Another "depends on the kid" - DD did things like that at the same age, even to the point of having one or more of her younger brothers to care for as well. My current 11.5 year old I'm sure will not be comfortable with that when he is 12. He barely is willing to be 30 minutes by himself during the day and last summer when his 18 year old sister was going to babysit him overnight while DH and I were gone, he still needed a bedtime call with me before he would go to sleep. I think as others have said, support network matters. When DD stayed home later at night at that age, we had 4 neighbor families within a two block radius we knew super well and trusted, so DD always knew she had lots of options if she needed any help.

I found this with a Google Books search... https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Book_of_the_Dead/qgmUDwAAQBAJ?hl=en It's not a novel though, but "interlocking" short stories. But has a character with that name and it was the only English language result for something near the right time frame.

Another one for the collection of colleges closing in part due to declining enrollment. This one caught my eye because one of my high school besties went to school here: Stritch University closing: https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/stritch-university-in-wisconsin-is-closing-after-86-years/

I don't know anyone IRL that uses them, but had I just heard about PH/Acellus in the dyslexia FB group I'm in, I think I would have had no clue that it was run by a sketchy cult leader - I learned about that here. I really do feel for parents caught off guard by this. In the dyslexia group, there are so many parents who feel pushed into homeschooling because public school and even online charter schools have failed them. For people who are trying to work and homeschool and are struggling to figure out how to help their student, I really get why an inexpensive online solution is appealing. I feel like the boat they're in is so different than the one I'm in, as someone who has organized my whole life around homeschooling since my oldest was a preschooler and who chose homeschooling out of personal desire to do so - so I don't want to be too judgy about the choices people are making who are walking a very different path than mine.

Hugs...I can relate! My DD doesn't have a car with her at college (about three hours away) plus she works every Saturday, so I knew she wouldn't be able to come home at Easter (which is also right around my birthday and DH's birthday). I would have loved to go visit her for the weekend, but it just isn't practical with other schedule considerations. I am eagerly counting down the weeks until the end of the semester! She had other plans over spring break so I haven't seen her since January. I kept thinking maybe I could go sneak in a quick trip sometime before the end of the semester, but between my schedule and hers I don't think it will happen.

It sounds like you are trying to come up with a gift that can be ready on hand to give to someone "in general" or could be given to someone you don't know their preferences ahead of time? I think the safest bet is to go more "gift basket" style and have a few (still nice) but smaller items that could be given in an attractive way. I think if you do several of the things already mentioned, most people would feel appreciated and if there was one item they didn't like, it would still be a nice gift.

I think "online appointment setting" is the search term you might want to try. I haven't used this site personally but it looks like they have a basic free tier you could try: https://calendly.com/

Are you able to mark as spam? Even if you can't block directly, if you can mark as spam it should train the filter to catch it in the future. For a while I was getting the same spam text every day but from a different sender so blocking didn't help. After a couple weeks the spam filter finally started catching them. (YMMV of course....this is in the Google text message app on Android)

Every state is different, so hopefully she can check into what it would take for her. I wouldn't take a child to a parking lot to drive until they had their learners permit. If anything happened (accidentally hit a car in the parking lot...or my DD almost went out of the parking lot into traffic by accident the first time DH took her out), there would be serious consequences. I don't get the impression her child even has a permit yet. 40 hrs with a parent is required in my state, and the driving school w/professional instructor is required for six hours too. The schools here require the parents to have practiced with the kid for a reasonable amount of hours before the professional sessions, then the three sessions (2 hrs each) must be at least 1 month apart. (Not by law, it is just a policy all the local schools have) I'm sure it is very different in each state!

I was actually going to say almost the opposite...I would be more likely to be direct about ending the relationship if it is likely to see the person "around" because running into them might just start the relationship up again. Maybe not in the OPs situation....but in a situation of my own where I conveniently "lost touch" with someone, she literally came to my door six months later to ask for something and ask why I wasn't messaging with her any more. The slow death did not work at all!

We woke up to snow when previously it had all just about melted...I feel like that was April Fools from nature. 😂 Some years we've had a lot of pranks going on but the prank game seems quiet today so far. My 11 year old has something kind of silly planned (I was in on it) for his brothers, but he is in bed listening to an audio book, so he'll have to figure out a way to make it happen later today I guess!

I realize I have basically become my mother when this made me text my daughter to be like, "you guys are in for some extreme weather today and tonight"... 😁. She didn't seem too annoyed like I sometimes feel when my mom texts me to ask how much snow we got. 🤣 Meanwhile, it's thunderstorming and chilly right now here but we're also in a winter storm warning because it's supposed to snow overnight tonight.

It's so hard...I've been on both sides of this. I'm not a big initiator in friendships...I just have so much going on in my household and my other commitments, that it's super easy to just let time go by and forget that I have friends I haven't been in touch with in a while. I like how some friends handle this who always insist on pulling out our calendars and penciling something in, even it's two months from now, for our next get together. I had a friend in my previous city who I always had to initiate with...I really loved her perspectives and found spending time with her refreshing, so even though I knew she considered other friends to be "closer" (or at least, from what I could observe based on who I think she did initiate with), so I was willing to be the one asking to get together to not lose touch. In one friendship right now, I have a friend who is complaining to me that she always initiates with me...and in this relationship, I don't really enjoy the friend all that much...We got to know each other when we were both involved in a particular group, and she was going through a bit of a rough patch. Honestly, I was being kind and trying to support her during a time she had very little support (she's single, estranged from family at the time). We really don't have that much in common, especially now that we no longer have "in common" the activity we were both doing at the time. I'm too nice to tell her, "I'm not that interested in being friends". Eventually, maybe I'll trying and distance myself a bit more. 🤷‍♀️

QFT! We know so many homeschoolers that promote doing two years full time DE during junior and senior years of hs (DE is free in our state) because it will "cut your college costs in half." DH is always shaking his head and wishes he could shout from the rooftops that there needs to be about 5 asterisks attached to this. His Engineering undergrad had only the most minimal distributed requirements (probably could all be 1 semester worth of classes if taken together), and had very, very specific math, physics/chem, etc requirements freshman year that CC classes might not match. Starting 2nd year and continuing on, there were major specific classes, that had to be taken in sequence, so even if Freshman year was super carefully planned out with perfect DE classes, there would be no way to graduate in less than 3 years. Even my DD's major, which is less technical, has this interesting thing going on where several classes that count for her school's distributed requirements also count for something in her major - a double dip. So, for the "international perspectives" and "US Diversity" requirements, she can't just choose any course on the list, she takes one that is in her department. She's in a specialization of food science, so these for her are courses related to world food issues and US cuisines/food culture. So a student taking DE classes they think might meet university requirements like this, might find that while they would meet requirements in general even at a particular university, they might not meet requirements of a certain major. I know people have piled on you a bit about this, but I hope you can find a way to help your kids see beyond their very local culture and what "everyone thinks" in their local area. Post-high school is the perfect time to branch out, maybe go a bit further away and see that things aren't the same everywhere...who cares what your neighbor thinks if you are a state or more away? I can count on one hand the number of high school friends I even keep in touch with, and no other "local people" - neighbors, teachers, high school part time job co-workers, etc. It's a chance for a fresh start!

I'm not coming from the exact same situation (so far all my kids are interested in going to college), but my DD was not a super-motivated/super-academic student in high school and didn't want to do any test prep for the ACT. I think it helps to keep in mind that in most states (I know this isn't the case everywhere), there are non-flagship state universities that will accept most students who apply, with relatively reasonable requirements - basic high school coursework (doesn't have to be AP), and reasonable test scores. My DD was able to get a reasonable score that fit the non-competitive admissions for the school she decided to go to with zero test prep. She didn't even look at the sample test. I know she could have gotten a higher score with more practice, and many students get much higher scores than she did...but it was good enough! She could even get mid-level "automatic merit" aid. She also had decent coursework, and a mix of As and Bs for grades (she did take two AP courses, but this is far from the total number possible - she would have only had 1, but Stats was only offered as AP her senior year). She just took the "basic 4" of science/social studies/math/English each year plus a foreign language, and then electives like art and culinary. She pretty much did no volunteer work and only one extracurricular activity, and spent a lot of time on personal hobbies and a part time job. She did about the opposite of what I did or what her next younger brother is doing, and still was able to head of to college. I think if one of my younger students was thinking they weren't sure about 4 year college, I would have them take credits that filled the basic entry requirements for a non-competitive state university (it might be less than 4 years of science or social studies), but not focus on honors/AP level work. A lot can happen between 8th and 12th grade to cause them to change their mind! They might see friends go on to successfully study at a 4 year school or learn about a career they've never heard prior to this point that would lead them to decide they still want to take the university route.

There are a lot of math YouTube channels that might have something. Most of 3blue1brown is probably above a 7th grade level (and Grant's voice is so relaxing, it might make the students sleepy...LOL). But I think there's plenty of content at Vi Hart, Stand Up Maths, or Numberphile. Veratasium has some math related videos too. Stand Up Maths has some that are 30ish minutes long, so they would take up most of the time, possibly followed by a discussion or activity. We all really liked the Jigsaw Puzzle one: He also has several about various ways to calculate Pi. On numberphile, my kids are obsessed with the Klein Bottle videos: And I like the Sequences guy:

We have "Buy Nothing" groups here, and people want surprising things sometimes, even things that don't seem useful to me (like broken items, because they want the item for parts). I don't think we would have the patience for parting something out. Our county waste facility takes larger items for $15-25. That plus borrowing or renting a truck for a couple hours is probably still cheaper than a junk service.

There are definitely going to be options, regardless, at less competitive schools. DH and I went to Iowa State University, and this is where DD ended up deciding to go (mostly because they offered a unique specialization with in her major, but the fact that she got an extra scholarship because we are alums didn't hurt). They have an extremely high acceptance rate and generous merit for out of state. It is a very STEM (and Ag) oriented school, so lots of CS and Computer Engineering students. Is it prestigious? No, but DH and many friends in STEM fields have gotten great jobs after graduating from programs there. This will definitely be my DS16's "safety" school on his list, as it will probably be cheaper for him even than our in-state flagship due to the merit aid and the scholarship for children of alumni, plus higher COL in the city of our in state flagship.

One thing about Windows to the World though is you can swap out some of the stories or not use every section. We swapped out one story (I think it was The Necklace?) because DS14 had just written about it at the end of 7th grade and didn't want to do it again so soon. I found another story that could be used to illustrate the same point the guide was trying to make. For DS14 for this year, 8th grade, I wanted to use high school or close-to-high-school level materials and assignments to prepare him for going to public school in 9th. We did Windows to the World in the fall and for Spring semester we are going through some of the units in Introduction to Literature by Campbell. I didn't need as many units as that book had anyway because I am using it for a shorter time, but I think Jane Eyre is the only one there that could be dark (we skipped it since I didn't think DS14 would care for it at all and he might be a bit young for it).

Help me understand what we should know about the idea of oversubscribed or impacted majors. Is this mostly a California thing? Or is it something to be concerned about for other large schools also? I see it mentioned now and again here on the board, but when I am googling, I am mostly seeing CA discussion. DS16 is making his long list right now so we can plan some campus visits over the summer. He is currently thinking a double major in math and computer science. Math is his passion, but he wants to pair it with something else, which could potentially end up being something other than CS in the end I suppose. The majority of his long list right now is Big10 flagship campuses (which includes our in-state flagship). With the idea of the double major, if the second major is CS, I guess part of what I am trying to figure out is will that end up making it harder to get in at some of the schools he is considering than if he just applied as a math major with a CS minor or picked a different 2nd major. He's only a 10th grader so this is really the very beginning of his search, but I want to know the right questions to ask when we start in on visits. DD18's major of Food Science is exactly the opposite type of major. We were told over and over again that Food Science is a "found" major that many students switch to after starting as Chemistry or Chemical Engineering, so there was never any worry of too many freshman applicants. All three schools she applied to were looking to expand the number of students in their departments through more outreach to let potential students know that the major even exists.

I agree with HomeAgain. A lot of the theme books are more flexible as to level and have A level assignments with B level "extensions" or modifications.

If you are completely settled on going, I would spend whatever you usually spend on a wedding gift. It does seem a little strange to me to spend less than you normally would have if you can afford it, but there is a real range in what people might normally spend so I don't think you have to buy an "expensive" gift, if by that you mean more than you would normally spend. We were invited to a niece's upcoming wedding that would involve 6 hrs each way of travel...plus the complication that kids aren't invited (even 18 year old DD isn't invited though she is an adult at college...I guess she is still too much of a "kid"), and it's on Easter weekend. So we would be essentially missing out on Easter traditions as a family AND asking someone the huge favor of watching our kids over a holiday weekend. Or we considered bringing the boys along and having them just stay in the hotel room during the wedding festivities, since DS16 could be responsible for younger brothers. That didn't really make sense either, and then we would be spending most of our Easter Sunday driving home after a Saturday PM wedding. We certainly could have afforded the expense and made it work...but we decided ultimately that even though this is a fairly close family wedding, we would rather avoid the complications and send them a more expensive gift than we would normally send, figuring we are saving $ on hotel, gas, food, etc. We will miss being there with family, but ultimately niece and fiance must have known that by choosing to both get married on Easter weekend AND not allow kids to attend, it would make it a challenge for some family members to be there.

While we really don't know where AI is headed, I think education that teaches a wide breadth of knowledge, critical thinking, creativity, and interpersonal skills will always be a good background. I think if anything, computers will become easier to use and require less effort - think about how easy it is to ask Google/Siri/Alexa a question now, vs. even a few years ago when the only way to search was to type in a question to a search engine. AI could make it less necessary for the average high school or college student to know how to use Powerpoint to put together a presentation, because the 10-years-from-now GPT100 could just put together the presentation for them based on a list of information that should be on the slides (probably far less than 10 years before that becomes the case). But even 10 years from now, I still don't think AI is going to be excellent at truly novel idea generation, and it can't replace human touch and interaction (though it could make the jobs of doctors, teachers, therapists, etc easier). And even with AI becoming more powerful and making general computer use easier, I have a suspicion there will still be humans behind the scenes doing research to improve the AI, and solving programming problems created by years of legacy systems that will undoubtedly still be in use in a decade or more's time. I think often of how my mom once told me when I was a middle schooler and interested in computer programming that, "By the time you are an adult, computers will program themselves." LOL...she was a few decades off, that just now AI can generate some code. But even if AI can generate some code, I don't think human programmers and engineers will be out of work any time soon. (But still plenty of other kinds of jobs for people who have no interest in that field).

The most obvious thing I can think of is clerical error - someone sending the letter picked the wrong recipient (could be someone with a similar name). Or maybe a "notification" was sent to a large number of students, instead of only the x number who were supposed to receive it. Not a scholarship, but at a school DD was admitted to but decided not to attend, she received a congratulations letter for a particular program she didn't apply for at that school...followed the next day by a "whoops" email stating they had sent it to the wrong list of potential students.

We tried to do the the practice book, but essentially after reading the “story” he didn’t understand how to even mark the sentences, and had no better understanding of the parts of speech or parts of a sentence. We didn’t try it for very long, but the straightforward instruction in IEW Fix It, while somewhat minimal, was much more understandable to him. IEW Fix It has been workable for us, and he would get nearly everything correct on most days. I think the focus on the IEW terminology is probably what bothers me the most - they use terms for different clauses that are different from what most grammar books use, and students are supposed to remember a list of sentence openers that are listed by number. We aren’t currently using IEW for writing, so spending time memorizing the things that match the IEW writing don’t make sense for him (I did use some IEW with my older kids, so Fix It was a better fit for them).