This does remind me of something my SIL shared with me last Xmas. When her dh was in Jr. High his parents made a huge financial mistake when his dad was starting his insurance business. The mistake would have qualified them to recieve food from the LDS church which they were members of, but admitting to being careless might have caused church members to be wary of buying insurance from them. They made the hard call and ate strickly from their garden for many months until they got back on their feet. They are very prosperous now, probably due to their discipline. Food stamps are a choice, a hard one, but a choice.

I changed the way we ate when my step dd was 12 because she begged me to. She was overweight due to eating only junk food on visitation with her mother. We weren't eating badly, but like you we ate a lot of comfort food. But she complained soon after we made changes, but then I had invested in new food and we stuck with it. She never has become a healthy eater, she probably weighs 250 at least and she is only 5'3". She just at more junk at her mom's house and bought junk when she started going to public high school. She just never adjusted, and it was a disappointment. I will say that I do believe my dd has issues that make her think she needs the extra weight to keep men away. Your dd might make a better adjustment, but probably not if she is allowed to eat cereal before bed.

I do not consider Rosemary Sutcliff the easiest reading, but I find her stories worth her slightly different style. :)

My experience with this in Oregon is that most of the money spent on education in upper grades is administration, extra curricular things, and classes that aren't condusive to academics. My oldest attended public hs and my other children will not. Math instruction in our local high school is STRICTLY calculator tutoring. There is NO therory or practical application of algebra, geometry or precalculus. Also, Enlgish instruction is only worksheets, no text or overall plan as far as I was ever able to tell, unless you are in an honors or AP class. I could go on, but I was really underwhelmed by the quality of our local high school.

I am praying here.

This is very serious and I would contact the principal ASAP, because I doubt a teacher can do much. My oldest dd (the only one who ever attened school) was very mistreated on the bus and even had her face punched by a much older boy. I contacted the principal who made him appologize, but he was not disciplined in any way. Buses can get out of hand. I spoke to a bus driver who lived in LaPine once who said the busses in the rural areas were so full of s@# abuse that she told her children she would write them out of her will if they ever put any of their children on a bus ONE TIME. Of course LaPine is a rural area with older kids riding with younger ones. But she assured me that she wishes her children would home school her grandchildren just based on what she saw on the buses.

She may be hitting a growth spurt, maybe her last. She probably needs extra good nutrition too. My oldest went through this and really did much better with lots of time alone and NO SUGAR. Sadly, she craved sugar, but it really fueled her unkindess to the rest of us. I would make sure she has lots of fruits, veggies and lean protien to go with her sleep, and I would discretely stop buying fruit juice, soda, desserts, for a little bit. My big mistake was making a production out of cutting back on sugar and junk food. Just not making cookies and buying oj would have been better for my dd, in retrospect. My dd could drink 800 calories of fruit juice a day, and if she did she would be unbearable. All through her teen years I would notice when she was starting to cycle on this and would try to get her time alone to head off the big nasties. If I could make some time alone happen she would generally settle down and not be so rude to the rest of the family.:grouphug:

I have some relatives who have a very close family and probably never had more than one dinner a month together. My aunt worked at a demanding job, my uncle was pastoring a very high-society church with a lot of social functions and their older children worked and attended college when I spent time at their house. They are all close years later, and probably eat together now more than they did growing up. I don't think it is a hill to die on. Now I'm going to fix something for my family because we haven't eaten together for awhile.

I wasn't going to play this game, but I did read a book written by OBL's son and first wife a few months ago and I will say that I have some compassion in the most vague way for the man. This is a man who saw his father alone ONE time in his life when he was nine and he had to make an appointment to do it. His mother was preoccupied with a new husband and family and he was at the mercy of a very scary educator. He was never happy in his childhood and he denied his own children good educations, toys and even air conditioning in the desert heat. He was never happy in life, he found a way to get some power and find meaning in life. Most of the men who followed him were not educated at all, and they were unwelcome in their own countries after fighting in Afganistan. I doubt that many Al Queda are equipped to pull off something like 9/11. Yes, they will try in the coming months, but I am hopeful that they will not be succesful because of lack of education, logic skills and funding.

I did home school my step daughter and she spent many long weekends at her mother's house. She worked extra hard to get everything done. I really wouldn't share custody without feeling 100% good about it. You don't have to do anything you don't want to, even if they say they will only "agree" to your home schooling if you give them 50/50 custody, you are in charge and it is your decision. I would be very careful here. Damage done to a young girl by careless parenting is impossible to undo in my experience. For instance, if they let her stay up till midnight all the time for six months you might never get her back on your own schedule. If they feed her junk food all the time it will be very hard to get her to eat well again. Six months is much longer than six weeks. That is just an example, but if they are careless parents she will be forced to grow up to cope, and she may not make good choices as a "grown up", but the damage is done and she won't be a girl again.

I really feel your pain because my family had a cattle ranch that didn't make much money during the eighties and we never had vacations. My dad worked Christmas, New Years, all those days. My sister was just saying that she feels awful when she is with friends and they talk about their great family vacations because we never had one. I really hope you will take up camping and get out some this summer. If you all get a system down of packing up the car and setting up camp quickly you could have some time in nature for a few days this summer as you could get away. Your kids will really thank you for making the effort.

I know a realtor who told me that when the city of Portland expanded some streets to accomodate a hospital expansion that they paid off the mortages plus down payments to people who had bought houses at the hight of the real estate market, so I know that it can be done. I hate to say it, but an attorney is probably what you need. And not just any attorney, but one who deals with this sort of thing. The name of your attorney will probably matter a great deal to the city.:grouphug:

I can't say this gently, but I will say it even though I may be flamed, but how does he expect his children to value Jesus Christ if the main value in the family is to be able to waste $50 a day and buy a $1,000 worth of toys a month? If he holds that as a value, even over his children spending time with their mother, they WILL know the real family religion is materialism, and that will probably be their real religion also. There is no Bible curricula or teaching from any teacher that will over come what is lived day in and day out. It does sound like you know this, I was just stating what seems obvious to me, in case it helps you think clearly, even if it is just to say that I'm wrong, he is not materialistic at all. Just so you know, my dh was exactly the same way for a couple of years even though I couldn't have brought in income to radically change our lifestyle. He was very unreasonable and every few months I would have to recrunch the numbers and show him that my working full time would not improve anything but it would ruin our life. Now he is very grateful for the education that our children are getting and even tells me how glad he is that we went this route. But he really wanted to live the life that his coworkers were leading.

I think this cost sounds good, I would pay that for a teacher that had a recital every semester. A group lesson is probably more engaging to a young boy. He probably doesn't want to sound bad in front of the other kids. My guess is that the group dynamic and a little competition are really what your son likes. Boys need that small edge of competition to engage fully. I wonder if that is really what you are paying for.;)

I will agree with most people that I don't see anything divorce will fix. Going to stay with family that is already not helping the situation surely won't help either. That said, who does know what is really going on, and maybe she can't verbalize more serious problems that they have. One observation that agrees with another poster: Men do better when they remarry after divorce. Even beautiful women find it very hard to start over, and they often don't. Divorced men get lots of sympathy and people start fixing them up right away. She probably won't get him back if she lets him go, even for a few months to think about things. If she goes it will almost certainly be the end.

My experience with scouting is that it can be very expensive if you buy everything new, tent, backpack, cooking gear, ect, but everything but a backpack can and should be shared until your dd is ready to commit. Scout fundraising in our troop is great, some scouts sell enough plants and popcorn that they put $1000's in their scout accounts each year. My son has paid for camp, $290 by selling plants in the spring and wreaths in the fall, and it does not take more than 20 hours of each even with pick up and delivery. If you dd would take fundraising seriously she could probably afford to do even the most expensive trips.

Praying here. :grouphug:

I am sorry, that isn't okay. I would probably not unfriend her. I have not unfriended by bff's hubby who is having an affair with a woman in Thailand. Facebook keeps trying to get me to friend this Thai woman. I am keeping an eye on him, it is sad, but he is making his own choices. I haven't unfriended him so that I am in the loop on what is he doing to be supportive of my friend.

The most I have ever heard of charging for VBS is the Catholic church here charges $20. Most other churches in our area ask for $10 a child to cover costs, but they waive that if a parent volunteers or if you can't pay. There is one church I know of that charges $140 a week for daycamp, but that is not VBS, that is one full forty hour week of daycamp with activities and it is so much fun that they sell out almost instantly when they open registration. You have to bring your child's lunch on top of paying the $140, so it is not cheap, but not meant to be. Hope that helps.

Our family made some small changes to help our oldest when she was 12. She was putting on quite a bit of weight and we cut out all dessert but one night a week. We also cut out ALL drinks but water. Seriously, juice and milk can add up to thousands of calories a day. That upset her very much, but my son was too little to notice and our other dd was a baby. But it had to be done. My oldest is my stepdaughter and her mother and her mother's mother are life threateningly obese and we had to help. We exercised as a family an hour a day and I signed her up for a cheap dance class through parks and rec one night a week. I posted even though you got lots of good advice because you said this was your child that you have to stay on all the time anyway. I think that fixing her health will fix a lot of the attitude that you are experiencing. Some people are more stubborn than others, but if she starts getting an hour of exercise a day you might not even recognize her new attitude in a few weeks. That was the case at our house. As an adult dd is now obese, but she has the mental tools to change her weight and trims down when her weight gets to be too much for her. This does break my heart, because she does not have the natural good health to carry so much weight and she experiences pain and health problems, but when things get bad she eats well and gets exercise for a few weeks, she doesn't do fad crash diets to lose weight, and that is probably the most I could hope for when she has the family history she does. I think the years that we only drank water and went camping every summer to go hiking for her health were a good investment in her even though she is struggling now.

Reading this I nearly choked. I do not think your ds did a thing wrong and I think your aunt was over the top. I hope you spoke to your son and made sure he was aware that he is not the one who should be embarassed in this situation. A host should be gracious. As some one who has worked in catering I will say that she may have paid as much as $5 a slice for that meat and was worried about the cost. I wish people wouldn't throw parties they can't afford, but that is another post. I have catered parties where guests took way too much food and the last people in line got nothing while the first people in line threw away piles of food they never touched from their plates. It does happen that there is not enough food for people to waste some. But the way your son was treated was not acceptable. I am sorry.

This sort of thing is why I never go to Blockbuster anymore. When my then 8yo ran to find the Hannah Montana movie and drew back freaked out over the Halloween movie next to it I never went back. I had complained before about other parts of their store layout and was told that the corporate office made every store follow a set layout and that they stores had no choice how to display things. Wow, that Blockbuster is going out of business. It is not a surprise, since they made it plain they didn't care about customers.

I just wanted to let you know that I am sure your ds will be fine when you leave. My step dd came to live with us full time when she was four and she adjusted from watching TV ALL DAY and eating all the candy she wanted and taking codine cough at night to go to sleep in a few weeks. She had trouble later with adjusting from summer visits to her mom's house after she got older, but that wasn't a problem until she was about 7. I am sure your ds is young enough to adjust when you move, but I would never let him visit more than a day at a time when you leave. Make the library your new home! Summer is coming, parks and rec often have lots of free programs to get kids out of the house, visit your family for a few days at a time if they are open to that. Go camping at cheap campsites for a few days at a time. Make sure everyone at church knows that you are available to house sit and take care of their pets for no charge while they are on their summer vacations. You get the idea. :grouphug:

I am really sorry to have upset people on this level. What I meant to do was provide balance to a number of threads that I have noticed where people who are having a hard time are encouraged to put their dc in ps. I get worried that people think that solves the problem. PS is not a solution to poor parenting. My intention was to illustrate this. My point was not to get sympathy for my SIL, whose main focus always has been sports. She doesn't have money for her dc to go to college and so her focus has been athletic scholarships, which worked for her oldest who was offered many full ride soccer scholarships. She was not completely checked out, that is the part she is angry about. That no teacher in any parent teacher conference helped her see the bigger picture. She is aware that she should not have been taking these girls to practice and games when their grades were so poor. She thought that they couldn't play unless they had a C average. All three of her girls in hs were failing, just the oldest is in hot water. All of the girls are not playing sports right now and are working on catching up school work. My personal issue, that I was trying not to vent about, is that as a taxpayer in Oregon, there are a lot of parents who do not see the big picture, and we spend almost $2,000 per year per student on administration alone, and this is what we get. If the purpose of ps is to educate those children who have no other options, why does this happen? Why did this situation not merit a parent conference after a year? Why did the school keep letting them play sports, even at a freshman level? There is a lot of information missing here, and a lot of it is missing from the school. SIL was most frustrated about trying to get answers and not understanding the ones she got.

My SIL did not give me permission, but I bet there are hundreds of messages posted on this board every month that would annoy someone that their story was posted. It wouldn't annoy her, BTW. If you don't care for the warning, don't read the post. I worry when people here suggest ps as a solution for people who are already not on top of things. Ps is not there to fix your problems. The only example I have of one of the disputed fees was when her dd was signed up for welding without her permission. She got the class changed, but was charged for it. Arts classes are almost as expensive as sports in Oregon. My older dd was charged more than $150 a year for gym fees, locker fees, art supplies and choir robe laundering fees, choir traveling fees, no sports. Sports cost a little more. You could never charge a lunch at the hs my own dd attended. I do think that in SIL's case, sports were the problem, she paid more attenion to them than the grades and now she is paying. Yes, all three girls participated in sports with such poor grades. They participated at a freshman level, so maybe that was the difference? I am unsure. She was sure that they could not participate if their grades were not adaquate. She was wrong.