own. Ana doesn't work that way. 

 

So when I watched Nanci Bell's 1 hour long video and read numerous reviews on Visualizing and Verbalizing it seems that V/V starts out with single words, then moves to sentences, then paragraphs. Is that not true? Does it really start out on the whole sentence level without any work at the individual word level? And I'm really looking at more the overall method than following the curriculum to a T, even the method is something different that we haven't tried because it's not the usual way of teaching. 

 

I'd love to find a set of vocab cards appropriate to her but I haven't found any. They seem to go straight from stuff for very young or very mentally challenged kids like "cow, horse, spoon, television, table, book, pencil, pen" to abstract SAT prep kinda words like "disdain, scold, numerous, procrastinate". She's in between those. She's got the language of a typical 6 year old, so common everyday nouns and verbs she's solid on. But then you get to more complex verbs or adverbs or adjectives and she starts to flounder. And subject-specific words like tundra or island or peninsula....we've learned these concepts extensively I thought but they don't stick in her mind and she couldn't possibly describe those things back to you. And at the sentence level she really struggles. She AND her hearing sister have atrocious sentence structure. Basically they speak and write in random phrases without clarification or detail. And not just out of laziness, they truly a) don't see what's wrong with the way they said things and b) cannot usually produce a complete or complex sentence when guided. It was fascinating chatting with her 14 year old sister's foster mom about what they've been struggling with in that regard! 

 

Sorry if that's a lot of jumbled info. Just trying to get across where she's at as far as language development. It's hard since obviously she doesn't have any writing samples since she can't write much and it's so misspelled you'd never be able to decipher it anyway. :)

[LMB's Visualizing and Verbalizing]

So I'm considering DIYing Visualizing and Verbalizing at home with Ana this summer and wondering if I can get any feedback from others who have done that. I'm confident now that I can learn it and implement it, which I was unsure about last year when we were just diving into this remediation stuff :)  She's seriously lacking in language development for her age and her vocabulary is still at a 6 year old's level but she doesn't learn new vocabulary even with direct instruction in it at home and lots of books and discussion of new words. Her oral comprehension is even worse, she just cannot seem to put sentences together into a good mental image, kwim? So the V/V seems to really hit where she needs it and then hopefully she can learn vocabulary more easily afterwards if she can visualize better. 

 

First, any practical tips on implementing it at home? How often/intense of sessions did you do? I know LMB does like 4 hours 5 days a week for a month or two but that's with rotating tutors to keep them fresh, lol! 

 

Second, what elements of the kit are most necessary to buy, which are nice to have, and which are unnecessary fluff? I know I'll buy the teacher's manual of course but some of the picture and sentence flip boards seem kinda essential too. Would it be too much work to DIY those? (keep in mind I'm 6 months pregnant and we're moving in 2 weeks :)....and yes I know we're crazy, lol)  How much would you say you spent overall to implement it on your own at home?

[NOOOOOO!]

Update from the saveourfamily website:

 

http://www.saveourfamily.info/family-reunited-for-the-weekend/

 

We are happy to announce that Joe and Nicole have been reunited with their children for the weekend. They have been asked by the court to not take any photos or recordings of their time with the children. The entire family will be staying together at the home of an approved foster family during their visit. We are respecting the Naugler’s precious family time and we may not have updates until after the visit. Please continue to remember them in your thoughts and prayers.

Yeah like others I don't buy it.

 

A) they never approve foster homes for 10+ kids at a time, even for siblings. 6 kids including bios is the limit here in PA and most states have similar laws because of the high needs of any child in foster care. So many doctor, psychologist, social worker, and legal appointments. No way are all 10 kids at the same place overnight.

 

B) I have never heard of visitation happening at the foster home even for an hour, nevermind overnight. In a kidnapping risk situation (like this would be given the money they received and their history of hiding the kids) they don't even share the foster home address with the birth family. Actually even DD's birthmom never knew our address and she was not a risk.

 

C) weekend visits just a few weeks after removal at all would be odd. It's usually a gradual working up to that with first supervised 1-2 hour visits at the court house, then 1-2 hour visits with foster parents at a neutral location, then longer unsupervised visits, then after months of meeting goals and uneventful visits they try a weekend visit when there is hope of reuinification.

 

The family is either phrasing things oddly or outright lying about the weekend visit.

[NOOOOOO!]

I have only six kids, but I can vouch for how difficult it is to find anyone who is willing to rent to a "large family". With ten kids, I'm willing to bet those places are few and far between.

 

Yeah, I won't lie, we didn't bother telling our new landlords that I'm pregnant because we were afraid of them getting scared off by that. 

 

The fact is that people like to hear you have 1-2 kids, that means you're settled down, but 4 they think "whoa, big family" and more than 4 and the response seems to when you've officially hopped aboard the crazy train ;) 

 

Similarly 1-2 cats is acceptable, but 4 cats means crazy cat lady, haha! And yes, we have 4 cats, but never will I do that again! They are more work than the 4 kids I swear, oy! 

[NOOOOOO!]

I wonder if CPS even has the expertise to judge whether the "homestead" is safe.  I'm just a city mouse, as I'm sure the rest of the social workers are -- I know about city stuff, like not having exposed electrical wires, and keeping cleaning fluids out of reach of littles.  I have no idea how to manage wastewater without a septic system, proper procedures for livestock, etc. etc.  I wonder if CPS even has guidelines about this kind of stuff.

 

Hm, good question.

 

Given the parents' Facebook statements though it seems like they're not even planning to build a main living structure yet so I think that would need to be in place first before the details about proper fencing/maintenance of livestock, septic vs outhouse vs composting toilet, and well vs city water vs hauling fresh water was discussed. I'm thinking 4 walls + roof + insulation is the first step, then water and toilet, then beds and proper food in the house. Plus I assume they're still investigating to rule out physical abuse allegations and any signs of emotional abuse or anything given the stories from the oldest son and a few community people. 

 

I think it'd be smart of CPS to bring in some sort of 'expert' at some point to advise them on adequate vs inadequate methods of water and sewage for a farm/homestead. That'd cover their own behinds so nobody can claim they didn't give the benefit of the doubt and try to meet the parents where they're at. 

 

My guess is there's no way these kids will return before the end of summer at the earliest, and that'd be *if* the parents did everything as asked, were model birth parents trying to improve their behavior, and had very good lawyers representing them. 

 

I just hope either the parents or CPS get a really solid plan in place to fix the situation before the new baby comes.