The other girl is seven. Maybe her mom wears thongs and gets dressed in front of her. My mother used to sometimes get dressed around us, especially when we were that age; I knew what her underwear looked like. Heck, I sometimes come out of the bathroom in my underwear after a shower when my 7-year-old is around; I just don't think it's a huge issue. If the mother (or older sister) of this girl wears thongs, then that's probably what she thinks grown-up underwear looks like. Little girls like to do grown-up things. I liked to wear high heels when I was seven. I wasn't thinking, "Wow, these shoes will make me look sexy and my legs look shapely." It was just what grown up women wore, and kids like to play at being grown up. Many women wear thong underwear, for a variety of reasons, from wanting to look sexy to just finding them more comfortable. I don't find it at all unusual that a young child has a mom who would wear thongs, or that, if that was the case, they'd know what thong underwear looked like.

:grouphug: That would hurt me, too. In terms of quantity, it's quite possible that your son is learning "more" in school. After all, they're sitting in desks for like 7-8 hours a day; you have to provide a lot of content to fill that time. That doesn't mean he was actually learning better, though, you know? I'm sure I learned quite a bit in middle school; after all, I was there for 7-1/2 hours each day, and teachers were telling me things. We covered a lot of ground, I think. But I honestly can't remember any of what I learned during that period, and I'm not sure I actually became a more skilled student or thinker during that time.

Our kids would either go with my parents or my sister. My ILs are fine people, but they are older and in poorer health than my parents, and I honestly don't think they could handle caring for three kids. Neither my parents or my sister and her husband are ideal, but we're confident they'd do a good job. My parents are older, and it would be hard on them to raise three kids (although they could do it). My sister and her husband work a lot, and don't want kids, and just don't really have lives very conducive to raising children. However, they both adore our kids and would totally step up to raise them. They live close to each other (within about 45 minutes), so we figure that between all of them our kids would be well taken care of. Our difficulty has been figuring out who they'd live with primarily. Right now, they'd probably go to my parents, who are in their early 60s. But in ten years, if we sit down and revisit it, I can see that changing and us making my sister and her husband their primary guardians if anything happened to us.

Why is it skanky? I don't wear thongs myself, because I don't find them comfortable, but many non-skanky friends of mine wear thongs because they find them more comfortable and don't get panty lines. I guess I'm just not sure why thongs themselves would be skanky, any more than claiming that choosing bikini-style undies over "granny panties" is skanky. I'm a fan of granny panties, myself, but, again, with nearly all women I know, the underwear they choose is more of a comfort issue. If they were going to be showing off the undies, then, yes, that might indicate a problem (not a problem I'd identify as "skankiness" in girls that age, though). But, if they were simply emulating a more "grown up" style of underwear, I don't really think it indicates a problem--the cutting of clothing without permission is a problem, of course--and I certainly don't think we should be calling the behavior of 7- and 9-year-old girls "skanky" under any circumstances.

As a white person, I don't think it's really my place to decide if it's insulting or not. My feelings on that are irrelevant, because it wasn't said about me. If she's insulted, then I'm not going to say she doesn't have a right to be.

And thank goodness for that! Most people want to read modern fiction more than they want to read classics; public libraries should be about providing the community with what it wants, not the government deciding what it thinks people should be reading and stocking that. I've yet to find a library that didn't stock the classics, though. I guess I've just been fortunate to live in areas where libraries were valued at least a little bit and there was a good selection of books (and easy, free ILL access).

I'm using both with DS: We do CLE, which is spiral, and Math Mammoth, which is mastery. He prefers the spiral approach; he gets bored/frustrated if he's doing too many of the same kind of problem at a time, and the built-in review is good for him. So CLE is our main program and MM is more of a supplement for areas I want to work on more. I can totally see how for other kids the spiral approach would annoy them, though, because they'd feel like they were jumping all over the place. I think it's one of those things that would really depend on the kid. I had no idea what the difference was, or that there were differences, until recently. I wish I'd known sooner, because I would have realized DS would do better with a spiral approach and I think our last year of math would have been much more pleasant.

I think most kids are pretty good at self-censoring, honestly. At least my kid is. He really wanted to start reading Harry Potter. I feel like the first few books are okay (he's 7), but the later books are too mature. But, I figured he'd probably get bored by the third or fourth book anyway, because while the adventures of an 11- and 12-year-old are fun for a little kid to read about, they really aren't particularly interested in what teenagers are doing, and that's what happened. He zipped through the first two books, loving them, slogged through the third, and gave up about two chapters into the fourth, saying it was boring. When he's older, maybe he'll go back and find the later books more interesting. I don't think that a librarian has to think about an author's oeuvre before recommending a book to a child. If Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing is age-appropriate on its own merits, I don't think it should be either unavailable or not recommended to those its appropriate for because some of Judy Blume's other books aren't. If she was recommending Forever to first graders, that would be an entirely different issue.

Amazon is a private business; they can carry whatever they want or not. That's very different, in my mind, than a library or other public institution deciding to make a book that some (or many) patrons want unavailable to them because of what are often sectarian complaints from a small group of objectors.

This, at least not for a while. Maybe I'm just an untrustworthy person when it comes to my kids, but I never trust my DS when he tells me that a friend did something without his knowledge. My take on it is either that 1) he knew and is lying or 2) he should have been paying better attention or 3) he should have brought the situation to my attention right away if his friend was doing something he objected to and that he knew would get them in trouble. So I'll give DS consequences for things that happen when a friend is over even if he claims that he didn't know/didn't do it.

I don't think anybody's saying that. The issue is whether the concerns of what usually amounts to just a few people over a book that, in many cases, there is a demand for from other patrons, should be enough to have a book removed from the shelves. I'd venture to guess that if you asked to have the world religions book taken off the shelves, and it was, there'd be little to no uproar, because that book probably is not in demand, and nobody would even notice. But, if you wanted to have the Bible (or Harry Potter, or The Catcher in the Rye, or Twilight) removed, then it would cause a stir, because people would be looking for those books and unable to access them. So I guess the reason I don't find things like "Banned Book Week" problematic is because for a book to actually become well-known as a banned book, it has to be a book many people want in the first place. Otherwise nobody would care if it was banned/unavailable. So we're talking about books that are popular and that people want access to that they are being denied access to because of, in most cases, the efforts of a small handful of people (if not just one outraged individual), and not just about books that are deemed inappropriate for the library.

I rarely used wool covers with my first, but with my second, I had started knitting (and soakers are super fast and really fun to knit) and my DD has such chubby little thighs that being able to customize was useful, so I do use wool with her, although not all the time. I've had very good luck with the wool. Unless I let her go really long between diaper changes, I don't notice the soakers getting damp. Usually DD just wears dresses (because we're lazy and it's easier) or we just use the wool soaker as shorts (especially in the summer--she doesn't need any more clothes on), so I don't know how they'd do under pants. On a side note, I was initially worried that she'd be too warm in wool when the weather got warmer, but so far I haven't noticed any problems. If anything, she seems more comfortable in wool soakers than in her other covers when it's hot, maybe because they're less constricting and more breathable.

Really? Again, I must either be very fortunate or very oblivious, because the teens I've encountered at the library have either been too busy on the computer or looking at books or doing homework to be doing anything problematic, or have come over to talk to my DS and been really nice and polite. I don't think I've ever encountered poorly-behaved teens at the library.

Unless it was the only book on world religions available at the library, I don't think I'd mind. If it was the only book on world religions available, I'd probably be more likely to bring up my concerns and suggest additional titles be ordered, but I don't think I'd ask that the specific book be removed. Was there actually pictures of sex or drug use, or descriptions of them, depicted in the display? Or was it that books that featured those things were displayed? I assume the display was aimed at teens. Not children. Most children I know go to the library with their parents, and their selections are guided by their parents. Teens are more likely to go alone and choose their own books--and, IME at my library, are more likely to be at the library than littler kids, which could explain why displays often seem geared towards teens, rather than children. I do think it's wise for libraries to have separate sections for children and for teens/young adults. If they don't, I'd actually prefer to see YA literature shelved with the adult fiction, because I'd say much YA lit today is closer in theme, content, and even reading level to adult fiction than to juvenile literature. Plus, I imagine many teens would rather browse in the same section as the adults than next to a shelf with picture books, if those were the choices. My branch library is very small and shelves the YA books near the children's lit (it doesn't carry any adult fiction at all), but the main library has a new, very large teen wing. My main complaint is that you can't get in unless you are between the ages of 13 and 18. As an adult fan of YA literature, I find that a bit frustrating, and perhaps the result of an overabundance of caution. You can get a librarian to go in for you and get a book, or place an interlibrary loan order, but it would be nice to be able to browse there. But, having the teen wing definitely solves a lot of the problems that come along with shelving children's and YA literature together.

I'm not sure no parties is feasible, or would be very productive. But I think more than two parties (I realize we have more than two, but no other parties have a real voice in the political system) would be very nice.

We're kind of in the opposite boat here: DH and I were both raised Catholic, and then both stopped practicing in our late teens. I joined the Episcopal Church in my early 20s and have been a happy Episcopalian ever since; DH had no real interest in organized religion and is agnostic. At this point, he sometimes feels like he'd like to get back as part of a religious community, and he really can't see himself being anything other than Catholic. He has no moral or intellectual or spiritual objects to the Episcopal Church--in many ways he agrees with it more than he does the Catholic Church--but to him the Catholic church is the church, and there's no point in joining anything else. Episcopalians, to him, are just wishy-washy Catholics. ;) I go back and forth. On the one hand I'd really like to worship together as a family and be a part of DH's spiritual journey, and I do enjoy the richness of the Catholic tradition. On the other hand, I love the Episcopal Church and there are issues I have with the Catholic Church that I'm not sure I could just sit with. I think that if it got to the point where DH really, truly decided he was going to return to the RCC and was serious about it becoming a part of his life, I'd probably be willing to return with him, and raise our kids Catholic. But, as it is, I'm definitely the one with more spiritual interest and DH just toys with the idea (although more and more), and it's not something I would initiate.

I'm kind of struggling to see how what my library does or doesn't carry has nothing to do with me? The problem is that most of the time it's not "the community" deciding that these books are inappropriate; it's a small group of very loud complainers making such a ruckus that books are removed to shut them up. Plus, why should "the community" get to decide what books are available to ALL local taxpayers? If you lived in a predominantly Muslim town, would you like it if your local library, which you supported with your tax dollars just as much as they did, decided it wouldn't carry any Christian-oriented books? I also think it's a sign of class privilege to assume that just because a book is for sale, everybody has access to it. That's simply not the case. Many people rely on libraries for their reading material. "Banned books" are generally books that other people in the community WANT to access that some people feel should not be available. Nobody's talking about libraries having to carry everything. If you local library doesn't carry some obscure or unpopular book, it might just be because there's no interest in it in the community, and you could probably get it via interlibrary loan if you needed it. But, if your local public or school library doesn't carry Harry Potter because a few people think it's demonic, then that's an entirely different issue. It's taking something that they would otherwise carry and that there is a demand for and removing it to keep a vocal minority happy.

I'd always liked the idea of homeschooling--the main thing I remember when I think about my K-12 days was being constantly bored--but I don't know if I would have actually done it if it hadn't been the best choice, practically, for us. We live in Detroit, which has terrible public schools; when we started we were living on very little money and private school wasn't feasible; and the charter school we started DS in just didn't work for him. He was tested as reading at a 4th grade level when he started kindy, and none of his classmates could read at all. They had no idea what to do with him, he was constantly getting in trouble, and it was just a really stressful, unpleasant situation. We were also CONSTANTLY sick. I mean, literally constantly sick from about October until March. Everybody but us, it seemed, in DS's preschools and kindergarten, sent their kids to school when they were sick, and we would catch everything. It was really wearing us down to have one family member or another (or, a lot of the time, all of us) sick with something for much of the year. But now that he's been home for almost two years, we just like it. It works for our family. I love having the kids home with me. The kids seem to like it: DS has told me that we need to homeschooling DD for preschool because he would be so sad if she was away at school every day. We can choose curriculum that fit our kids rather than having to try to force our kids to fit with the school's curriculum and methods. Our kids aren't as influenced by cultural things we find troubling--particularly rampant materialism--as they would be if they were in school all day. Especially at the lower elementary school level, they've got plenty of time to play and be kids. And we can wake up whenever we want. ;)

I started having PVCs and PACs when I was a teenager. My triggers are definitely stress, fatigue, and caffeine (which I generally avoid), as well as hormonal changes (I feel a lot the first few months I'm pregnant, then few or none the rest of the pregnancy). I used to feel them all the time; they're the kind of thing, I think, that the more you think about them, the more you notice them. Now it comes and goes. I have periods where I'll feel them frequently, and long periods where I don't notice them at all. Regular, moderate aerobic exercise seems to help me, although whether that's because the exercise is helpful in itself or because it reduces stress and helps me sleep better, I don't know. Oh, I find that hydration is an issue for me, too. If I'm dehydrated, I'm more likely to feel them.

I agree. I don't necessarily think he's wrong, but I'm not sure he's right. It's definitely his issue with his sister and MIL, though, not yours. So I'd just let my husband do what he wanted and stay out of it as far as possible.

I guess this is my question: what does not knowing math facts mean? Is not having them memorized rotely the same as not knowing them? Can you say that a child who hasn't learned their facts by rote memorization but who is able to quickly respond to addition and subtraction problems knows their facts? What does "know" mean when we're talking about math? My concern is that my DS seems to have learned his facts pretty well on his own, conceptually. (We did Miquon for the first two years of homeschooling.) I'm worried that I'm messing up his progress by focusing on drilling and rote memorization, and undermining his confidence, because at least for now that's what seems to be happening.

Mine changes a lot, but I think I'll have to go with the Indigo Girls, too, and pick "Devotion."

I picked up some math games to play with my DS7 recently. I'm noticing--and this would seem to go against conventional wisdom--that he actually does a lot better with the problems that we haven't drilled and he hasn't memorized yet. The fact that we've actually reviewed and drilled and memorized, he freezes up over. So, he can tell me, just having to pause for a moment to think, that 13+5=18 (we haven't drilled or reviewed that) but will freeze up and go blank if asked what 2+5 equals. If you have a kid who is strong conceptually in math, can attempts at memorizing and drilling facts backfire and undermine their confidence and ability? Because I feel like that's what's happening. I don't want to put my DS behind by not having him memorize his facts, but if he can quickly figure out the problems, is it really that important that he has the answers memorized?

I think that, once you have kids, your house won't be as organized as it otherwise would be, no matter how your kids are educated.

Do you honestly believe this? You really believe that spousal abuse and rape did not exist until this generation? I mean, I don't even know how to respond to that, because it demonstrates a level of willful ignorance of history and reality that is just staggering. Rape has been around since people have been around. And the abuse of women has been, too. If anything, "this generation" is one of the first to take both seriously as problems that affect women, as opposed to seeing them as property crimes against men.