I have an incessant talker, too. Half the time, maybe more, I don't think he's even looking for a response; he's just talking. Sometimes to his baby sister, sometimes to his toys, sometimes just to himself. At this point I get more worried when he's NOT talking. Unless I know he's reading or playing a video game, when he's usually quiet, his not talking usually means he's up to no good. Unless he's interrupting us or monopolizing the conversation, or trying to talk to us when we're clearly busy with something else (and it's obviously not something pressing he needs to say), at this point we just let it go. We figure he'll grow out of the need to constantly be talking at some point.

Tea tree oil soap (I use the one from the body shop) has worked really well for me.

We've got six years between our first and second. It took us that long to feel okay about having another child. For a long time we figured we were such unfit parents we shouldn't breed again. ;)

My 7yo LOVES to help with his 1yo sister. He would do everything short of changing her diapers if I let him. But he wanted a sibling for forever and was so thrilled to finally have one. We've having a third in August, and he's already making plans for how he's going to help. In fact, one of the first things he said when we told him about the new baby was that he didn't know how he'd be able to take care of a new baby when he still had his sister to take care of. :) He's decided he can take care of them in shifts, so neither one feels neglected. If he was reluctant to help with her, I wouldn't push. As it is, though, he mostly plays with her and entertains her, keeps an eye on her (in a safe, childproofed area) when I'm in a different room, reads to her, and brings her bottles and snacks. He can also help her get ready to go outside (put on a sweater or jacket, socks and shoes), but she can get a bit fussy about that. He's said that he wants to be her preschool teacher when she's ready for preschool. I said we'll see if he feels the same way in a few years.

Ivy League schools are pretty much where grade inflation started, though, so it shouldn't be surprising that it continues there.

In our case, if we really can't either compromise or let the issue be for awhile so we can discuss it and think through it, whoever will be most affected by it would make the decision. So, for example, my DH is on the job market right now. If he were to find a job in a place I really didn't want to move, I'd share my feelings on it, but ultimately it would be up to him to decide, because it's his job. We're also trying to decide if I'm going to teach any classes in the fall, since we're having a baby in August. DH is free to share his opinion with me, and I'll consider it, but the decision is ultimately mine. I honestly can't think of any time that's happened, though, where one of us went ahead and made a decision the other really felt strongly against. We've had plenty of disagreements, but with enough discussion and time, we've always been able to come to a solution we were both okay with.

I can so relate. I have an incredibly strong-willed child who can get very destructive when upset. I have had the exact same issue with so many parenting books. The advice seems good in theory, but my son does NOT react the way the books seem to expect. I don't walk away, because I need to keep an eye on him, but I do try my best to lay out what he needs to do and what the consequence will be (i.e., he has ten minutes to put his pajamas on and if he doesn't do it in time, he'll lose the extra minutes off of his evening reading time; he needs to do his math before he can have a snack and play), and then just wait him out. I try to stay as calm as possible, and not yell or nag or even mention it again. He knows what he needs to do, and he knows what the consequence is if he doesn't. So if he decides to jump on the bed rather than putting his PJs on, I don't yell at him to stop; I just deduct the time from his reading time. If he wants to spend half an hour whining about math rather than doing it and telling me I'm the meanest mommy in the whole wide world, I just ignore him the best I can, supervise him enough to make sure he isn't starting another activity, and wait him out, because I know at some point he decides it's not worth it and gets back to work. That tends to work for me because otherwise DS and I get into what I think of as the "you cannot do anything fun every again!" spiral. I tell him to do his math. He says no. I tell him to do it again. He says no. I tell him he's lost video games that afternoon for being disrespectful. He starts yelling that I'm the worst mom ever. Soon he's screaming and trying to hit me, and I'm piling on the punishments, and the more punishments I pile on, the madder he gets and the more he lashes out. It just turns into a huge disaster with both of us getting more and more angry and nothing productive coming from it. So, for us, laying out the thing he needs to do and the consequence, and then ignoring him if he dawdles/whines/refuses, works best. (I don't think I could leave the room, though. If he's being destructive, I take away whatever he's using to be destructive, like you did, as calmly as I can and without saying anything.) For really serious things, like hitting, I make sure he knows the consequences in advance. He hits me, and X happens. Then, if he does hit me when he's already really angry, I don't need to come up with a consequence on the spot or even mention the consequence, which would only make him more mad given his mindset at that moment. Instead, I ignore it, and later when he's calmed down I remind him that, because he hit me, consequence X is in place. I actually first figured that one out dealing with my college students. I was always terrible at telling somebody I won't accept their late draft or that they lost a point for being tardy. So I started just putting the policies in my syllabus, and telling them on the first day what the policies were, but that I was not going to tell them every time they have an infraction. If they show up late, I'll smile at them, I won't lecture them, but they're still going to get the point taken off. Same with DS. If he hits me, I'm not going to scream at him and tell him no video games for 24 hours at that moment. And when he's calmed down, we'll hug and I'll tell him I love him and forgive him, and we're all good, and the consequence is just going to be quietly applied without anybody getting worked up about it. This does NOT work perfectly. DS still has LOTS of "those days." But at the very least it keeps me saner than when I felt like I had to respond to his outbursts, and he does seem to be catching on. FWIW, DS has also been like this since day 1. I mean, literally, he was the most stubborn, difficult kid I ever encountered. I thought I was the worst mother in the entire world until I had my DD, who is so different. She's not perfect, but she's just so easy, and she seems naturally inclined to want to please us. So it gave me some confidence that it wasn't entirely my parenting, but partly just DS's temperament (although I know that his temperament and my parenting have not always been the best combination, which is why I need to make such a concerted effort to stay quiet and calm in the face of his misbehavior, because that is NOT how I'm inclined to react).

That's a tough one. Part of the issue for us is that we don't want to be dependent upon two full-time incomes. That just seems like too precarious of a situation, because if one of us lost a job, we'd be in really bad shape. If we're able to get by on one income, if DH were to lose his job and not find another soon, I could look for full-time work in the interim, and we'd be okay. So it's important to us, even independent of homeschooling, that we live in such a way that we can get by on one or one-and-a-half (because I teach a couple of classes most semesters) incomes. DH is currently searching for a new job (he's a post-doc right now) and we do not plan on living somewhere where his income wouldn't be enough to live on, perhaps with some part-time supplementation from my teaching. We'd absolutely live with family, if that were possible, rather than both work full-time to make ends meet. And we are fine with things like living in a small home and having one (old) car and not taking vacations (we're not vacation people anyway). So it's very, very important to us that we not need two full-time incomes to make ends meet, or start to live in a way that we come to need two full-time incomes, but that's somewhat unrelated to homeschooling. It's just a situation we think would stress us out too much and not one we want to get into.

Honestly, I have to admit I do the same with my husband: I do NOT understand why he's always so tired. He has a job where he spends most of his day sitting at a computer. I've got the house to keep in order, a one-year-old to wrangle, a very rambunctious seven-year-old to deal with, and I'm 27 weeks pregnant. And yet he's the one who falls asleep on the couch after dinner, while I'm running around the house trying to get things done. I do try to hold my tongue, though. I know that it can be really mentally draining to be doing the kind of work he does all day; when I've spent hours on end sitting and doing desk work, I tend to feel really exhausted. And, I've certainly had periods in my life where I've been super-exhausted. I'm just luckily not in one of those right now. But, I do have to admit that I sometimes feel the urge to just ask him why the heck he is so tired. ETA: I just saw that you're pregnant. I was sooooooo tired the first 10-11 weeks of this pregnancy. I had no idea how I was going to manage, especially with my DD still being so little (7 months when I got pregnant). Thankfully, I ended up feeling much better after that, and I have had the easiest second trimester ever. I think I have more energy than I normally do. But I was napping ever chance I could manage those first months.

Has justice been done, though? I'm not sure. Real justice, a real making right of things, would undo the deaths and the pain, and this will not do that. I think we can look forward to real justice in the future, when God will make all things new and right every wrong. At that point, we can really, truly celebrate. This is, at best, a punishment that fit the crime, which is a good thing, but IMO not a joyous thing.

Where is that line, though? I don't know, I tend to think that some of what separates justice from vengeance is intention and response. And when we celebrate something like this, I do think we're moving toward vengeance. It's a very, very fine line, that I think sometimes is mainly related to what's in our heart. And I do think that if we celebrate something like this, it reveals that it was a desire for vengeance that was in our hearts, rather than simply a desire for justice.

This, exactly. I personally believe that all people will eventually be reconciled to God. I marvel at a God who will in time not only right all the wrongs done by somebody like Bin Laden, but will reconcile Bin Laden to himself and reconcile Bin laden and his victims. I don't know by what process that will happen, but it is cause for celebration.

I'm in the camp of thinking that his death was probably necessary, but that the killing of any human being is not something we should ever celebrate. It is, at best, a regrettable necessity like, as I mentioned in another thread, putting down an attack dog. But it seems like it should be a time for solemnity to me, not a time for dancing and joyful shouting.

My go-to reading when I'm needing something very light and not feeling very well is young-adult fiction. I'll usually just head to the library's YA shelf and pick up whatever looks interesting. I'd particularly recommend anything by John Green and Laurie Halse Anderson to start with. You really can't go wrong there. Some of their books can be a bit "heavy" but since it's YA fic, it always has a satisfying resolution.

Except that, unfortunately, I don't think anybody would have been talking about it anyway. If only we were a people who became outraged when the innocent family members of our declared enemies were killed. But, we aren't. So I don't think that could be seen as significant enough to warrant a distraction of this magnitude.

I don't know. On the one hand, I do understand these sorts of decisions, both legacies and affirmative action. When you've got thousands of applications from valedictorians with high SAT scores who were president of the student council, you need some criteria to determine who will get in and who won't, and I do think to some extent it's going to have to involve taking non-academic factors into consideration. My main issue is just that so many people who get up in arms about AA tend to not care or think at all about legacy admissions, even though legacy admissions tend to constitute many more spots. On the other hand, I think it could be argued that legacy admissions, given the reality of these institutions--how many politicians they produce, how many people involved in the banking industry come out of them--seem like a way to maintain an American form of aristocracy, where real power never has any chance of falling into the hands of the average person, no matter how hard they work or how skilled they are.

But we're talking about schools where the vast majority of applicants are qualified. So they're taking spots from other equally- or more-qualified students. I'd be less concerned about legacy admissions if people weren't so up in arms about affirmative action. I don't see how anybody could be okay with one but not the other; if anything, a far stronger case, morally, can be made for affirmative action than legacy admissions, since with AA we're talking about students who in many cases have been up against social disadvantages, and not students who have had every advantage imaginable.

If he hears, I'm not really sure how I'd explain it. We had a talk once about how, if a dog bites a person, sometimes that dog has to be killed. We shouldn't be happy about it and it would have been better if things had been different, but sometimes it's what has to happen, and we can be both sad that a dog died but feel better that it can't hurt anybody again. (There were a few news pieces here about pit bull attacks on children that REALLY scared my DS, which is why we were talking about it.) I guess I'd explain that this is kind of the same thing.

I had an episiotomy with both of my deliveries. With the first one, I pushed for 4 hours. By the end, I would have done anything to get the baby out, and the OB who was at the delivery told me that I could have the baby out in one more push with an episiotomy and maybe ten more if I didn't. (I have no idea how/if she actually knew that, and she was not the nicest doctor I've ever encountered.) I did not hesitate to ask for the episitomy. Looking back I don't know if that was the best choice, but after four hours of pushing, you're willing to do just about anything. But, the recovery that time was rough. I was in a lot of pain for a while, and intercourse was painful for almost a year. With my second, she came out FAST and had a big head. My OB (this time somebody I really trusted and knew--she was the same OB who did my prenatal care) thought that it was likely I was going to tear and said if I wanted she could do an episiotomy along the same cut as last time. We went with that option, and it went very well. The annoying part was that it seemed to take forever to get sewn up after, but they must have done a good job, because the recovery went really smoothly. I really don't remember having much if any itching, much less pain. Of course, DD broke my tailbone on her way out, so it's possible that I was in so much pain from that that I just didn't notice any other pain.

Same here. Plus, I was an English major, and I love grammar. I think it's fun. So, I partly do grammar at this point because I just like teaching it. ;) I have a feeling that my DS, who seems to have a natural facility with language, would internalize grammatical structures even without formal instruction, and be able to use them in writing. Even in kindergarten and first grade, his writing was surprisingly in line with standard written English, and we weren't doing formal grammar then. But, it's something I enjoy, and I certainly don't think it does any harm, since it's not something that he hates doing at all. So, we do it. I absolutely agree; grammar is a must for communication of any sort. But, I think the point was that dialects also have grammar, which is how people who speak those dialects are able to understand each other. If people were just conjugating verbs willy-nilly, communication would break down. So there's always a grammar for any understandable dialect, and the issue isn't about whether the use of language is grammatical or not, but whether it's following the rules of what has come to be standard usage. At one level, I think there's the issue of intelligibility. If somebody is continually using the wrong verb tense, then that is not simply non-standard, but confusing. If somebody is writing sentence fragments or run-ons where there is no clear relationship between ideas, it's often difficult to decipher their meaning. Those are issues that interfere with the ability to get a message across at all, and, as a writing teacher, those would be the first issues I'd tackle with a student, and if that was all they corrected all term, I'd feel like significant progress had been made. Then there's things like subject-verb agreement, which is more of a standard/non-standard thing than an intelligibility issue. It's not too difficult to discern that the "be" in AAVE is the present form of "is." It's non-standard, but it's grammatical. I think people need to be aware of which usages are standard and which are non-standard, and what settings the different usages are appropriate in, and how to switch between them comfortably. But I'm not going to bemoan the end of civilization as we know it because people are using non-standard but grammatical and intelligible (at least to the people they are intending to communicate with) forms in their e-mails or Facebook updates. And then there's places where standard usages of language are actually changing. I'm pretty sure that we'll soon see "they" become commonly accepted as a standard neutral third-person singular pronoun (i.e., "Someone left their book in the classroom" as opposed to "Someone left his or her book in the classroom"). To me, that's language change in action, and a good thing. Not having a neutral third-person singular pronoun is a gap in the English language, as many people do not feel that "he" fills that role successfully. So using "they" in that way is becoming increasingly common. I don't think that's some sort of destruction of the integrity of language so much as a perfectly natural and appropriate evolution. We've already come to totally accept "they" used that way in speech, and I think it's only a matter of time until it will become part of our prescriptive grammar. And I would be perfectly happy, in my role as writing instructor, to consider that use of "they" standard from any student who could explain to me why they were using it. ;)

I teach introductory composition courses, and there is a lot of small group discussions and exercises and peer workshopping, so it's important to me that as many students show up at any given class as possible. I tend to not be as strict with my attendance policy as I should. Every semester I say that this time I'm really going to crack down and deduct points for every absence after the third unexcused one, but then I back down. Partly it's because it is a huge PITA to deal with the excused vs. unexcused issue. Partly it's because every semester I have a couple of students who really do have extraordinary circumstances that warrant special consideration. Partly it's because in the end most (though not all) of the students who don't show up regularly end up doing poorly anyway. My main issue, as an instructor, is with students who routinely miss class, hand in work late, skip handing in drafts, etc., but then expect private tutorials via e-mail and during office hours and after class. It drives me crazy when students expect me to catch them up via e-mail with everything they missed in class, or to sit down and review a draft with them that they submitted too late for me to comment on when I responded to all the other drafts. If a student doesn't come to class but submits work on time, does a good job with it, and manages to keep up with what's going on, then I can't say it bothers me all that much. That rarely happens, though. Usually the students who miss a lot of classes end up having a lot of difficulty keeping up and dealing with them ends up taking up a lot of my outside-of-class work time. It's very frustrating, and something I need to get stricter about. I do take attendance into consideration when grading. I do think, personally, that effort matters and should factor into a grade. I work at a university that has both a very good honors and scholarship program that attracts some great students, as well as an open admission policy for anybody who graduated from a high school in the city where we're located. That means I get an enormous range of skills when I'm teaching the introductory comp course (which everybody needs to take), ranging from students who are already writing strong academic prose to students who are unable to construct a sentence in standard written English. If I didn't take effort into consideration, I'd pretty much need to write off about 1/4 of my class based on their diagnostic essay; instead, if a student works hard, shows improvement, and seems like they are moving in the right direction, they can pass, even if their skills are still much, much weaker than many of their classmates. I have a student this term who attended one--yes, one--class the entire semester, and seems to think he can pass the class. He is delusional.

If you're concerned about it, you could either not use it, or, if you came across material that didn't fit with what you want to teach your children, tweak it. I'm a very politically liberal, theologically moderate Episcopalian. I very, very rarely find a homeschooling curriculum that I completely agree with, especially when religion is a part of it. I do a lot of tweaking, and if it's something I can't tweak, I pass it by. No big deal.

What age level?

I really don't think this is anything new, as mentioned. It's very difficult for me to think of ANY classic children's story or book that includes a happy, intact family. Fairy tales? All dysfunctional/broken families. Dickens? Orphans abound. Huck Finn had a terribly dysfunctional family. Jane Eyre was an orphan. Or, in many stories, the parents just aren't a presence at all. My son actually asked me about this the other night. He was reading Harry Potter, and he'd recently finished The Guardians of Ga'Hoole series, and he noticed how much the two plots were similar: orphaned child goes off to a boarding school, etc. We started talking about how many other books we've read or he's read have the same plot, including most of the older stories we read, and why that might be. Our conclusion was that it's really hard for kids to go off and have adventures when their parents are around, because parents tend to put a stop to that kind of thing, and a book without adventures is no fun at all. ;) Re: The Boxcar Children, they're orphans.

I really appreciate you posting this. I teach writing at an inner-city university, and many of my students speak (and write in) AAVE/BE. Yes, it's not just "wrong" standard English; it's a dialect with its own consistent grammatical structures. Some students seem to have a much stronger natural ability to "code-switch"--to move between AAVE and standard English--than others; some students really, really struggle with standard English, particularly standard written English. I think--and I try to teach my students--that the big issue is audience. There is absolutely nothing wrong with AAVE. However, for reasons that are indeed largely political and probably quite unfair, standard English is what is going to be expected of most students in academia and the work world. So, it's to their advantage to learn standard English, and become comfortable communicating in it (especially in writing), even though they can communicate just fine in their usual dialect. But personally I try not to make value judgments, with my students, like "right" and "wrong"; I talk more about something being standard English and not being standard English. Unfortunately, it is very, very, very difficult for adults, even young adults, who haven't already internalized the forms of standard English to become comfortable with it. I don't know that formal grammar instruction would necessarily make the difference, because, despite popular opinion, most schools, including the ones they attend, DO include formal grammar in the curriculum. I tend to think that immersion is the best solution, and find that my students who are avid readers tend to have a much better grasp of standard written English grammar than my students who don't read, regardless of their language background. I don't think that negates the value of formal grammar instruction, and immersion probably doesn't work for every student--my sister is an avid reader but isn't a fantastic writer--but I don't think formal grammar instruction is the cure-all, either. Isn't the English we now consider "standard" a Spanglish-like mixture of Old English and its predecessors, Latin, and other languages? I think it's best to combine a respect for the prescriptive rules of grammar with a respect for the inevitable reality of language change.