See, mine don't bicker. Instead they cooperate to come up with new, unwise plans (let's push the one-year-old on the full-size swing! Let's turn the fridge up to the coldest setting and see what happens! Let's line up the Furbies and see if we can get them singing a Furby chorus! Let's put eight types of random kitchen ingredients in a glass, mush them together, and see if we can convince the little one to drink it!)

Didn't we already have this discussion in the previous thread? Did that one get locked or something?

Well . . . that's kind of how common law works. Once SCOTUS makes a decision, the lower courts are obliged to apply it unless they can distinguish the facts in some way.

Almost 300

I was just thinking, wow, my kid who used to take my entire bathroom apart is really pretty cool now that he's six. So he cut his own hair today. That was awesome.

Ah, the joys of small children in groups. There's always at least one agent of chaos, someone aiding and abetting the agent of chaos, and I'm not supervising the way I did with just my first kid because I'm changing a diaper and teaching someone to read. AFAIK there's no link between being a particularly chaotic kid and a later career as an axe murderer ;) If there is, please don't tell me. I'm already having a rough day.

I don't usually post in cc threads because I'm not Christian and have little to say on it. I don't think a cc thread is a good place to start comparing Jesus Camp to North Korea. I think the comparison is ridiculous and I'm neither Christian nor North Korean.

I am Canadian. You cannot generalise Canada to the US. Suppose I have a child who wants to do a career that is available at UBC and at our local lower tier school, Random University College. UBC engineering runs about 10K a year. It's in the city so most people commute, and tuition is their major expense. Engineering (I'm playing pretend because as of right now I don't know if any UCs have engineering in my area) would run about 4K a year at Random UC, given the cost of other programs there. Like most major Canadian universities, UBC is located in the city. Since half of the total population of my entire province lives in the Lower Mainland, tuition is far and away the major cost. So putting my kid in UBC for all four years costs me an extra 24K. If I do 2&2, I'm out an extra 12K. My kid can make a very significant contribution to those kinds of costs. Do I believe that a higher prestige school with the first-five-year boost is worth 24K? I think it's definitely possible. When my American friends are choosing a more or less prestigious school, they're talking about 200K or more of difference. They're talking about an entire (albeit modest) _house_ of difference. I think it's unusual for the prestige bump to be worth 200K unless you're talking about a real bottom-of-the-barrel school vs. a really good one. That isn't usually the choice. It's usually some version of fine vs. slightly better.

Very intensive. Also didn't work for dyslexic-ish dd. Tried R&S. You'd start with Spelling 2. Switched to Apples & Pears which requires me to read things out loud and check things, but at least there's no tiles. Plus it works for dd. But I won't go back to AAS with following children unless I really have to.

I am a lawyer. The vast majority of lawyers are humble plodders doing a mediocre job of what they do. People generally go into law because it's something you can make a living at doing a good-enough job. As opposed to, say, being a cellist. You have to be a really, really good cellist to make a go of it. Maybe I just have low standards. For an awful lot of things, good enough is good enough. Re: State school. AFAIK the evidence available right now does not suggest that the same person who is choosing between a state school and an Ivy realises benefits equal to the extra expenditure at the higher prestige school.

My time is pretty dear to me, and so when someone really had to come over and it turned out they just wanted to pitch me something, I did feel pretty put out. Also, increasingly stuff being sold is wrapped in a little package of fear-mongering woo. No, I don't believe your product will cure cancer, or ADHD, or really anything else. I don't believe that continuing to clean with Pine Sol is poisoning my family and I don't think I need to eat your super food or that eating it will make me live to 112. It's like a host of weird pseudo-science Amways popped up. And I feel a bit bad for these people because they're putting in so many hours and so much money and almost never do they make the same amount of money that they would have using that time to stock shelves at minimum wage.

Also, my understanding of that passage in the catechism is that all people are saved via the Catholic Church but not that all people must be members of the Catholic Church to be thus saved. But not a Catholic. So take it for what it's worth.

It is very questionable whether it is possible for one human being to "brainwash" another, even in a Japanese internment camp or a lunatic cult. Nothing you could or would do to your child in your own home will brainwash them.

It Works wraps -- I thought they were a girdle? That's not what it is? I totally thought that people were selling a MLM Spanx.

Mine is young living oils, which if my fb is to believed, cure everything from dyslexia to cancer. Not exaggerating.