I think the issue is that words like "sick" and "pedophile" get thrown around, and that's just not the case. 16 is the age of consent in many states. 16 year olds can and have been getting married for pretty much as long as there's been marriage. Not to mention, this girl's life experience is very different from that of a "normal" 16-year-old. She is in the entertainment industry. She apparently had/has her own TV show. She probably has far more in common with this guy, who is also part of the entertainment industry, than she would with your typical 16-year-old boy. The argument against adults and older teens that makes sense to me is that they really don't have anything in common; your average high school student has very little in common with your average 51-year-old man. But neither of these people lead typical lives. Now, I do think it was unwise for her parents to get her involved in the entertainment industry at her age, and to apparently condone her marketing herself based on her sexuality, but given all of that, this pairing really doesn't seem that weird to me. And, I agree that going through puberty doesn't make you an adult, but 18 is an arbitrary age. Most 18 year olds I know have far more in common with 15 and 16 year olds than they do with people in their 20s. And, if we want to go by maturity, we know that most people don't mature, in terms of things like decision-making and impulse control, until their mid 20s. We could just as easily locate "adulthood" at 15/16 (when most people have gone through puberty and are sexually mature) or at 25/26 (when most people's brains have matured) as we can at 18. Given how slippery these things are, and how diverse people are, I'm just not inclined to pass judgment.

:iagree: I think it's an abuse of power, and not something I'd support. But there's nothing sick or perverted, sexually, about a grown man finding a post-pubescent teen girl attractive. For most of human history, you were a child, went through puberty, and then were an adult. Adolescence is a relatively modern invention, and I don't expect that human nature is going to change to accommodate that. There are certainly good reasons why we don't allow sexual relationships between adults and teens, but it is a whole different issue than adults being sexually attracted to prepubescent children. An adult male who finds post-pubescent teen girls sexually attractive is not a pedophile (or, I'd imagine, all that unusual). It is pathological to be sexually attracted to prepubescent children, but I think it would be incredibly difficult to argue that finding adolescents who are sexually mature attractive is pathological. FWIW, many of the models we see in magazines and catalogs and commercials and on runways are teen girls, made up to look older. They are held up in our culture as the epitome of female sexual attractiveness. Is it any wonder, then, that many men would also find them sexually attractive? That said, I'm not buying that Courtney Stodden is actually 16. She looks like she could be pushing 40, to me.

I'd say you can just tell them that, if you feel like you have to say something. I look at my student loan debt sometimes and wonder why the heck I racked that up if I'm just going to be home most of the time. But I figure that, when the time is right for us, I'll look for full-time work using my degree. Even if I didn't start working until the youngest was 18 (at which point I'd be 51), assuming I worked until 65, that would still be 14 years of full-time work.

I was going to say that probably won't happen, but then, out of nowhere, my DS7 decided to sit down on top of DD1 and say, "Look, Mom! I'm hatching an egg!" (And he had no idea I was reading this thread.)

We have a book called Making Animal Babies that's for kids, and it's quite good.

This is the kind of thing I was thinking of, because of the gas situation coupled with the difficulty she's having studying, turning in assignments, etc. It sounds to me like maybe she could use some direct help in learning to set up systems/routines for managing things.

Medical bills. Debts that they were ashamed to ask for help about but couldn't pay off, that have caught up with them. Maybe being scammed by somebody?

I think you absolutely did the right thing. I wonder if there are some underlying issues going on with her that need to be addressed? From what you say, it sounds like maybe her forgetfulness/impulsiveness/poor decision-making is more than just typical teenage irresponsibility. Maybe not, and in any case you did the right thing, but my first thought reading the post was that maybe she had ADHD or another issue, because it sounds like she has patterns of really poor decision-making and impulsive behavior. I can understand your car running out of gas once, but when it's happening several times in a period of a few weeks, that seems deeper than just normal teenager irresponsibility to me.

I prefer my DS and his friends outside, but that doesn't always happen. What drives me crazy is when they are coming in and out of the house every 5 minutes. And, usually they are not just doing that, but they are coming in and out both the front and back doors every five minutes. At that point, I usually tell them to pick outside or inside, but just stick with it. I do generally have to insist that they stay outside to get them to stay out, though. We just don't have the world's most fun yard. When we're at friends' houses who have more stuff to do in their yards, DS usually doesn't want to go inside at all. So we do a lot of our outdoor playing at other people's homes.

Right. I'm just saying that I don't think it's so much that people are saying "I won't consider it school until the government says it is" as people having different lines for when what they are doing moves from routine parenting stuff to "doing school," and at what age they make that transition.

I'm not sure that's it, so much as what a parent considers part of parenting, and what they consider "schooling." When my DS was preschool age, he attended preschool for about a year, and the rest of the time was home. I didn't consider myself a "homeschooler," because we weren't doing anything I considered above and beyond normal parenting stuff. I read to him a lot, I sang him nursery rhymes, I did some prereading stuff, we went for lots of nature walks, but to me that was just parenting. When I started adding in formal education, then to me that was homeschooling. It's my job as a parent, at least in my mind, to read to my child. It's not necessarily my job as a parent, in modern society, to teach him fractions. So, when I'm doing that, I feel like I'm homeschooling and not simply parenting. I think maybe it has less to do with reliance upon what the authorities say than upon the ways we think about parenting and educating, and how much we see the two as distinct.

What we've been doing lately that seems to be working well is working on dinner together after DH gets home and spends a few minutes with the kids. I try to make sure the kids are in a relatively calm mood when DH arrives. He usually comes home around 5:15, so around 4:30 we send home any friends, do some picking up of toys, and then the kids watch videos. That way, they're pretty calm and occupied, and DH and I can get into the kitchen for 15 or 20 minutes, make dinner, and catch up on what's going on. Having the kids TV/video/computer/video game time coincide with when DH comes home and when we're preparing dinner definitely seems to help keep things calm.

We've definitely settled on Matthew for the first name, and are pretty sure we're going with James for the middle name.

:lol:

I considered myself a homeschooler when I pulled DS from kindergarten. He had been home on-and-off during his preschool years, but I didn't really consider that homeschooling. However, now that I feel like a "homeschooler," I think I'd probably consider myself to be homeschooling DD once she's preschool age, and not when she gets to kindy age.

We have one car, which DH takes to work, so I don't have a car for a big grocery shopping during the week. Usually we do our big grocery shopping on Saturday morning, and then DH will stop on his way home from work on Wednesday night to get milk, eggs, or anything else we might need to get through the week. We've been thinking about getting groceries delivered, though.

This is my concern, as well.

This morning, DS (7) sat there looking at me blankly when I asked him what 10 minus 8 was, wailed that he DID. NOT. KNOW., and then pouted for a few minutes until he finally muttered "two." Then, tonight, I told him he had to get to bed at 9. I told him it was 8:34. He then told me, without a moment's hesitation, "I've got 26 more minutes!" :banghead: I don't know what to do with him. BTW, when I posted earlier about my son's aversion to math facts, people had asked if we'd done things like manipulatives and mental math. My DS has steadfastly refused to use manipulatives of any kind since I've started teaching him. He considers it "cheating" and doesn't want to do it. I've tried giving him Cuisinaire rods, an abacus, base 10 blocks, chips, convincing him to use his fingers. He gets upset with me if I try to use manipulatives to show him, because he says it makes him feel stupid. So I'm kind of at a loss for what to do. I'm totally fine with his using the abacus or blocks or his fingers, at this point, when doing addition and subtraction, if that will help him visualize things and make connections, but he's unwilling and very, very stubborn. I don't know if that's part of the issue, or if he just puts undo pressure on himself about math (and if he's not thinking about it as math, like tonight when he figured out the time, he doesn't have that pressure), or what. But it is darn frustrating to have a kid who can figure out problems like that in his head but then will turn around tomorrow morning and tell me he doesn't know what 6 plus 1 equals.

DS2 is due August 5th. DD came at 39 weeks, and I'm kind of hoping this guy follows her lead, because I am not loving being massively pregnant in the summer. (My other two were born in May and March, so it was winter and early spring for my third trimester, which was much more pleasant.)

And even that, to me, is not a basis for loving one's country. I find the idea that we should consider the enormous wealth the U.S. has as a reason to be proud kind of odd, especially because I don't believe we achieved that wealth because we were so much nobler and harder working than very poor nations. And, certainly there are other countries that have standards of living and a quality of life higher than ours. Should we feel less proud than we would if we lived there? I guess I just don't get patriotism. The closest I can come to mustering a patriotic feeling is the kind of sentiment expressed in the "Hymn of All Nations": I can get behind that, but I don't think I could get behind a patriotism that didn't simultaneously acknowledge that people in other countries feel the exact same way about their nation, and that we are no more justified in whatever pride/devotion we may feel than they are.

Not if I could help it. For my own appointments, I try to schedule them so DH can be home for them whenever possible, because I don't even like bringing the two. I do bring my two to the doctor's together when one of them has an appointment most of the time, but with five, I'd definitely prefer to have somebody else watch them.

For me, 1-2 kids would be a smaller family, 3-4 would be medium, and 5+ would be large. But, then, I feel like we've got a really small family with our two, and the upcoming addition of #3 still doesn't make me think we're close to a large family. My DH, on the other hand, who's an only child, thinks three kids is a whole bunch. I often have neighborhood kids with me when I'm going places like the library or the park. I can usually get away with having my two plus two other kids without anybody saying anything, but once I have 3 or more extras tagging along (so 5 or more total), it seems like everybody's got a comment. So that's probably part of why I'd say, for me, "many kids" would start at 5.

If you already have a relationship with this child, and the babysitting has been going well (you've been paid on time, you haven't been taken advantage of, etc.), and the money would help your family, I'd definitely consider it.

I've concluded that I'm either completely oblivious or very fortunate, because most of the bad behavior I hear people on the internet saying they see all the time--obnoxious teens, unfriendly neighbors, people with designer bags using food stamps, people who let their children run wild and do nothing about it--is stuff I pretty much never see, or at least see so rarely that it really, really sticks out to me when I do. And I grew up in the northeast and then moved to a mid-sized Midwestern city and now live in a large Midwestern city, so it's not like I've only been in places where people are noted for friendliness and good manners. I can recall one time when somebody was outright rude to me when I was trying to be polite. I was living in New Jersey at the time, and was at the laundromat. I had an extra coupon, tried to offer it to the woman at the machine next to me, and she snapped at me. The situation was so striking and unusual that it had me in tears. I honestly can't think of any other time where I've dealt with that level of rudeness. In general, I smile and say hi to people, and they smile and say hi right back.

I've wondered this about my DS, who's 7. At this point, my main concern wouldn't be what he'd see at the birth, but him seeing me in pain and feeling scared about that. Plus, I had a lot of bleeding after both of my births so far, so I'd also be a bit worried about that. He's seen births. He was super-interested when I was pregnant with DD, so he watched parts of The Business of Being Born with me, and saw a couple of the water births. But, for him, I do think that he'd feel very out-of-control and scared seeing his mother in pain, and I wouldn't have the presence of mind, I don't think, to be there for him in that moment. I think it totally depends on the kid, though. And, in two more years, I might feel very differently. With DD's birth, DS got in the room just as she was being born; he heard her first cry, but he and his father were behind a curtain. He got to hold her as soon as she was cleaned off, which he loved. He still tells us that the happiest moment of his life was when he heard her cry and got to hold her, so I do think there's something really neat about a child being there in some capacity when a sibling is born, if they are old enough/mature enough for it. For me, though, at this point I don't think DS being there watching while I was actually pushing the baby out would be best for either of us.