I know that when I've taken Myers-Briggs type tests in the past, I always come out an ENFP and a very slightly expressed extrovert. I took one of the ones linked to to check, and the strength of my preference for extroversion was just 1%. So, according to the test I'm almost right in the middle of the extrovert-introvert spectrum, which is about where I'd place myself, too. For me, I find that I really enjoy being at home or alone, and that's usually my preference, but if I don't get a sufficient amount of social interaction, I start to lose it.

I think it could be a lot of things. They could be in a really unhealthy relationship. They could be really immature. They could be people who enjoy playful teasing way more than most people.

Honestly, I find that a lot more forgivable/understandable than just cheating on a spouse out of the blue, or than leaving a dying spouse to start a new relationship guilt-free. I can understand why somebody might, in the horrible situation of having and supporting a dying spouse, turn to another person for comfort and have that turn into a romantic relationship. It's not right, but I wouldn't write somebody off as an awful person because of it, and I do get it.

It depends on how you define "short time." I spent a summer in Costa Rica in college. Not sure if that counts as living overseas or not.

Anybody been? What did you think? DS is really into knights right now, so DH is thinking he'll take him one weekend. Is there enough stuff there for a 7yo to enjoy? Would it be worth it for me to come along, too, with the babies (17mo and newborn), or would we just get tired and restless? Anything we should look out for/be sure not to miss if we do go?

I know this, but it's so helpful to be reminded. I think one of the reasons I've had so much trouble parenting my DS is that he is so. darn. smart. It's made it incredibly difficult for me to have reasonable, age-appropriate expectations for him. It's so easy to treat my DD, who is 17 months and babbles away with a few recognizable words here and there, like the tiny toddler she is, and so to have reasonable expectations. My DS was having conversations with us at that age. It was really hard to reconcile the fact that this tiny person was talking to us like he was a much older child with the reality that he acted like a tiny toddler. And that's just continued on. He's remained really verbally advanced, while he behaves like a typical--or slightly immature--kid his age. It's hard for me to have realistic expectations for behavior when this kid is talking to me with better logic and understanding than some of my college freshman seem to have but still jumping on the couch, running back and forth across the house, and throwing balls at the ceiling.

Good point. I think it really depends on what you're saving. My mom has fantastic taste in children's books, and we really appreciated and used all the books she gave us. But, most of them were "field-tested" by her preschool classes, and she only saved the ones in great shape. I got a bunch of stuff, after my first was born, from the mom of a good friend of mine whose kids weren't having their own kids. (I guess she'd given up hope on them and decided to just hand the stuff over to me LOL.) There was a lot of it, and a lot of it was in really bad shape. So then I was in the awkward position of having to figure out what to do with all of it, and of then having to figure out how to get rid of what I wanted to get rid of.

My mom was a children's librarian and preschool teacher when she was working, and she saved tons of books for my kids. She kept them in airtight plastic storage bins, and they came to us in great shape.

AFAIK, the Ezzos changed their advice, which originally was pretty rigid about 3-4 hour feeding intervals from birth, in response to reports that babies were failing to thrive when their advice was followed. I have lots of problems with the Ezzos, probably chiefly the self-righteousness their advice breeds in those with compliant children and the sense of failure it breeds in those with difficult kids. But, at least when they were presented with evidence that their advice was being used in a way that was harming children, they made changes. That's something. I don't expect the Pearls to be doing that any time soon. I really don't think we'll be seeing a disclaimer in later editions that, if your child isn't broken after x amount of time, you should probably discontinue the beating lest you kill them.

TalkOrigins is a great resource.

It depends on the comment. When my son was smaller, he'd sometimes make comments about people's size or skin color (i.e., "That woman is really fat" or "That man is dark brown"). I'd just say something right then about how people come in all different sizes or colors, and isn't that a great thing. Then, when we were in private, I'd explain that you can hurt people's feelings by talking about their appearance, and it's not what matters about them anyway, so we don't make comments about what other people look like. I'm not sure how I'd respond to that specific comment, though. "Some people look like chipmunks, and isn't that great?!" just doesn't seem right. ;) I think I'd have been inclined, if the person being talked about pretended not to hear, to pretend along with them, ignore it for the moment, then address why we don't talk about people's appearance when we were in private.

Great info! Thanks.

We have a Facebook group for neighborhood parents. I just send out a message seeing if anybody else was homeschooling this year (I know that two people in the neighborhood are, and am guessing there are more), and if they were interested in meeting up once or twice a month for support, play, and maybe some trips (we're in a city, so we've got lots of places to visit nearby). Now I'm wondering if this was a mistake. Am I going to make the non-homeschooling parents upset? Does that seem like an exclusionary post? What do you think? FWIW I would love to get a neighborhood homeschool group going, because homeschooling is getting more popular in the city and all of the groups are in the suburbs. But now I'm just wondering if I should have posted something like that on a general parents' group.

While I'm assuming that's not verbatim, it's pretty darn funny. :lol:

I haven't read either of those books. I'm guessing it would actually be a pretty popular opinion here, but I hated Love Wins. The catch is that I actually am a universalist. I should have liked it. I agree with Bell theologically. But, the book drove me crazy. I hated how it was written, I thought it was poorly organized if not downright incoherent, and I kind of wanted to punch Rob Bell by the time I got about halfway through. I'm sure he's a really, really nice guy in real life, but everything about that book just bugged me, despite my agreement with the overall premise.

My concern is that the advice is most compelling to the parents who have kids who will respond least well to it. Because if you've got a difficult, defiant child, it's going to be very appealing when somebody tells you they've got the solution, and if you just follow their plan you'll have perfectly-behaved kids. Those are exactly the kids who will resist these methods the most, and with whom it's most likely that a parent could, quite innocently, end up crossing a line.

I think I took five, too. I took both that were in the pack I got from CVS. Then I called a friend, telling her that I could NOT be pregnant, and she brought me over two more (she has four kids under five and has a whole stash of pregnancy tests at home). Then I ran out and got one more from the store just to be really sure. And, honestly, until he actually came out of me, I found it hard to really believe that I was having another baby.

Right. It's very, very sad. I don't know enough to know if these are just cruel, abusive people who didn't have their kids best interest at heart, or if they were people who wanted to do what was right and crossed a line. But I can see how they could be the latter. They were dealing with a child who had issues the Pearls' don't consider when they give their advice on the one and only way to raise a child. Again, it's this idea that you have to keep spanking until you "break" the child. It doesn't take into consideration that some kids respond very counter-intuitively to a spanking. Rather than feeling remorseful, broken, or genuinely repentant, they just get more and more defiant and angry. And a child who's come from a difficult background is probably even more likely to respond that way. AFAIK, the Pearls make no room for that. So, yeah, they probably would say, if asked directly, that you shouldn't spank a child for seven hours. But, there are children who can be spanked for seven hours and still not have their will broken or be genuinely remorseful. If you advocate spanking until those things happen, as the Pearls do, then you should be aware that that could easily lead to some children being spanked for an unreasonably long period of time or with too much force. And when you tell the parents that their child's future behavior and eternal destination are dependent upon them striking them until repentance, then I don't see how you can't expect this sort of tragedy will at least occasionally happen.

My concern with rewards is that DS will come to expect them. He's a kid who, if he gets an extra half hour of computer time for being especially good one day, will spend the next two weeks insisting that he gets an hour and a half of computer time every day and I'm terribly unfair for not giving it to him. I do think, at this point, we need some tangible positive rewards, just because I have been SO negative with him the last couple of months and because he's had some big adjustments lately--he went from being an only child for almost six years to having two little siblings in the last 16 months--and we really need to jump start some changes, for both of us. But I'd prefer to use non-reward methods in the long-term. I think a big issue, too, is that I often don't take the time to distinguish between stuff that I find annoying or irritating and stuff that's really a problem. Like, it drives me insane when DS runs back and forth across the house, or when he jumps on the couch, but he's a 7-year-old boy, and we've got a small house with a small yard, and those are things that aren't hurting anybody and that he's not going to be doing ten years from now. But I have a tendency to try to get him to stop it, and I think that makes it less effective when I want to stop a genuinely problematic behavior. I'm a person who kind of thrives on peace and quiet, and he's a kid who is constantly bumping into things, making a ruckus, and just generally disrupting my peace and quiet, and then I get anxious and annoyed. Same with saying no. My instinct to most requests that DS makes is to say no. Why? I have no idea. I think maybe I just feel like I have some moral responsibility to say no as much as possible, so he doesn't get spoiled or think he can always get his own way. Plus, I don't want to be inconvenienced. But, most of the things I say no to are things that, if I think about it, there really was no reason to say no to, and so then when I say no to something I should say no to, it's less effective. Thinking about it, I don't think it's just punishment, but that I just relate to DS so, so negatively, and realizing that I need to make serious changes in that. Because when I get into these really negative places with him, I don't enjoy him, I don't feel good about him, and I don't feel good about myself as a mom. It's like I'm just constantly trying to manage his behavior and never just enjoying his company or who he is as a person. I think I just need to really focus on being as positive with him as I can, on saying yes to whatever I can reasonably say yes to and saving no for serious things, and for just tolerating immature and/or annoying behavior that might grate on me but isn't actually causing any harm, and reserving my efforts at changing behavior for things that really matter.

I feel like my DD and my DS are like this. With my DD, if we say "No" to her with a stern face, she'll stop what she's doing. Sometimes she'll burst into tears. She's a pretty naturally compliant, people-pleasing little girl, and she responds pretty well to punishment. That said, I think she'd respond pretty well to anything, because she wants to please. My DS is SO not like that. He would have yelled "You NO!" back at me when I said no to him when he was my DD's age. Or just ignored me totally. We have been in that exact same cycle so many times: I punish, DS either doesn't care or gets more defiant, I get angry and frustrated and punish more, he gets more defiant or indifferent, and on and on. And, honestly, once we get into that power struggle, he'll probably win. He's more stubborn than I am, and I'm the one who's going to end up piling on so many punishments that I end up backing off on some of them, because they were so unreasonable. So, with him, I just need to not get into that struggle in the first place. If I can manage to be as calm and indifferent about his misbehavior as possible, ignoring it if it's not dangerous or serious, he usually seems to realize on his own that he was wrong. Because he's not a terrible kid, and he's pretty smart. He knows right and wrong, and he knows when he's done something wrong, and I think I just get in the way of him admitting that and making changes when I try to force the matter with punishment.

The suggestion from the book I'm reading would be that you put a program in place to encourage the child to do chores. So, you'd assign points for each time they did a chore the first time they were asked, and earn rewards for that. If they don't do the chore, the rewards are withheld. And you'd want to structure things to make it as easy as possible for them to do the chore. My problem with my DS is that, if I punished him for not doing the dishes, he'd still refuse to do them. I could say, "Fine, no dishes, no computer tomorrow," and he'd say, "I don't care!" And then I'd get more upset, and end up taking something else away, hoping that, if I took away enough, he'd just do the dishes, but he will NEVER get there. Once he's in defiant mode, there is nothing I can do or take away or threaten that will get him out of it. He'll just dig in his heels further. So after a while I've piled on more punishments than he deserves, and the dishes still wouldn't be done, and everybody is upset. Usually, with my DS, when that does happen, he'll rage and stomp for a while, and then, once I've calmed down, he'll calm down, and eventually he'll apologize and offer to do whatever he was asked to do. Assigning punishments, I'm realizing, just makes it more difficult for him to get to the place where he's willing to do the task on his own, because it makes him so angry and defiant. We've been trying, for about 3-4 days now, a mealtime behavior reward chart. DS has a tendency to drive us crazy at dinner time. He takes forever to come to the table, picks at his food, complains about whatever he's served, spends the entire time asking if he's eaten enough to get dessert, and just keeps getting up and leaving the table before he's done or has been excused. We just cannot have a nice meal. It drives DH particularly crazy, because we usually eat right when he gets home from work, and he'd like to be able to relax a little. So that seemed like a good behavior to tackle first. We've tried all kinds of punishments to get his mealtime behavior to change, and they haven't worked. We started doing a reward chart for meals (he gets points for different things, like coming to the table the first time he's asked, saying grace, trying everything on his plate, saying something positive about the meal, waiting to be excused, etc.), and can earn rewards for them. It's really just dinner that's the problem, but he can earn points at breakfast and lunch as a way to practice those behaviors. Maybe it's just the novelty, but he's been doing awesome. We saw more improvement after two days of positive reinforcement than we've seen in the last six months.

This is mostly going to be me rambling, and looking for input. I'm thinking I need to totally give up on punishment as a means of discipline with my DS. It just has NEVER gotten me good results. I've been reading The Kazdin Method for Parenting the Defiant Child and it has been, to use language I wouldn't normally use, a very, very convicting read. Pretty much all of the ineffective parenting myths he describes--using harsher and harsher punishments, lecturing, being afraid to praise things the child should already be doing--are things I do. And practically I know that punishment just doesn't work with DS. He gets more and more defiant the more I punish. And it's certainly never led to long-term positive behavioral changes. So, logically, I feel like my DS would probably do much, much better if we focused on positive reinforcement for correct behaviors, a lot of practicing those good behaviors, and ignoring most bad behavior, using punishment only sparingly for extremely serious things. But, I feel such emotional resistance to doing that. I really think, if I'm honest, it's a "But what will people think?" thing. I mean, I have a challenging kid, and if I don't punish him, it will seem like I'm just ignoring his bad behavior, and I'll look like a bad mom. I know that shouldn't matter. But I've realized over the years how much ego I have invested in what people think of my children and of me as a mother, and that's still a struggle. Has anybody given up--or just never used--punishment, at least as a regular or primary means of discipline? How has it worked out for you, particularly if you have a very defiant, challenging kid? How do you deal with other parents or family members or friends who don't believe it's possible to discipline without punishing or who think you have to punish all misbehavior?

I agree, but I also think that any time you have somebody advocating striking a child until the child demonstrates an acceptable level of "repentance" or "brokenness," you are setting the stage for abuse. I don't think they are legally responsible, but I do think they bear some moral responsibility. Some kids will not have that kind of response unless you cross the line into abuse. Some kids will not have that kind of response, ever. Aside from our moral qualms, we had a good practical reason to stop spanking our DS, which is that it just didn't work. He would just get angrier and more defiant. My DH, who is a big guy, got to the point where he was afraid to spank, because he knew that in order to get DS to care about the spanking, he'd have to hit him hard enough that he could very, very easily hurt him. Once he realized that, he was done. And we're not people who would follow the Pearls. My husband's an atheist-leaning agnostic, and I'm a liberal Episcopalian. We never believed we were commanded by God to spank or that our child's eternal destiny rested on it. We were just frustrated, exhausted, sleep-deprived, desperate, demoralized parents who had no idea what to do with a very stubborn, defiant, and challenging kid, and who felt like we HAD to try everything. And even with all that, I can still see how easy it could have been for either of us, given DS's personality, to cross the line. If we had felt like we had a duty to spank until we saw "repentance," we probably would have crossed that line.

I was going to suggest those, too.

My DH is taking over science lessons this year. I don't like doing experiments (I do like reading books about science together, but I'm just generally not a fan of setting up and cleaning up hands-on stuff), and I'm not sure how well I could manage them with DD and the new baby, so DH is going to do science lessons at night. I think we're going to use BFSU. It looks like it would fit our needs very well. But, I skimmed through it, and I'm a bit confused now about how we'd use it. Do you just work through it chapter by chapter? I'm also wondering what information and supplies my DH will need to get started. He's great at teaching DS, but he isn't as into the planning as I am, so if I can just tell him what he needs to know/have/do to get started, he'll be happy.