I can tell you a bit about our experience -- With my youngest (currently 10/4th grade, with dyslexia/dysgraphia), we did the first two Writing and Rhetoric books orally this year. I read it to him, and he responded orally. Every now and then I would have him write or type a sentence or two of his responses, but not usually. We've already finished both books -- he really liked it, so we moved pretty fast. He really "got" the composition part when doing it orally but but quickly started getting stuck on some of the more grammar related questions, so I knew we needed to add in more grammar instruction than just watching schoolhouse rock videos and talking about grammar informally. I was also starting to explain spelling/reading rules more often in terms of parts of speech, which was hard to grasp with just informal grammar instruction. We tried some MCT first (I have the Island level books from my older kids) and he was so confused by it... 😄 I think it was just too flowery and abstract for him, because he really wasn't getting much from it. In January we started IEW Fix-it book 1 (The NEW edition - it starts out at an easier level than the "old" level 1), and this has been a much better fit for him. It's very straight forward, and the explanations are pretty clear. Tricky things are repeated many times so there's plenty of chance to get it. I give him a lot of grace on the homophone mistakes to fix, because I know that's pretty tough for him to spot as a dyslexic. We actually do 2 pages per day (usually there is only 1 sentence per page), but I don't have him re-copy the sentence because I want him to save his best writing energy for our spelling instruction. He is approx. late 3rd/early 4th in terms of his reading level I would estimate, and he rarely has any issue reading the sentences, so the reading level is not too advanced in book one. We will probably switch to IEW for writing next year. I don't prefer the next few W&R levels, so my other kids switched to other programs after the first two W&R books. I think IEW will be a good fit, and I am hoping by next fall that DS10 will be ready to either hand write or type at least his Key Word Outlines for IEW and maybe even some of his whole sentences (maybe...or maybe toward the end of the year). He is learning to type right now with TTRS, and has not moved very quickly but I am hoping his typing skills grow with a bit more practice time over the summer when we aren't doing as much other schoolwork. Another grammar I see recommended in some dyslexia-specific groups is Winston Grammar. I think it is well liked because it is more tactile, with grammar cards that are used to mark parts of speech, so that might be worth checking out. If that looks more appealing, you could still use IEW or another program for writing. Some people complain that Fix-it is too much "guessing" and kids aren't really internalizing the concepts, but I'm not seeing that so far, except sometimes on new concepts that DS10 hasn't developed very much familiarity with -- he would "guess" for the prepositions at first because he had no idea, but then the more I pointed them out and talked about their role in the sentence, the more often he would get it correct,and now he can find them most of the time. Edited to Add about MCT: He understood/comprehended the Island level stories in terms of what was going on in the story itself, but somehow he didn't understand at all how it realted to analyzing sentences or using the grammar knowledge in other contexts like spelling or W&R. It was confusing to him somehow that the things going on in the story were the same as "grammar" if that makes sense.

My ADHD/possibly-on-the-spectrum 13 year old boy has no interest yet in chatting or messaging with anyone. His two closest friends are a year younger than him and come from families that are much stricter about technology use than ours, so I think I'll be coordinating his social life for a while. I just don't think it's out of the range of normal for 13 year olds to not be ready to make a lot of their own social connections. My 15 year old only just this year really has started making some of his own plans....and he still finds it hard to do alone because none of his friends can drive so he still needs to coordinate with me for a ride in most cases if he is going to actually do something in person. My two older teens will ask someone, "Do you want to message later?" Or "How can I get a hold of you later?". Then they let the other person suggest their best method of contact. Email, text, etc. My 15 year old is only on discord besides email/text and my DD17 also has Instagram. If someone suggests Snapchat or another app they aren't on, they will just say they don't do that and suggest text instead, in which case it then makes sense to exchange numbers.

I read a lot of Isaac Asimov books in middle school. The first three in the Foundations series should be fine (The "original" first three, which would be Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation), as well as the two Robot mystery novels, Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun. Those 5 were all written in the 50s and so are "cleaner" than the books he wrote later. The Foundation books are nothing like the recent TV series -- they are pretty slow paced and full of political intrigue. I liked them as a teen, but they might not appeal to all.

Some of my favorites were the Library of Congress, National Archives, and the Udvar-Hazy center of the Air and Space museum (outside the city, but we did it on the way in). I also liked the monuments, the bureau of Engraving and Printing, and the National Gallery of Art. We stayed at a VRBO in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. We almost always VRBO or AirBnB when we travel -- especially as a family of six this almost always works out better for us since we don't "fit" in one standard hotel room and we like saving money by being able to cook at least some of the meals in the place we are staying. When we book these type of rentals in big cities, we always book near mass transit stops, and read the reviews carefully to avoid being scammed. Since we've had a vehicle with us on most of our trips, including DC, we pick places that either have off street parking, or if applicable a street parking permit. So far, we've always had great experiences.

I'm so sorry that happened to her. My DD17 was asked to prom this year by a boy she hardly knows. She didn't even know his name, only that they have a class together. Luckily it was just a casual ask, and she was able to tell him that she didn't feel comfortable going to prom with him since she hardly knows him. A week or so later a boy she's been friends with for a couple of years (and knows well enough to have hung out together a couple times) asked her, and I think she was very glad he just texted her to ask, because she even wanted to think that through before saying "yes."

I personally find molasses a sticky pain to deal with and I hate the smell...so the convenience of brown sugar is well worth it. We use enough of it that it never turns hard before the bag is out. My kids like putting it in oatmeal, so it's common for us to just be using a spoonful or two at a time.

We really enjoyed walking the freedom trail, and taking little side journeys along the way to find interesting snacks (amazing Italian pastries, for example) and just look at interesting shops and buildings. The swan boats are iconic and not that expensive. For me seeing the USS Constitution ship was a must do, but I get that not everyone finds old ships all that interesting. I had already read a lot about it so I was so thrilled to tour it in person.

I was so annoyed...the actual answer was the very first word that popped into my head after row one but it seemed so darn unlikely. By row three I still thought the actual word was super unlikely....but, here we are. Wordle 287 4/6 ⬜🟩🟩⬜🟩 🟨🟩🟩⬜🟩 ⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

I'd let him take the easy Spanish class. I think the instructor will figure out he has stronger skills and may give him some enrichment potentially even if the actual classwork is below his current level.

My newly-15 year old is saving up for a kit to build a drone. https://store.flitetest.com/ft-vcr-quad-value-bundle-kit/ Other small ideas: Food/snacks - at Christmas I did a Rubbermaid tub full of random snacks for DS15. For his birthday he told me a few specific more expensive treats he wanted (stroopwafels, fancy dark chocolate, mochi ice cream). He also told me he wanted "interesting fruits" 😁 He has also liked interesting decks of playing cards, nice mechanical pencils, funny t-shirts, and dice (for role playing games). We also almost always give a book for each birthday/Christmas, or an audiobook credit if they prefer. DS15 got "Humble Pi" by Matt Parker, about math mistakes in the real world for his bday.

We're still waiting on University of Wisconsin Madison. Before we went for a visit (back in early December), DD wasn't even sure she wanted to apply there, but DH insisted she take a third tour somewhere, and this was the next choice on her list. (We had already visited Iowa State and University of Nebraska Lincoln). We had a better than expected visit at UW-M (especially the visit with the department for her major), and she applied regular decision. Madison doesn't usually release regular deadline acceptances until the last week of March. We are making our second visit to Iowa State next week, which is has been (I think) where she has leaned toward through the whole process, as they have a really unique major there that suits her well. Our first visit at ISU was in the summer with no students around, and we didn't get to meet and professors or students, only an academic advisor. So, it's possible if this second visit is really great at Iowa State, it won't matter about Madison either way, but DD has said ever since she applied there that she wanted to hear back one way or the other before deciding. We have reciprocity with Wisconsin, but she got merit scholarship and child-of-alumni scholarship at ISU, so I think Iowa State will actually work out to be cheaper also.

I knew someone who was in training to offer this form of therapy a few years ago. It seemed he could gain a certification for this form of therapy without having other qualifications (he had no college level coursework in psychology or any health field). That makes me a bit leery - I would definitely investigate the qualifications of any practitioners of this style of therapy. This guy's personal life was a mess which made me doubt the entire method, but I realize there are probably other mental health practicioners who are a mess personally and can still function well professionally.

I almost failed today, and got it by lucky guess in row six. I had no idea that you lose your streak if you miss a day. I assumed it was the number of wins out of all your tries .. I do it on my phone but if we ever camp somewhere remotely where I don't have signal, I would lose it that way. DH lost his streak in the switch to NYT somehow, so he has no sympathy for my desire to keep my streak. I seriously considered cheating today when I thought I might fail...lol.

We also did a Seattle trip without a car for the actual Seattle portion of the trip - we actually flew out, rented a van to spend a few days camping at Mt Ranier/Mt St Helens, then returned our rental car and took transit all around the city. It worked out really well. I would 2nd Seattle as a great destination with a lot to do for all ages. August tends to be less rainy than other times of year in Seattle! We spent just a day in Vegas in late August a number of years ago...my kids were elementary age and younger at the time, and we spent time at M&M world, and drove around to look at the sights, as well as swimming in the hotel pool. It was soooo hot when we were outside! I wouldn't have wanted to spend very long there at that time of year. We just stopped over on our way to the Canyon, and then we went on the California from there.

We usually get the E88 (unlike E85, any newer vehicle can use it), which was 3.63 yesterday. But the regular cheapest was 3.87 I think?

There are also sentences about alcohol... I let my then-11-year-old continue but it made me slightly uncomfortable to see that some sentences were about beer or whiskey. He thought the sentences about dating were funny, but I could see how that would bother some parents. There are also sentences that are just kind of morbid...something like "Everyone has to die." Eventually it got a bit more difficult for him than he was really enjoying, and he stopped doing it. If you google "Weird duolingo sentences" you will see humorous/odd examples. There are a lot of things that are just funny and maybe don't really make sense. I think it is on purpose to make it more memorable, but it could be confusing to some kids in general.

In book sales groups that I'm in, books that have pictures of animals on the cover are frequently rejected as being "animals for sale". Ditto books that have a banned item in the title..."Album of Horses" by Margarite Henry or "Rifles for Watie" by Harold Keith. 🙄. I get that it's just automated moderation bots but it is annoying to have to work around it nonetheless.

Using PayPal goods and services provides extra protection, but it is generally in favor of the buyer and not the seller, so if the buyer wanted to claim the item never arrived, then most likely paypal would side with them, especially with no proof. On a valuable purchase (something where I am not willing to take the chance that the package might get lost in the postal system, etc) I would purchase insurance and delivery confirmation. Then if the person tries to claim "it was never delivered" you have some way to make an insurance claim or fight with paypal over the person asking for a refund. When I sell books (usually on Facebook, in vintage book groups), I send the person an invoice in paypal for them to pay. I'm sure if you look, there would be a tutorial somewhere on how to do this, but it is one of the options in the paypal menus. Then the purchase automatically will be paid as good and services, rather than risking that the person might try and pay "friends and family" when you want them to pay the other way. When you decide what to charge, just make sure in your "profit" you account for the fact that you will eat the cost for insurance (unless they agree to pay for the insurance -- but it is really more to protect you since paypal so often refunds buyers), as well as the paypal fees. Google a paypal fee calculator if you aren't sure what you as the seller will get charged in paypal fees. There are no fees for "Friends and family" transactions...but again, no protection for buyer or seller so it isn't a good idea with strangers! As for boxes and packing material, I wouldn't use an envelope for a heavy textbook. I save amazon boxes and re-use those. You can also purchase a plain box at someplace like Target, walmart, office supply store, ups store, etc.... When selling vintage books especially I always saran wrap the book or put it in a ziploc bag, as well as using newspaper or other packing materials so the book doesn't shift in the box. Using waterproof materials around your book makes sure that if it ends up sitting in the rain or snow on someone's porch, the book doesn't get water damaged (another reason they could ask for a refund, and you would be out the money potentially).

I just started reading AOPS Pre-A aloud to my DS10. He completed Beast Academy 5D in January, then we moved straight into AOPS Pre-A. He is dyslexic, and his reading ability lags far behind his math capability, so I will probably be reading him math books for a while yet. I am doing some of the writing as well in the notebook since he's also dysgraphic, and the writing tires him out. So far we've made it through chapter 2 and I've only been driven slightly crazy. My older two boys worked through AOPS Pre-A and Intro to Alg totally on their own, just asking for help if they got stuck. It is hard to sit with a kid while they wrestle through a problem, watching them take the totally wrong direction. 🤪 But struggling through and trying different approaches is part of the method. I'm not actually sure the discovery method is a good fit for him, but he is bound and determined to use the exact same math books his older brothers used, so we are sticking with it for now. He's so young that if we make slow progress, it's no big deal.

PSA: today is the first day the NYT version differs from the original. So if you play off a page that you haven't refreshed since the move or from a saved copy, you will get a different word that players on the new site. Only a small number of the words have been changed, apparently. It was a good day for my starting word with the puzzle on the NYT site: Wordle 241 2/6 🟩🟩🟩⬜⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 (Spoilers in article): https://mashable.com/article/wordle-241-glitch-answer

This has been an interesting discussion. I feel like when my kids were younger that besides rules that were a matter of safety, we had a number of rules that were based on desiring to avoid property damage, and the adult realities of having to pay for said damage/spend time making repairs. Maybe my 4 kids were extra hard on the house? I thought I would be a "fun mom" and let my kids jump on the couch. The not-new-to-us couch broke a spring, damaging the wood floor of the house we were renting. We had to buy a new couch AND money was taken out of the damage deposit when we moved out of the house, because there were huge gashes where the spring dug into the floor. There was no way my 4 kids ages 10 and under could have paid those costs, so they were paid by us as adults, and we made the rule that there would be no more jumping on any couches. We also had two doors in that same house that could be slammed together, and when one slammed into the other, the very old door knobs would catch in such a way that the bolt holding together the door knobs on one or both doors would essentially "snap" when the doors were untangled from one another. We made a rule for no slamming those doors, because the consequence was not only the cost of the new bolt (very cheap, even the kids could have paid for it), but also my time or DH's time to drive to the hardware store, buy the new bolt, and the time to reassemble the door knob set-up again. I told my kids a number of times when they were younger that when they were adults, they would have more freedom to act in ways that would potentially cause material damage to the houses they lived in, because then they would have the money, transportation, and skill to fix whatever damage they caused (or live with the results of having a broken couch, etc...something DH and I weren't willing to live with). Now that my kids are older, they would probably say we have very few "house rules" because I feel like we did explicitly teach a lot of norms and rules when they were younger. I think if you asked them, they would said our main house rule is "No shooting nerf guns at someone who doesn't want to be shot at." -- Not that I ever have to say that to my boys now, but when they have friends over I am always telling the friends that this is our "house rule" for nerf guns, because prior to having that rule, friends who came over would indiscriminately shoot their nerf guns at me or DD (who never wanted to play nerf of be shot at). I decided that either most households must not have this rule or they just don't play nerf, because me or DD getting shot at by the boys' friends when playing with nerf guns happened surprisingly often.

One small thing to note - In our experience, the Introduction to Algebra book covers more than a typical Algebra I class in a public school, and then the Intermediate Algebra may also not be exactly equivalent to all public school Algebra II classes, because it does not cover any Trigonometry (but I think must cover additional topics beyond a typical public school Alg II). I believe that in the AOPS sequence, Trig is covered in the Pre-Calc class, but in many public school classes (especially at an honors level), some Trig is in both Algebra II and Pre-Calc. After finishing Introduction to Algebra, my DS14 was able to self-study a few additional chapters of a public school Algebra II honors text, and then pass an exam to test out of Alg II at the high school he wanted to enter and move directly into Pre-Calc as a 9th grader (he had taken geometry also in 8th grade).

Lol! Our cat likes to sit on top of piles of Legos (we joke that he is channeling his inner dragon on a hoard of treasure), and waits patiently for the dryer to finish running so he can hop inside the second we open the door...this despite the fact that once he got stuck inside it for a couple hours when someone absentmindedly closed the dryer door before leaving the house not noticing the cat was still sitting inside. Overall I'd say he prefers warm places, so the fridge does seem surprising!

I think this is a real factor to consider -- If the first flight A to B is cancelled, is there even another flight in the day that will get to B in time to make it to the flight from B to C? We live in a city with a small airport that makes a couple of regional connections, and a couple of national connections. We've pretty much given up trying to fly out from here because even in weather that seems perfectly fine to us, if the plane coming IN to our airport met with weather delays in its origination location (even thunderstorms), crew shortages, airline computer problems etc..more often than not they would just cancel the outboound flight for that day rather than state that there was a delay. At our small airport there is often only one flight per day to each destination (or maybe one in the very early morning and one very late in the day), so if the first flight is cancelled, it often completely messes up the entire itinerary. It feels like flight cancellations are becoming more common these days in general, unfortunately. If it is all on the same airline they will rebook it for you or find some way to get you on your way (once when my husband's flight from our small airport to a regional hub was cancelled, the airline paid for a shuttle bus to get passengers off the cancelled flight to that first destination, and of course rebooked subsequent flights if that wouldn't get them there on time!). But if the B to C leg is on a totally different airline, I can see how that could cause real problems unless the second flight was some kind of flexible ticket.

When my kids were much younger, they really liked making silly videos of them acting out different stories they created, showing how to build something with legos, or things like "The top ten ways to laugh" or "The top ten ways to faint" -- it would just been them acting out each of ten ways to do those things. They put varying amounts of time into editing and producing them, but I would then upload them to a youtube channel attached to my username so we could share with friends/family. I wasn't concerned about their faces being visible because there was no identifying information in the videos. Most of them have like, 10 views. Randomly, one video has 9,000 views though, which was pretty surprising. Then for about a year in middle school my DD had a stop motion video channel of her own on youtube, but she was too busy to continue that hobby in high school. She got very few views or comments. None of my kids ever have had any desire to "be a youtuber" or monetize their content or anything like that -- it was really just a way to share fun/hobby projects. My teens have zero interest in TikTok, and only my DD has any social media, of which she mostly uses IG to share artwork and to sometimes share other photos with friends. DS14 has no desire to try any kind of social media...LOL. I've always followed my DD's social media accounts pretty closely, but she has never come anywhere near anything problematic.