The Anglican cycle of prayer includes prayer for other denominations, and I've never gotten the impression that it's supposed to be a prayer for conversion.

The issue isn't that holding those beliefs, in and of itself, makes one small-minded and insecure. It's that requiring that those around you also hold those beliefs is.

No reason to mention it. The good school district thing is just a selling point.

We have a great church I attended when I just had DS about 1/2 mile from our house. It doesn't have any programs or facilities for kids, though--there isn't even a convenient area to take a fussy baby--so getting over there with DD is more difficult, and with three kids it will be impossible. So I've been attending a church about 2.5 miles from home that I don't love nearly as much but that has great programs for kids, that the kids love, and that a few of my friends go to. I don't belong to a group or co-op. Distance is part of the reason. We have one car, and DH usually takes it to work during the week. I'm not aware of any homeschool groups within the city, so I'd have to drive to the suburbs to get to one, which isn't an option.

:iagree: I love that site, even though right now, at 36-1/2 weeks pregnant, I'm kind of struggling with the actual getting off of my butt. ;)

I have this issue, too, but I don't think it has to do with a culture of too much praise or too much concern for children's happiness. I think it has to do with shifting ideas about education, particularly higher education, and especially the idea of student as consumer. The customer is always right, after all. Once students start seeing their education as a product they are purchasing--and, given the high price of college education, I can't totally blame them for that--then the instructor becomes a service worker paid to provide them with the services they want. And, unfortunately, more and more administrators are backing students in that view, in order to keep their tuition money coming in. FWIW, I've decided this semester to include a section in my syllabus about what is and is not appropriate college behavior, particularly regarding e-mail communication. I'm teaching the remedial writing class so usually about 90% of the class are first-semester students, and most of them are first-generation college students. I figure I'll be doing their future instructors a favor if I let them know right away that it is not okay to e-mail your professor asking a question about something that can be found on the syllabus or at 11 p.m. the night before a paper is due insisting that they read over your draft (and then telling them the next day that you can't turn your paper in because they didn't respond to you).

I'm not sure why that's a problem in many cases. It depends on the "failure." It also depends on the kid. I've got a perfectionist. He gets really, really upset if he doesn't do things exactly right: to him, right now, everything is black and white, and he either did it perfectly or he failed miserably. My job as a parent is to help him learn to reframe his own expectations, and often that does mean looking at things as a "good try" rather than as a failure. Again, I'm not sure. You don't need to gush over a kid doing what they're expected to do. But, personally, I know I'd feel pretty unappreciated if my DH only praised me on things he considered "above-and-beyond" accomplishments, and just felt that homeschooling, making dinner, housecleaning, entertaining the kids, etc., were just things I was expected to do. And I know DH would feel unappreciated if I only praised him on the above-and-beyonds. He needs to know that I value the everyday stuff he does, and think it's pretty great. And, I do. I think it's great that he gets up every morning to go to work even though he doesn't really enjoy his job that much, and I have to remember to sometimes tell him that. Honestly, I think most kids don't get enough praise. We are sending kids negative messages all of the time. I don't think we should praise them for doing things that are obviously wrong or bad--I'm not going to praise my son for taking a toy from his sister--but I do think most kids are getting much less praise than they should be. And I also think that most kids aren't being told enough that they are valuable just for being who they are, apart from anything they do. Now, sure, you can mess up a kid by doing that if you make it out that they are wonderful and special just for being themselves, and other people aren't. But I think you can instill in children their high worth as individuals while also teaching them that other people have that same high worth. Anyway, that said, I just disagree with the idea that people become self-deluded about their own talents because they were praised too much. There are other factors at work. My mother is one of the most self-deprecating people I know. She has a sister who believes she can do no wrong. They were raised in the same household and went to the same schools. My father has two siblings who, like him, seem to have a pretty grounded self-image, and a brother who is one of those "I'm always right and great" people. Again, same parents, same schools. I see it in my students. Students who went to the exact same schools and in some cases grew up in very similar homes show up with wildly different assessments of their own abilities. Some consistently underestimate their own abilities, others consistently overestimate them. Personally, I don't think consistently overestimating your own abilities is simply (or even usually) the product of too much praise. Most of the time, my students who overestimate their own talents are among my worst students and have the most limited critical thinking ability. I think their inflated self-image is probably more likely a self-protective reaction to being told they *aren't* good enough and a product of a limited ability to see things from other perspectives and just a part of their personality. Just like, I don't think my students who consistently underestimate their own talents (I was a student like that) do so because of a lack of praise, but because they are overly critical of their own effort, think others judge more harshly than they do, and, again, because it's just part of their personality.

Then why is the issue the new girlfriend being barred from family events, and not the father? Assuming that she wasn't also married at the time, I'd say that, while both of them participated in adultery, he was the one breaking marriage vows. I just really take issue with the "homewrecker" idea. Personally, if a marriage breaks up because of an affair between a married and an unmarried person, I'm going to put more responsibility on the shoulders of the person who was married, by far. They made a vow that the other person hadn't made.

Obesity rates leveled off about a decade ago. http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/weightloss/2010-01-13-obesity-rates_N.htm And, Europe isn't that far behind us. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/world/europe/22iht-health.4.5393089.html Honestly, I think we're in the midst of a moral panic. Obesity rates leveled off 10 years ago, in that 10 years we've seen life expectancies continue to rise, and yet we've seen an absolute explosion of media reports on the "obesity crisis." It's got all the hallmarks of a classic moral panic. There is no evidence that any of the interventions being proposed will do anything to change people's body weights long-term. And yet, rather than emphasizing the value of healthy eating habits and physical activity for their own good (and they are extremely good for health even if weight doesn't change), we continue to push weight loss as the only way to good health. This despite the fact that every single study of dieting (yes, even when it's marketed as a "lifestyle change") has found that over 95% of dieters end up regaining everything they lost, and most of those end up weighing 10% more after a diet than they did before, with every single diet. If we want to make people fat, dieting seems to be the surest way to do it, and yet we keep pushing it (and at younger and younger ages). I really think we're going to see some extremely bad outcomes to our current "war on obesity." We're going to see children growing up with an obsessive, unhealthy focus on body size and afraid to eat (already the rates of eating disorders in young children has skyrocketed). We're going to see young people probably ending up heavier than they would have because we're told to start restricting their food intake as early as infancy. We're going to see an entirely generation of children coming of age with disordered thinking and behaviors around food and their bodies. And, we're not going to be any healthier for it.

It's kind of amazing to me that that even needs to be said. I have friends who've taught in both the Detroit public schools and in suburban public school districts. Their suburban kids score much higher on standardized tests. They are the same person in both settings. In some cases they were even using the same materials. But, the results of their teaching were very, very different. There are so many factors that go into how students perform on these tests that have nothing to do with an individual teacher and not even much to do with the public school system in an area as a whole that it just seems extremely unfair to judge teachers based on it. I also think this kind of "accountability" does nothing but making working in inner city, rural, and other resource-poor school districts undesirable. Who, if they could find another job, would be willing to teach in one of those districts when, on top of everything else you'd have to deal with, you are constantly being evaluated by the performance of your students on high-stakes tests that they are going to do worse on, as a group, than their more affluent peers?

If you and your DH are both uncomfortable talking to her about it, but really feel strongly about setting boundaries on this (and I think you are totally right to do so), would writing a polite e-mail or letter setting those boundaries be a possibility? Personally, I don't think that's a cop-out. I think it gets it out there in a way that will both allow you guys to speak your mind without having her steamroll you AND gets it in writing so that it's not one of those things you say and then she just pretends was never said. I'd consider writing her something that lets her know how much you are looking forward to her visit, how much you value her and her relationship with your kids, but that you need to deal with this one specific issue--medical care--within your immediate family only, and that it will not be something you want discussed during the visit.

I was thinking the same thing. I would not put an angry teen with whom I had trust issues on a bus. No way. A non-stop flight would be much, much safer.

Evaluation isn't unreasonable. Expecting 100% of students to be testing at or above grade level is. We don't live in Lake Wobegon. ;) The only way for a school to get by in such a situation would be to dumb down the requirements for each grade level so that all students would hopefully pass. For anybody who wants to see high standards in schools, this sort of testing is exactly what they shouldn't support. States that lower their standards and have easier tests get higher passing rates. States are rewarded, basically, for lowering standards. Plus, I don't think you can truly assess how good a job a school is doing by student outcomes. There are just too many other factors involved. Even the best teacher in the world is not going to get good results if there are enough other factors going on in the child's life working against that. And, a terrible teacher who is in front of a room full of students with engaged parents, a foundation of basic skills, and a supportive community is probably going to end up having her students do all right no matter how bad her teaching is. Another part of the issue is that the students have pretty much no stake in these tests. They are extremely high-stakes for teachers and school districts, but essentially meaningless for students. I certainly think assessment of schools and teachers is a good thing, but I don't think relying on the standardized test scores of students is a valid way to do that.

I'm not a therapist, but it's hard for me to imagine a therapist suggesting to a family that a step-parent should be banned from family occasions so that a teenager would feel comfortable going, absent some sort of history of abuse or mistreatment. As unfair as it may seem, I think the therapists job would be to help the teen adjust to the situation. That may mean declining invitations to family events for a time, but assuming that this woman is going to be in the teen's life for the long haul, I imagine the goal of most therapists would be to help the teen figure out a way to deal with their feelings about the divorce and the step-parent, rather than asking the family to say the step-mother is unwelcome at family events.

Could he be teething? DD is generally an awesome sleeper, but when she is teething, she'll have around a week of really, really rough nights. A lot of times, she doesn't seem like she's in pain. She got four molars within two weeks a couple of months ago. We had no idea she was teething, because she wasn't doing any of the normal teething stuff like drooling or sticking things in her mouth or acting like she was in pain. She just had two weeks of a really foul mood and of putting up a fight every single time she was put down to sleep. Then the molars popped through, and she was back to normal.

Yeah, I don't see anything wrong with praising kids, either. I mean, you have to think developmentally. Sure, solving what seems like a relatively minor problem isn't a big deal if you're an adult, but if you're a preschooler--the age of Super Why's target audience--then it is a big deal. My problem with Super Why is that I think it misrepresents what a "super big problem" is. ;) Personally, I think the article is silly. It's an example of the problems you want to have. (Or, of making into a "super big problem" something that isn't. ;)) I think most people wish they had the luxury of shielding their child from all of life's harsh realities, but that's just not the way things work out. Which is to say that people for whom this might be a problem have an enormous amount of privilege.

I have no problem with the idea of submission. I've submitted to my husband's decisions, even when it hasn't been something I was thrilled about, many times. What I have a problem with is the idea that, in any given situation where husband and wife disagree and can't come to a mutually satisfactory agreement, it is always and only to be the wife who submits. My husband has submitted to my decisions, even ones he hasn't been thrilled about, many times. It's really a matter of who the decisions affects more, who is better equipped to make the decision (by virtue of their knowledge/experience, not gender), and who is more passionate about the issue at hand. I don't think we've ever had a situation where we were both equally affected by, equipped to make, and passionate about a given issue. That said, I'm naturally a decision-maker, so my temptation is to make quick decisions without fully considering how they'll affect my DH. I really need to consciously pull back and resist the urge to make a decision immediately, because I just hate leaving things hanging. For example, the other day I got an e-mail offering me some teaching sections for the fall. My instinct was to immediately e-mail back saying I'd take both of them--after all, the school needed me, and I figured DH would want me to be earning some extra money. I had to stop myself and decide to wait until DH got home, and then sit down and discuss it with him, and then reply. After we talked about it, I realized that it really wasn't practical, with a baby coming in early August, for me to be out of the house two full mornings a week starting September 1st. It was more important to DH that we not have the added stress of that than that we had the extra money. He thought, though, that either my not teaching at all or teaching one class would be totally doable, and really didn't have much at stake in whichever decision I made between those. So my instinct is to make quick decisions, always say yes, and take on more than I should. For me, it's really helpful to pull back and wait to make a decision until I've sat down and talked it through with my DH. I really, really resisted doing that for a long time, because it felt too much like asking his "permission" to do things, which as a grown woman I do not want or need, but more and more I realize that--especially since he is far more likely to see the reasons NOT to do something than the reasons to do them--he can give me a perspective on something that helps me make a better decision, and that I don't need to given an answer immediately to everything.

I think it really depends on the person. For me, belief is or at least can be a choice. I have very little certainty about most things. And, I'm okay with that. I'm the kind of person who is okay with not knowing, but still making the decision to throw myself into something knowing full well I could be wrong. I don't know if there's a God. I lean toward there being one, but I don't know and I accept that I don't know. I made and continue to make the choice to have faith, because to me, it makes the most sense of the world and of my experience in it, and because there are versions of the Christian story that I think are beautiful and inspiring and worth giving myself over to (I'm sure there are versions of other religion's stories that are also beautiful and inspiring and worth giving oneself over to, and if I lived in a culture where those stories were predominant, the choice I made would probably be different). I'm okay with the possibility that I'm wrong. Other people, both atheists and religious people, don't seem to have a choice. They believe because they must, or they don't believe because they can't. And if that's the case for them, then I trust that's the case and it isn't a matter of choice, even if it's not my experience.

My DS is exactly the same way. He's 7, and he seems to have more of a need for snuggling and physical affection than his one-year-old sister. In the last year or so, he's decided that he doesn't want to be hugged/kissed in public, because it's embarrassing. But, in private, he still wants lots of physical affection. For my own sanity, I do need to put some limits on it. I can't handle being touched all day long, especially when it's really hot and I'm really pregnant. But, I do try to make sure he gets as much physical closeness as I can deal with. I don't think there's anything wrong with it, and for him, I think it's a really important way of connecting with me, showing he loves me, and feeling loved.

I got pregnant when DD was 6 months old and I hadn't established a regular cycle yet (I had had some bleeding, but nothing regular). She was still nursing, although not exclusively. And we were using condoms. So, I'd test.

I don't think it's simply that it's old that is the issue, but that it's also broad. Catholics affirm the Nicene Creed; Orthodox Christians affirm it; Anglicans affirm it; every mainline Protestant church I've ever attended has affirmed it. I've attended a somewhat conservative Protestant church a few times, and they've affirmed it. If you want inclusive, then I think the Apostle's or Nicene Creed is, while not 100% inclusive, as close as you are going to get. Many of the SoFs that I see look more like an affirmation of one certain type of contemporary Western Protestant fundamentalism than of the historic, broad teachings of Christianity. And, if that's what people are looking to affirm, then that's fine. But, I think the issue is that many times people say they are looking for an inclusive SoF. If they are, then I'm kind of baffled that historic creeds aren't more often suggested and used, because those are pretty much the basis for every branch of Christianity. That said, I probably wouldn't join a group that wanted me to sign on to one of the creeds, either, not because I can't affirm the creed, but because I'm not interested in a Christian-only group.

Would it be offensive? No. Would it be something that Catholics, Orthodox Christians, or many mainline Protestants could sign on to in good faith? Probably not. I agree with the people who've said that "infallible" and "inerrant" are words that would make signing this difficult for many Christians, and often seem like codewords to indicate that anybody who doesn't read certain biblical passages in a certain literalist way (i.e., not interpreting Gen 1 as literal 6-day history) is excluded. AFAIK no historic creed made any claim of this sort about the Bible. If anything needs to be said about the Bible at all--and I don't think it needs to be, since the historic creeds work just fine without such references--I think "inspired" would be taking it far enough, if the goal is to be inclusive of as many Christian groups as possible. But, is the goal to be inclusive of as many Christians as possible? I guess that's the issue. If you really want to include as broad a spectrum of Christians as possible, then this wouldn't work. But, if that isn't your goal, then it's fine. If the goal is to include as broad a spectrum of Christians as possible, I'm not sure why a formal SoF beyond "This group is open to all Christians" is necessary. If the goal is to include only those Christians who meet certain criteria, then any group is obviously free to list their criteria and exclude those who don't fit.

With my OB--who's really the only person I've seen for the last 2-1/2 years or so--generally it's 5-10 minutes, but sometimes it's more like 20. Never more than 30, though. I don't mind waiting about 30 minutes, or a bit more if things are really backed up. An hour and a half would definitely be the point at which I'd started to get annoyed, though. With my old GP, I would routinely wait 3-4 hours. It was absolutely ridiculous. If I had a doctor's appointment, or one of the kids did, we had to plan for it to be an all-day affair.

I'm going to suggest reading Linda Bacon's Health at Every Size. Sometimes taking the pressure off to get down to a certain weight and instead focusing on adopting healthy habits for the many other benefits they provide is what people need to make long-term changes.

I bet the baby shifted into a different position. When I went for my u/s at around 21 weeks, I wasn't feeling any movement. (I had been feeling movement in weeks 18 and 19.) But, the u/s tech told me he was moving around like crazy. He was just in a position where I couldn't feel it. Tell her to just wait. LOL I'm in the phase right now where the baby is constantly bumping into either my lungs or my bladder.