I wrote down a bunch of these and will look into them shortly. Thanks again.

And you can't afford for her not to have one either if she is going to look to you for help in emergencies. The fifteen hundred dollars now is only 10 $150 emergencies. Only 10. When you are raising kids it is easy to have one of those a month. She needs a GREAT attorney to get all the alimony, child support and property settlement that she can get. There is no use hoping he will be nice, he is already playing games with the kids. The rest of her future depends on doing well now. Prepaid Legal might be helpful... I haven't belonged since my step daughter turned 18. But if it hasn't changed too much it might be a godsend to your sister. I'm sorry, this is hard.

When my step dd was 13 she really, really wanted to go to high school and we let her. As you are experiencing the school was not academically rigorous and she floated through the first couple years with no real effort. The next two years were a different story because she had gotten into the attitude that good grades would be handed to her. I will not send my younger children to this school, but right now neither of them want to go so it's a non issue.

When I started homeschooling I was so confident that I would bypass this awful stage with my younger children. After all, I thought, they wouldn't be in that breeding ground of discontent known as school, so where would they get the attitude? Well, I guess the attitude found my sweet son somehow. I'm hoping to get through this, but my older daughter had already worn me out, so my patience is thin. Good luck to you!

My son takes drum lessons from Ron Hurst, the drummer for Stephan Wolf.. He's a lot of fun.

My son takes drum lessons from Stephan Wolf's drummer, so we know this song well, LOL.

I know that on my third trip and fourth trip to Nepal I noticed how many people are walking around permanently maimed. When I started seriously inquiring about these missing arms, and eyes and things I was appalled to find out that more people seem to get hurt working in Saudi factories than in the civil war that has lasted years in Nepal. Workers from Saudi are sent home without compensation for their missing eyes, limbs and diseases caught from poor sanitation. That makes me sad, but is it really worse than lots of other places? Human life seems to be cheaper in areas outside the western world...

I was just popping in to see what people are talking about for organizing the next school year, but I couldn't let it go and not answer this. Scouts is about character development! I would switch troops, definitely, because you would want your son to switch jobs if people at work were behaving like this. But I would write a letter to the Council dealing with these concerns, because you are right, this will just happen to other people. When the leaders of these boys signed off in their books that they are living the Scout Oath, and the Scout Law, they were lying! The council that you belong to needs to be aware that if these boys have been making rank while participating in this behavior, the leadership has been deceptive, and this is probably carrying over into other areas. And, just to let you know, another scout played a nasty trick on my 12yo son, and he was watched like a hawk by all leaders for a long time. My son belongs to a troop much like your own in size. In my son's case the other boy was elected Troop Leader, and the adults in charge have not cut him any slack to continue any bad behavior. He is a homeschooled young man with very nice parents, but he can be a real bad influence and so he has been closely watched.

Thank you for your thoughts, I really appreciate it. I called the coop leader and will take the necessary steps to enroll him. It makes me feel better to know that everyone felt this was the right thing to do. I will keep a super close eye on him and that should help everything. Also, I will tell the coop leader that I hope she will talk with the other leaders about enforcing the discipline policy more completely in the future. Thanks, Anne

I have been a regular on this board in the past, but I haven't read or posted for a long time. I would love to hear some different viewpoints on my issue to help me think clearly. My kids go to a hs coop once a week every week for three sessions a year. I really like this group of people even though most of them are more about homeschooling to keep their kids innocent than academic reasons. But lots of them are following the WTM and there are lots of classes that are inspired by the WTM for my kids to take. When we joined I got a call from the head of the coop after four weeks of class because it turned out that my kids had been misbehaving in classes from day one. No one had said anything, even though there is supposed to be a policy in place about letting parents know about misbehavior. I was not monitering their classes and was volunteering elsewhere to give them some space from me during the coop. There were leaders in every instance of bad behavior but no one told me. I had a meeting with two of the leaders, and my kids were straightened out. There were no problems until a few weeks ago when I had another call. My son had been belittling two kids who are younger than him during one of his classes. The teacher had let it go for three weeks of class before talking to me. By then by their discipline policy he had to be removed from the coop for the rest of the term. He was wrong and I disciplined him and he did great in class the following week. The week after that though he said something he shouldn't have to a seven-year-old and he was removed for the rest of the term. My dh and I worked very hard with him, and he has tried hard to improve his behavior toward his little sister to show us that he can be kind toward those that are younger than him. To be fair to him he is very kind to children much smaller than he is, he seems to joke inappropriately with kids that are just three or four years younger than he. All that aside, I wonder if I am foolish to sign up for the spring term of the coop when the leaders are not following their own discipline guidelines. This is the second time this has happened, and in both cases I think things would have gone much differently if I had been made aware of these issues early on. My son does well in scouts and at church. At the time of the first discipline issue he had just won an award in Kid's Church for good behavior so I had no idea there was a problem. When I teach a class I tell the parent picking up the child if their child misbehaved during class. I think that is reasonable. Am I missing something? Does anyone have thoughts for me? TIA.