I am surprised that no one has yet mentioned cutting dairy products with milk (not eggs) out completely. That worked very, very well for both of my children and I read about it on this board. I am certain that milk products were the cause of my step daughter's acne. I used to make her drink milk and eat cold cereal for breakfast before school every day and she had horrible acne and the dermatologist said there was nothing he could do at all for it.:confused: But it would go away when she visited her mom in the summer and I could never understant it. She now has no acne and I'm sure it is because she never eats any breakfast, so she doesn't have much, if any, milk. Hope this helps, I would try it for sure, it can't hurt even if it isn't as helpful for your son as it has been for mine.

From personal experience I am sure that this teacher will never have them use more than 10 pages. She is on a strange, sad, little power trip. That said, if you want to make your son as secure as possible you are right to buy the notebooks. She will probably make him "pay" for your common sense. This is one reason I homeschool. I don't want to condition my kids to idiocy.

I don't know much about Persian rugs, but I own six handmade Nepalese rugs and have bought eight for gifts for family members and they have been a wonderful investment. The rugs I have are wool and I vacum them every day and they hold up well. The colors are vibrant even after years in the sun. I probably would not have bought them from a furniture store with the prices they have at the furniture stores here in Portland, but they would still be worth the money, I just wouldn't have known how much better they hold up than the cheesy Home Depot Persian rugs that are similar. Wow, what an awful sentence, but I'm not going to fix it, lol.

I would make a chicken salad. I would finely dice the chicken and mix with a couple of crisp pieces of bacon and a little mayo. You are thinking "How is this healthy???" You are right. Now fill everyone's plate with fresh green salad mix and put a moderate amount of chicken salad on top. Now it is a little more healthy.

Unfortunately I agree that it probably is in your best interest to pay it and take care of your children in this way. There is no way you could get a nanny/ housekeeper for under a grand a month where I live so you come out ahead the way I do the math. Plus, you do know he has your kids best interest at heart. My concearn is that legally the more responsibility you take for him the more legal liability you may have for him at some point. If he moves out is he going to want "palimony"? My dad supported a girlfriend for years and she sued him for a lot of money when he asked her to leave. Her sons stole a good deal of money and equipment from my dad. She won $30,000. This caused my dad real financial hardship, but judges in Eugene are crazy. I would get legal advice from a good lawyer before paying the money.

I agree with Strider that low income kids eat way more processed foods and often won't eat fruit without dip, although yogurt dip can make strawberries and banannas and apples much more fun. Mixes made from cereals are huge hits here. Home made granola can be sooo delicious. Allrecipes has some wonderful recipes for homemade granola bars that are quick to make and DELICIOUS. Have fun, these kids are a real blessing when you can get past some issues.

I didn't read what everybody wrote but I have a couple of things that I hope you find helpful. I married foolishly at her age and SUFFERED. One thing I have learned since then is that women marry men who court them. This man is probably courting her well and that is probably overriding her common sense. This happens to a lot of women, no matter what their age. The other thing is that lots of women marry older men who turn out to have ex wives and kids that they didn't know about. If he really is 15 years older than she is, I wouldn't necessarily believe this for a second without proof. I know lots of women who married men who turned out to have whole other families in other countries. I live where a lot of migrant workers live. My heart breaks for you, and I hope it will all turn out well.

I just chimed in. Only really lurk or ask questions when I start to lose motivation, but I enjoy the forum very much.

I may be the poster you are thinking of where the scoutmaster was being hard on my son for no apparent reason, even bothering other parents and scouts. I am thankful to say that was resolved well. I do still think that my son's personality was to blame, because he is confident and that does bother people. Also he did not seem repentant after he was corrected for things he did not view as wrong. That does anger people. I absolutely agree that I am parenting my own children, thank you very much. I don't let them hurt others, or spoil situations with bad behavior. It is fine to call something to my attention, it is not fine to lecture them about things that others don't like (independence for instance) that I am actually trying to cultivate in them.

I wish we didn't have as much bad behavior as we do, but neither of us had a good childhood example of gracious living in our family. Recently my son went on a long canoeing trip with the Boy Scouts and one of the dads told me that when my son did something wrong he apologized sincerely and it humbled a lot of adults with bad attitudes. That made me glad that there has been a silver lining in the cloud of arguments.

I am glad you are being proactive. You can take your neighborhood back by making it unfriendly to these types, just like you are doing. A poster said that you shouldn't worry so much about drug dealing and drug abuse as other things, but I have lived next to drug dealers and had horrible situations just by having my kids near drug dealing and it's not okay.

I just wanted to point out that in the case of our coop it just means that you won't teach anything contrary to the statement of faith if you teach a class. A person of any faith at all could sign it in good conscience, you would just have to agree not to influence anyone's children away from those beliefs.

We support an orphanage in Uganda, although neither of us has been to Africa at all. My cousin is a missionary in Dar es Salaam. I would like to visit my cousin, dh wants to go to Uganda also, but I am not sure about that. We would be spending money that we had saved to go to Greece, but we are thinking that as the kids get older we are running out of opportunities to take them to Africa, which was something we always meant to do. I'm interested in the answers you get.

Before NCLB I suspect that lots of teachers did the opposite and made their students look bad on purpose. I have a relative that teaches and in the preNCLB years she did not teach her students how to test, or give them pointers on how to test because she didn't want them to have high test scores. You may be surprised at this, but she teaches in a school with mostly Latino students and the other teachers there get very defensive if one teacher has students with test scores that are too good. She told me that any teacher that does a really good job in that school "suffers terribly." The first year after NCLB she was almost fired when her students didn't test well. She started to properly prepare her students and after two years her students did so well that she was promoted to special reading teacher. It is sad to me that her original students were denied the test scores that they could have had, and probably could have used, because of the situation in her school. I do not have an idea if this is common or not, but I would not be surprised if it was.

I don't know how you do it and raise children. My parents struggled with all the burdens of children and animals and crops. I could live on what is left of the family farm now, but I know that I can't care for the horses alone, much less everything else. I just admire you in all your posts, because I just don't have hours in the day to get done what you get done. Sorry, I have no advice, I just wanted to let you know that I am your fan club.

I make my own rice pilaf and chili in large batches. As a matter of fact when ground beef is on sale I buy a bunch and make meatballs, spaghetti sauce and chili all at the same time and freeze them because I am chopping mostly the same veggies (onion, green pepper, tomato, garlic) for these meals so that I only make one big mess preparing several dinners. I make rice pilaf by grating some carrot and onion and browning it with the rice, then adding chicken stock and bringing to a boil, then simmer until done. Then I freeze it in four cup increments because that is all we will use at one time.

In many ways my dh's ex wife was like Ms.X after she got hooked on meth. Even now she does many illegal things, including stealing meds from her children and no dr has ever reported her. Even when she was high and accidentally stuck a lit cigarette in my step daughter's eye when sd was only 3 no hospital people cared to make a report. It took two years after that to get custody of sd because no one will file reports. Not just doctors, but people from Head Start were at her home numerous times when she was drunk or high and obviously not able to parent competently, but no one would make a report or agree to testify in court. I could not go into the "accidents" her other children have had over the years that no one reports. Unless you make it your personal mission, Ms X will remain at large I'm afraid.

I work in a large hotel. I just got off work tonight actually and was delighted to find this thread when I came home. I work with lots of people from other countries who learned English as an adult when they came to the US. I mean, I probably have met more than 100 people who learned English after they were 25 or older. So I have seen that not only is it possible, depending on where you live, it is common.

Oh, I am the naughty neighbor. I have too big of a lot because I don't like to be too close to my neighbors. I can't keep all the weeds pulled. I spend hours pulling weeds but I know that no one can tell the difference. I don't like weed killer. All my neighbors but one have grown children and make their houses lovely. My house needs to be painted, but I would rather buy books. Dh likes to play blaring country music when he works on projects in the shop. Oh, and I practice my Spanish by eavesdropping on my Guatemalan neighbor when he takes his phone outside. My dog sounds like a junk yard dog even though he is a Golden Retriever. I'm sorry, but not sorry enough to change, lol.

Thank you all for bearing with me. I am so worried about going on too long and losing people that I often don't put my thoughts correctly. Not to mention that when dc are around and I'm asking things about them I need to type quick.;) The things I have been thinking about all got addressed, and although I don't have a plan I have some good things to think about. Especially the idea that it should be fun! I loved band and concert choir and wanted ds to enjoy those things too. The student worship leader is getting married and moving away in June so I have hesitated to bring anything up with her. I do think I will talk to the new leader about auditions. I guess my point was: if your child does not progress in a reasonable manner should you keep up with lessons and so forth. But part of my trouble is that I don't really know if ds is progressing. Dh doesn't think so, but dh is often highly critical of ds so it is hard to know. I will ask the drum teacher what he thinks we need to do to get ds playing with other musicians.

Oh, I forgot to say he does have very good private instruction. It is really costing me. His private teacher says ds is ready to play with other people, but maybe he is leading me on?

Thank you for your answers. I do know that a good sense of time is important, and he is really improving. We have three worship teams, and the youth one is run by a college age girl. I understand that she is a volunteer, but I am annoyed that she would not give ds a chance to even play in practice. He did get to play one song in a practice and he did keep time for that song. The adult worship team had a lot of drummers but different things have happened to them lately, but no one seemed to think of letting ds try. But most of you do not think that is unreasonable, so I am going to try to retract my mommy-bear claws, lol.

My son and daughter play instruments, my dd plays piano, which I think is part of classical education and insist on. She can't hold a tune or sing at all but she is a natural performer and does beautifully when she plays in public. I will let her quit when she reaches a certain level because she doesn't enjoy it at all and I have to make her practice an hour every day. In her case practice seems to make up for lack of talent. My son (14yo) plays the drums and my dh who plays the bass a little doesn't think ds has musical talent of any kind. I am no judge of this so I stay out of it. Ds cannot sing at all but he asked to learn the drums and practices without complaining. He struggles with keeping time, but is improving by using the metronome. After two and a half years ds is not playing on the worship team even though he faithfully showed up for practice for more than a year. When I realized the complete strangers were getting to play drums I got annoyed and stopped sending him to practice. I don't see how he will get better without playing with other people and they seem unwilling to let him try. They didn't really give him any kind of chance at the practices. This may be dh's fault because he may have told the worship leader ds can't play even though he says he didn't. Dh possibly doesn't want to be embarrassed if ds doesn't do well. I would think that even if ds has no talent that after all his practice he should be able to hold his own with a little help. I am tired of paying for lessons that aren't getting used in a practical way. If you were in my place would you continue to stay out of it, or would you find a way for ds to play with another church, maybe a smaller one that needed musicians?

My first 10 quilts were made entirely by hand. I would draft patterns, not as hard as it sounds, trace the pattern on fabric, cut out pieces and sew on the lines I marked. This step can be done while waiting for piano lessons, car trips, ect. Then I would make a quilt sandwich with batting and backing and hand quilt with the sandwich stretched out on a hoop. Last I would sew on the binding. I found hand sewing to be less frustrating than dealing the the cheap sewing machine I owned then. Now I have a much better machine and make quilts with the machine. It is quilting month at the Sew Mamma Sew website and there are LOTS if tutorials that should get you started as well as give you ideas.

I have had wonderful results with T-tapp without much dieting, but I just got bored after 3 years and and now doing other video workouts. I would prefer to just stick to T-tapp because of the good results but it is hard to do the exact same workout over and over. Probably the main reason I lost 3 dress sizes in 4 months is because you have to concentrate so hard on the exercises and you learn good habits for ordinary living. Like tucking your fanny and keeping shoulders back when you go up and down stairs and other things. My favorite thing about T-tapp is that is fixed my crummy posture. I used to really slump. To get such good results I did a 10 day boot camp and was very faithful to do the whole 45 minute workout every other day after that.