lovemyboys
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Posts posted by lovemyboys
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I signed my 7 year old up thinking, "this will be fun." Wasn't his idea. Sadly, he was happy when the practices were rained out.
The coach, whom I love (he's a real sweetheart), leads boring practices where the kids stand around in the field for 1 hour and 53 mins. and bat for maybe 7 minutes. (The practices total go for 2 hrs.)
The thing that really bothers me, though, is that I was NEVER told about all that's involved:
-- selling raffle tickets ($30 total)
-- working the concession stands at least two or three times during games.
-- attending a fundraising "carnival."
-- sometimes games are on a Thurs, Fri and Sat -- yes, in a row. (That only happens once though. Normally they're once or twice a week.)
-- purchasing pants, socks, cup, glove, bat, helmet, shirt, hat. (When I was a kid we bought hat, shirt and glove. Why do they need special pants and socks?! They're 7. I know the answer. . . it just seems over done.)
-- snacks at certain practices (that's no surprise, of course)
And who is the extra money going to for all of the fundraising? It sounds like it's going to the older teams so that the older kids can travel when they play far away teams. (In my day, the parents footed this bill.)
I had no idea I was buying into this kind of system.
Keep in mind that I paid $100 to sign my son up for baseball in the first place.
Again, if I'd known the situation, I wouldn't be complaining. It feels like the water is being turned up on me. A friend even told me that it's entirely common for the communication to be so bad -- like all the parents have older kids in the sport so they automatically know what's going on.
Thanks for letting me vent. Any advice? My son is reluctant to play now. He's still somewhat interested.
Also: he never asked to do this. I enrolled him thinking it would be fun. Now I don't know what to do! Also, dh is complaining about losing weekends to this sport (we can't go away or do other things.)
Thanks,
Alley
Dc here love playing baseball. At that age, they don't much like practices. Have the games started? What does your ds think of them? Is Coach doing it all himself?
My comments here are based on your son's age:
Practices should have a little simulated game time near the end but the rest should be split up into small groups -- a few batting while a few are doing infield (throws to each base, getting ground balls, practicing tags), a few outfield (catching fly balls, longer throws).
I would step in and offer to help the coach to split up kids and do some drills, if you get it started, no doubt a couple other parents will participate. Look online, ask around, check books/videos out of the library if you want some different drills. I've seen some very creative stuff.
One that the kids always enjoy is running the bases -- can be done like relays or chases or timed or ....
Some leagues do have all the above expenses that you listed. If the fields aren't part of a county parks-and-rec or school network, then field upkeep and maintenance is part of all that fundraising. And yes, that first year is pretty alarming. We've been in leagues where it's built in to the price, and others where it's extra and you do the work.
Also, most coaches are somewhat flexible about pants and socks. Some of that depends on your child -- does he care? We've had teams with all different color pants (grey, white, black). The cheapest are the ones without belt loops. We've seen kids wear sweatpants and shorts (shorts was in fall league, more relaxed). Once you get the socks, they'll wear them for years. The pants usually go for a couple seasons.
Part of team sports is commitment to the team. If you and dh would like for your child to be a part of this, for the sport, the physical activity, the sportsmanship, the skills, etc., then you need to stick with it. Once games get started, some coaches don't hold regular weekly practice (again, at this age).
But you want to think twice about quitting once you've started -- at this point, part of your money is already spent too.
And if you and dh want to schedule a weekend off for a small trip, visit with relatives, family time, whatever, just let the coach know. Other kids will be taking off for scouts or things -- it's not like this is a high school team. I try not to be too rigid in the early years, we honor the commitment without letting it run our lives.
I'd vote for giving it a try. Maybe after one season, your son will decide it's not for him. But I'd let him get a chance to play some games to see what all that practicing is about before I'd agree to quit.
Hope that helps with your decision a little.
:grouphug:
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I don't believe in sticking with something until mastery is achieved 100%. I move on after a reasonable amt of time, which varies, and then circle around to the item again. Sometimes a little more maturity is needed, or another approach. I believe the mind occasionally needs a rest to "get" some things, and can sort of silently process while something else is being learned. Then when you come back to the hard thing, the mind can handle it. (Weird, huh? lol) I also think sometimes another connection needs to be made, so moving in another direction can help that.
So, yes, a B or even less is possible in my world. But there are some things that do need to be nearly mastered before moving on--for example, multiplication facts can be almost mastered, then they can get used so much in long division and in fractions that the practice leads to mastery.
Does that even make sense? lol
Good points. I've seen this with dc, sometimes they need a little space to get something. We've reached the saturation point so continuing on the same lesson or concept is pointless (like long division) but coming back to it and/or allowing some time for it to sink in while moving on to other lessons works well.
In general, we do work for mastery, but I like the way you say this -- 100% mastery.
And for OP, I'm happy if ds has a B in spelling. Some subjects just will not be an A for your student no matter how hard we might try or how hard we might work.
:001_smile:
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*I brang for I brought
*I have drank for I have drunk
Is this what you are looking for?
Dc try brang and broughten. :tongue_smilie:
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My funniest example was when ds was in preschool. He used to cut out those teeny-tiny pictures of books in the Scholastic order forms. While we met the teacher before school started, he sat and cut out a whole pile and handed them to her.
When I got an eval from the teacher several months later, "handling scissors well" was not checked. When I asked the teacher, she replied that she knew he could but it "hadn't been evaluated yet."
So I guess it didn't exist. :lol:
Locally, one friend's class had a short review lesson on filling in answer bubbles completely. :001_huh:
Others (3tap, ellie, cheryl) here gave more specific philosophical answers which do address why this is detrimental to education. It's an unfortunate trend. There's so much hue-and-cry for accountability, I doubt that these types of tests will go away anytime soon.
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I think we have to remain vigilant and active. Complacency is very dangerous.
......
We fiercely value and defend our rights, including those pertaining to homeschooling.
I guess that's what I was thinking in my response. When the candidate expresses himself so clearly re: homeschooling, I would be watching him carefully, perhaps asking a question at a rally or meet-and-greet.
Texans seem to be a pretty independent bunch, I can't imagine that Texan homeschoolers would be particularly interested to hear about future tracking or monitoring.
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I have read that in a couple of places, but I don't think we will have to worry about Bill White. ;)
I'm not a Texan (but I've visited :001_smile: ), but I wondered why you say this, given the quote in the 2nd para. from the candidate and the 3rd para from his spokesman:
White says, "Perry's claim of 10 percent dropout rate does not include students who continue in school, switch to home schooling, or have no follow up data. These students are not tracked, and the governor does not know whether or not they ever graduated."
His spokesman goes on to say, "As governor, Bill White will bring a business-like approach to the problem. We need to have accurate counts of how many students are graduating, annual goals, and public accountability for our progress. Putting those statements together, the only conclusion one can draw is that the state needs to track home school students and see if they graduate. Who then determines when the home school student graduates? What is required for that graduation?
This is an honest question. When I saw that it was a blog link, I figured it was a blogger's opinion, but these are direct quotes.....
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and are branching out to others in our library district.
That's what I was going to suggest.
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Sure, they could fit...but the question is, is it best for the island?
Sounds like his staffers are helping to prop him up. If they did the research they would see that the island population has actually downsized by tens of thousands in the last decade or so. Even with this increase, the numbers wouldn't reach what they were 20 years ago. From an economic perspective, Guamanians may very well welcome the addition.
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There is no way anyone can convince me that this was a joke. The Admiral didn't take it that way either, and he was there.
:iagree:
Yes. Very sad. And whether it's impairment from an illness or medication-related, it's pretty clear that it is impairment. When I went to see the link earlier, there were other clips from meetings and speeches where he sounded much the same.
Even his numbers for the dimensions of the island are confused.
His loyal staffers are making statements for him but it looks like it's time for the poor man to step down from that position and go home to get some care.
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I am happy Singapore works for you child Bill...but remember, you are just starting out. What I thought I REALLY knew when I was just the parent of small children has drastically changed over the years. Experience has shown me that we should never get too confident in our curricula decisions, as there is always that child there to prove you didn't choose as well as you thought you did. It is the nature of the homeschooler. LOL
Peace,
Faithe
Wow, Faithe, thanks for sharing all your experience. You've given me good food for thought here.
I'm just posting to say that :iagree: with you on this last para. too. If not that child then the second or third one who will be completely different, just because.
Parenting and homeschooling are humbling experiences. :001_smile:
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We have a Garmin eTrex which we purchased new about a year ago and it does the job for us. We really enjoy geocaching, but haven't done it too much as our littles are still little and getting used to it. OUr goal is to eventually place our own caches for others to find.
Our first letterbox in the new area was placed by a family starting out with littles near their home based on Eric Carle stories. It was cute, a little tricky but not tough.
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We owned Elemento, ds played Element-e-O at a game day. The 2nd one has characters like dragons that had characteristics based on the element (iron for strength, perhaps) -- anyway, they far preferred the 2nd one that we didn't own.
The first one helped get the elements off the periodic table in a way that was helpful, but it wasn't a great game.
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the introductory email from the director contained many errors in grammar, spelling, and punctuation?
There is a woman in our area who offers homeschool classes for a popular writing program. For one class, a friend forwarded this woman's resume with cover letter. It was a mess with misspelling, grammatical errors, poor writing and organization.
But people continue to rave about this person! They say she's enthusiastic, organized, encouraging and successful. They are quite pleased with what their children are writing and the progress they've made.
So, my advice for you would be to research it further. If there are other red flags, I'd probably look elsewhere. But if you find, like I have, that the communication was an anomaly or there are enough offsetting factors, you may decide it's worth it.
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it is normal to a degree. do the parents overreact? if so he may do it to get attention. however i agree with the other pps :)
If it's a lot of itching rather than just touching, maybe there is something to change -- clothing too tight, perhaps a little hygiene issue, soap/bubblebath irritation.
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Looking for a decent beginner's GPS for hiking and geocaching. Not serious rugged orienteering or anything like that.
What features do we need for that? Which brands would you recommend? Price ranges?
Thanks for your help!
:001_smile:
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Here's motivation for you to keep your house and yard cleaned up...if you don't do it, someday somebody will have to. And they won't like it. My in-laws were hoarders, and when they passed away we started cleaning up their mess. ....... I've learned more about my in-laws in cleaning out their house than I ever cared to know. If there is anything in your home that you don't want others to see ...... then get rid of it now. We none of us know how long we'll be on this earth, and I do not want to leave the kind of mess they left behind. ........ The sad thing is that cleaning up after my MIL has made me forget that sometimes she was a lovely and lovable lady.....
Great reminders. Hope your project will be done sooner than you expect. :001_smile:
I've seen parts of the show twice and I cringe as I watch. It's so sad and yet you have to hope that their lives are changed for the better for participating, and that others are motivated from watching.
I know I've been, I start making mental lists as I watch and start cleaning up shortly after.
We move a lot and things get packed up and rearranged every.single.time. It gets exhausting putting things back in order every year or two. We've got lots of curriculum, souvenirs, books, regional collections.
We had a brilliant friend who was a hoarder. She was incredibly creative and always had things close at hand (fortunately her house was huge), but there were narrow pathways through the rooms and piles everywhere. It was borderline dysfunctional .... and then she'd create something amazing. She was very friendly and interesting too. I mention this because it seems like the folks on that show have agoraphobia or other social issues.
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Yes. I contacted my Congressman, and both Senators. For all the good it does.I called and emailed. Multiple times.
Same as above.
I was called for a phone townhall by one of them about 3 weeks ago too.
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I'm sure that's exactly why some of these girls choose to circumvent their parents - they know it won't be about what they want, but about what their parents want.
But the girl will never know, will she?
Her parents might surprise her. Sure some parents would not let the teen have a say. But faced with a situation as serious as this, I still say that it's wrong to take the parents so swiftly and decisively out of the conversation. In some cases, a conversation that they didn't even know existed.
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That, and nothing illegal happened if the mother in question willingly signed an agreement with a clinic for which she knew that it kept the information confidential (if she didn't know it, she can only blame herself for signing the contract without reading it), i.e. she must have counted on not being informed, from the clinic, about what's going on with her daughter.
Personally I find this a HUGE mother-daughter trust and overall relationship issue (note that her daughter chose not to tell her that she was pregnant and that she made one of the big life decisions), but not really a legal issue.
Actually I really disagree here. It would be interesting to see the form itself. Does it really disclose that it's offering reproductive health services in the high school during school hours? Most of my friends who have signed forms such as these have done so in order for their dc to have aspirin, pamprin for cramps, etc. Otherwise, the school system says absolutely no access unless it's an accident/emergency.
And I would say you're making a huge leap about their relationship. Even in the closest families, a kid who gets pregnant in high school knows that it's an immense issue....parents realize (if they didn't know) that kids are sexually active, what's the relationship of the two teens, what's the future of this pregnancy, and loaded on top of that is the uncertainty, disappointment, fear, hormonal and emotional changes that occur during pregnancy. I know very few teens who would confidently walk into their kitchens to announce a pregnancy to their parents.
Assuming anything other than a normal teen/parent relationship here is unrealistic. We sow the seeds to have good open communications with our kids, but when they face a life-changing crisis and someone in authority tells them that they can make the crisis/problem go away quickly and quietly if they just don't tell their folks about it.....I would hope that my dc would talk with me. But I don't think any one of us could be 100% sure.
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While I am disgusted that this can happen, the only thing that might have broken the law is that they put her in a taxi and sent her to the place to perform the abortion. Doesn't the school need a permission slip for the student to leave school grounds? Did no one escort her?
This certainly isn't the main thing wrong with the whole situation, but it is something.
Unaccompanied to an invasive medical procedure. What if there were complications? What if the girl had underlying medical issues?
So there are some legal aspects that they might want to reconsider for the future. Their liability is huge if anything happens to this girl.
There's just so much wrong here. What well-meaning (?) dolt :tongue_smilie: came up with this idea? Wonder if this was the first time too?
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Do you think anything illegal happened here?
http://www.komonews.com/news/local/88971742.html
I'm a bit surprised that this made the news here in my very liberal city.
The teen health clinic arranged for a student to leave school for an abortion. The mother had signed a consent form for her daughter to access care through the clinic. The clinic is on school grounds, but is staffed entirely by a local hospital. Abortion is legal. In this state a girl can obtain an abortion without parent consent at age 13.
I find it very disturbing -- depressing that this is what things have come to-- but I'm not surprised. Nor do I see that anything illegal happened. Thoughts?
So incredibly sad. And yes, disturbing as well. These kids are so young.
What does this say about our society that, on one hand, people are applauding the ability to keep your children on your healthcare policy to the age of 26 and, on the other hand, legally paving the way for a 13-yo "young woman" to opt for an abortion without her parents' knowledge or consent?
Very few of the girls in these situations have truly horrendous home situations (abusive parents, incestuous father or older brother). Most of these girls are just really scared, bewildered and overwhelmed. The parents never even get a chance to work through this with their daughter because an outside entity takes over. And then she's supposed to heal emotionally, psychically and physically without her parents' support. Poor girl. Did I read that right, they even drove her to the facility? Yuck.
Just because it's legal in your area doesn't mean it's not wrong.
:ack2:
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I have a friend who suffers from RA. He was in desperate need of treatment, and it took the insurance company three mos. to approve the treatment that his doctors were recommending. In the meantime he could barely function at home due to the RA.
Just to say that you can find similar stories right here in the U.S.
There's a very basic difference here though. In LizzyBee's two examples, it was the availability and access (time) involved in receiving care that was delayed or unavailable.
In your example, it was a matter of insurance and who would be paying for the treatment.
I'm "picking on" these two posts because I think that's often what gets lost in the health care debate overall.
That's also why it's really unfortunate that simple and direct fixes to health insurance weren't debated realistically and haven't been addressed in the legislation. Health insurance is now under the auspices of the federal government. Anyone who's ever applied for a job with the federal gov't knows what the wait times can be.
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Yep.
Verizon employees received a memo that their healthcare premiums are going up short-term and they should expect to pay a 40% excise tax...
A number of companies have recently adjusted their statements to reflect the new legislation and the fact that they have to start putting money toward this. Several are making changes to their existing health insurance benefits policies.
And a number have announced that they are putting hiring on freeze for the near term at least.
Congress is expressing annoyance at this and wants to have hearings.
What did they expect would happen?
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That is not the case. That was addressed in the other thread.
http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1581642&highlight=congress#post1581642
Looks like it depends on what kind of staffer one happens to be.
I've read through some of the posts, perhaps it's been addressed but it seems there's a variety of interpretation.
Will you help me decide on bailing on baseball?? Please?
in General Education Discussion Board
Posted
Looks like you've already gotten a number of replies that support your desire to bow out.
It's not for everyone. And some kids do fine starting a bit later when they've got more coordination and drive. One ds here really didn't like practicing and wasn't that keen on team sports in the beginning (theoretically, yes, practically, no :tongue_smilie:).
And one ds has always wanted to play baseball, since he was wee. So if that's not really the case for your ds then it's best to figure that out early.
:001_smile: