We don't drive much. We live 2 miles from where DH works (and where I work during the year), and other than DH driving to and from work, we make one or two trips to get groceries or shop in the weekends (usually about 5-10 miles away). We have a lot of friends and some fun places to go within walking distance, so I pretty much don't take the kids anywhere we need to drive to during the week. I'd say we fill up about once a month, for about $40-50.

I wouldn't. I know my 7yo wouldn't be okay with it. But, I'd say watch it first, since you know your child.

Modesty is important to me, but I understand it differently than a lot of other people here. I don't see modesty as about how much skin is shown or about not dressing "sexy". To me, it's about not placing undue value on or drawing undue attention to one's appearance. And, that is important to me. I don't want my children dressing in ways that are designed to get others to focus on how they look. I don't want my children dressing in ways designed to impress others with how stylish or expensive their clothes are. I don't want them putting the focus on external appearance like that. I want them to dress in ways that are respectful of themselves and of others, and reasonably appropriate for the occasion. So, to me, wearing a prairie jumper is not, in most situations, modest. It's calling attention to itself, and basically saying, "Hey, look at me! Look at how modest and godly I am!" Wearing hot pants and a tube top isn't modest, either, because it's also drawing undue attention to the wearer, and saying, "Hey, look at me! Look how sexy I am!" I don't think either one of those is modest or appropriate most of the time. To me, modesty is more about an attitude of not looking to have your clothes impress others (either with how sexy you are OR how godly you are, or how wealthy you are, etc.), but instead dressing in a way that doesn't draw attention to your appearance and lets your internal qualities be the focus. Now, those are things that matter to me in how I dress, and that will matter to me in the long run with my kids. But, I don't expect that every outfit they choose when they are teens will be something I'd like. As long as they aren't dressing in a way that is truly disrespectful of others or disruptive to a situation (again, like wanting to wear hot pants to school), I'm not going to push it. I'd just hope that in time they'll come to share the belief that they shouldn't use their clothing to impress others or get attention.

I'm going to bring up something else about the poor and eating choices: maybe they aren't stupid. If you've got $5 to spend on food for the day, sure, we can say, "Well, any sensible person would buy apples! Or carrots! Or salad!" But, it's very unlikely that, with $5, you could buy enough of those items to actually meet your family's caloric needs for the day, and when we're talking survival, meeting basic caloric needs is more important than worry about fat content, artificial ingredients, or sugar intake. A person can live a very, very long time on an unhealthy diet that provides sufficient calories, especially since so many processed foods are fortified with various vitamins; a person cannot live a very long time with insufficient calories, no matter how healthy the foods they are eating may be. Plus, there's food safety to think of. If you lack ways to safely store your food--if your fridge is on the fritz, if you share a fridge with many others in your household and can't store much in it--you probably are better off, health-wise and money-wise, buying things with a longer shelf life than things that are very perishable.

It sounds like a big part of this is that she doesn't want to homeschool, but her DH is insisting. That right there is no doubt an enormous source of stress. I don't think homeschooling is right for every family, and I definitely don't think it's right for a family where the person doing most of the homeschooling doesn't want to be doing it. I really can't see the plan of taking the child to work with the dad going well, especially if there are behavioral issues. Most likely, the child would again simply be expected to do his work independently while the parent did other things, and that's obviously not working in this case. That said, I don't think there's anything you can do or that you even really should say. However, I do think, as somebody mentioned upthread, suggesting a virtual academy could be helpful, if she brings it up again. That sounds like something that might work in their situation.

Yes, it will. That's usually, AFAIK, the way people find out they were unfriended much of the time.

Right. Most models are a lot taller than your average woman. I doubt it would be that short on a girl who was average height.

It wouldn't be my preference, but I wouldn't die on that hill, either. So I said "other."

Probably not, although it's not an issue yet. I'd have the same policy about no realistic-looking toy guns that I have for DS, but that, for me, is a safety issue. There are loads of toys I wouldn't buy, but I don't think I'd ban playing with anything unless there was a safety reason.

In my experience flying, the physical contact you have with a TSA agent doing a pat-down is far less "intimate" that the contact you'll have with whomever is sitting next to you on the plane, whom you'll likely be bumping legs and arms with for much of the flight. If somebody is going to be pushed over the edge by physical contact, air travel might not be the best way for them to get somewhere.

I don't find this funny at all. I've been patted down by airline security: it is NOT groping. It's extremely professional, and there is nothing invasive about it. The TSA agents are doing their job. I can't, after my OB gives me a breast exam, decide to grab her breast. If I tried to do so, I'd be in the wrong. This woman is, too.

I had an Armenian friend in college, and he told me about it. After that, I can remember hearing things about it once in a while, but I don't think it's common knowledge.

I forgot stress hormones. Yup, cortisol causes fat to accumulate around the belly. I also wonder how much of a role dieting plays in this. We have increasing numbers of people on diets at increasingly younger ages. Many people I know who carry a lot of belly fat either seem to have a strong genetic predisposition to it or have a long history of dieting. They've lost and gained weight lots of times, as most dieters do. Given how much push their is to put kids on restrictive diets, I wouldn't be surprised if we're seeing the harmful effects of dieting affecting kids at younger and younger ages, and for many that's leading to an increase in belly fat that they wouldn't have had if they'd just been allowed to follow their body's cues and be the size they were meant to be.

I don't know, I think fat distribution is largely genetic. I've got a friend who is the same height and weight I am. We are very different shapes. I'm all boobs, butt, and thighs; she's all belly. We have toddlers who are about six weeks apart. It's funny to look at them, because her little one is a skinny thing with a big belly, whereas my very chubby DD has these giant sumo thighs, but a pretty normal toddler-sized belly. (She's got the same clothing problem I have--it's hard to get her in bottoms because if I can get them over her thighs, they're way too big in the waist.) When I look at most families I know, the kids and parents tend to have remarkably similar body shapes, and when you meet the grandparents, they do, too.

The problem is, bodies aren't bunsen burners. The amount of calories a body expends varies a lot. And, for some people, their body will work very, very hard to hold on to weight, and so certain processes that are responsible for most of our calorie burning--because most of it isn't exercise--will slow down dramatically when their food intake is reduced. Everybody does not burn the same number of calories at rest, not even close. As a personal example, I CANNOT lose weight while breastfeeding. I literally cannot. (Well, at least not with my first two babies, you can never say what will happen at a different time.) With my DS, I nursed for 26 months, and didn't drop a single pound the entire time. It didn't matter how much or how little I ate, or how much or how little I exercised. Those things certainly mattered when it came to my mood and energy levels, but not my weight. Then, once I weaned him, I dropped about 30 pounds in two months without changing a single thing about my eating habits or exercise. That should defy all logic, right? I mean, breastfeeding is supposed to burn MORE calories, so logically I should have gained weight after I weaned him, since I didn't start eating less. But, that didn't happen. For whatever reason, and through whatever mechanisms our bodies do these things, while I was breastfeeding, my body simply would not lose weight. I could eat less, and it would somehow compensate for that. Once I weaned, my body apparently stopped feeling the need to do that, and I lost the weight. So, you can very, very easily end up with two people of the same height who eat the same number of calories and exercise the same amount of time, but are two VERY different weights. There are two ways we can respond to that. We can say that the heavier person, even though they are eating just as much as the lighter person, is still eating too much, and expect them to keep reducing their food intake and upping their exercise until they hit some "ideal" weight, if that ever happens. (The problem, of course, is that it's very likely their body will compensate for their decrease in calories and increase in activity by slowing down other calorie-burning processes, and in the vast majority of cases they will not lose significant amounts of weight and definitely won't keep it off long-term, as their body adjusts.) Or, we can say, "Hmm, maybe human bodies vary in size, and it's possible to be healthy while falling outside of the narrow range that, in 1998, our government decided meant a healthy weight. Maybe Person A is simply meant to be a different size than Person B, and that's okay. As long as both are eating well, being active, and healthy, perhaps it's fine for their bodies to be whatever size their bodies will be." Unfortunately, we seem to think that the latter is a "cop-out" or excuse, and the former is the only right way to go, despite the fact that our efforts to reduce people's body weight has been a resounding failure. In fact, all that most weight-loss efforts result in is people ending up fatter than they would have if they'd never gone on a diet in the first place. I'd highly recommend that everybody read Health at Every Size at some point. It's an eye-opening, life-changing book.

If you hide someone, though, would you still see their comments so you could delete them?

I think that's kind of cute. And I imagine she just hadn't thought it through, not that she wouldn't have realized, if she'd thought about it, that of course a homeschooler could teach other grades.

I don't allow realistic-looking guns. Like, anything even close to realistic-looking. We live in a city, and it's too dangerous, IMO. Beyond that, I don't censor violent imaginative play.

DS can play video games with cartoon violence. I would not be okay with him playing a first-person shooter.

I really think this thread goes to show how deeply fat-prejudice is intertwined with class (and race) prejudice. I'm pretty sure that if affluent people were more likely to be fat instead of poorer people, we would NOT be seeing the kinds of attitudes about fat people that we currently see. We've just transferred a lot of our prejudices about the poor (and racial minorities)--they're lazy, they're stupid, they have no self control, they're dirty, they're smelly, they're just not made of the same kind of moral fiber that we are--that are no longer acceptable onto fat people, where in the same circles where it would be totally unacceptable to say that about a poor person or racial minority, it's totally fine to say it about a fat person. Which is NOT to say that there isn't still plenty of awful prejudice against the poor and racial minorities. My point is that fat prejudice is a way for people "too enlightened" to engage in that kind of prejudice to still hate on poor people and racial minorities without having to feel badly about it or think critically about it.

Right. We have no idea how much these kids are eating. And, even if they ARE eating a lot, kids, especially small kids, sometimes eat a lot, no matter what their size. And kids, especially small kids, don't generally eat more than they are hungry for, unless they have an underlying issue or are food deprived. Which is why I think the absolute worst thing we could do for a very fat child, even if they are overeating, is restricting calories and food intake. That will just make them feel out of control and deprived. My best friend weighs about 400 pounds. She doesn't just eat salads all day, but she doesn't eat a ridiculous amount of food, either. Her mother is very large. Her father is very large. Her aunts and uncles are all very large. I honestly don't think she eats more than I do, and may even eat less, but she weighs more than twice as much. And she is treated horribly. I can go to a Chili's and not have the waitress look twice, but I go with her, and she is given the most horrible looks by the waitress and other patrons. She had a medical problem a few years ago that could have been due to a number of things, one of them being obesity. Of course, her first doctor assumed it was her weight that caused it, and told her that he would not consider ANY other possible cause or treatment until she lost at least 250 pounds (seriously). She found another doctor, that doctor told her she should get off of birth control pills, she did, and the issue cleared up immediately. It infuriates me that she could have become seriously ill because a doctor wouldn't consider that anything other than her weight could have caused a medical issue. It is horrible how very large people are treated in our society. All of the shame and guilt we heap on them is not helping, at all.

Who's talking about excluding religion from anything? We seem to have a belief in this country that not allowing one religious group to lord their beliefs over everybody else, but instead treating all group equally, is somehow "excluding" religion.

I actually don't want to join any groups. ;) I don't really feel the need for homeschooler-only support. But, I know enough people who have had bad experiences with exclusive groups to think that they are not a particularly positive addition to the homeschool community or that they are they loving and serving the community.

That's a great analogy. For me, I have no idea why I'd feel the need to create a sock-knitters-only knitting group, or a sweater-knitters-only knitting group, or a Christian-only knitters group. And, if a crocheter wanted to join, I'd say, why not? Now, if they wanted the group to change to focusing on crochet, then I'd see it being an issue, and they should be politely reminded that it's a knitting group. But if they just wanted some other fiber crafters to hang out with while they crocheted, and were content to listen to knitting talk while they worked and weren't going to spend the time trying to convince everybody why they should crochet instead, it seems to me that all would be good. And if the knitters felt put out because suddenly they couldn't talk about how much better knitting was than crocheting, I'd say maybe they needed to grow up a little bit, and if it was that important to them to talk about crocheting in a way that would make a crocheter uncomfortable, the people who wanted to do so could grab a drink after the knitting group was over and do it then.

Maybe if we didn't stigmatize fat people so much, there wouldn't be such a potential for depression and suicide. And, while severe obesity can be one factor in those things, there simply isn't evidence that children are dying of strokes, heart attacks, and diabetes because they are too fat (rather than because the actual health issue itself isn't being dealt with). The problem is, it's conflating body size with health. By all means, take children's health seriously. But, just like we accept that some children are very, very, very thin but still healthy, we need to accept that some children are very, very, very fat but still healthy. Body size and health are not the same thing. Intervening in a family because a child has health problems is one thing; intervening in a family because the child has a body size that's on the extreme end of the spectrum is another. I don't think we do anybody any good when we make body size the issue, rather than health.