Anytime I'm searching a person (usually someone that will be working with my kids), I search with first/last name and their email address. The email address usually pulls up social media sites and review sites. Honestly, I don't worry if someone I hire goes out and parties at night or on the week-ends. I worry if it seems that their partying is a major influence and need for their life. Someone who posts lingerie pictures publicly (and is not a model) and brags about using their "ass"ets for free meals, drinks and attention, isn't someone I want in my home. I'm hiring someone to help my middle daughter with math. I checked her facebook and found a few pictures of her in a group of friends, all with drinks in their hands and a bit glassy-eyed. Honestly, it just made me smile and remember my own college days. I think people who judge others on their online status (and I freely admit that I do judge) should show discretion and a bit of grace. Everyone does stupid things they regret later on. But a complete lack of judgment is a different story. I don't agree with forcing people to give up their passwords to facebook. But, if something is posted publicly, it's because they don't care if strangers see it (and in some cases, I think they hope that strangers WILL see it).

Also true story. I was looking for a therapist to work with my daughter. I came across one with excellent qualifications (though she was young and had little true experience). Her cost for parents was $80 per hour. Her cost for the school would be $1,000 a day. (Her fees are typical of her qualifications). I was considering and had decided to set up an interview with her. I googled her name (since therapists usually have volunteer work and such - it gives me an indication of their personality). I found her myspace account which showed her in very skimpy clothing (she was very large busted) along with comments about how she dressed the way she did to get big tips when she worked and free drinks at the bar. Her comments about grad school included the fact that she was hungover for her morning classes and had pic after pic of a bathtub full of ice and beer. I didn't hire her and neither did our school system. I thought she lacked good judgment and saw nothing about volunteer work or concern for children. She even publicly stated that she entered the field for the "dollahs". She's welcome to post what she wants online. I'm welcome to hire the person I want to hire.

We always trick or treat in my Dad's neighborhood. We live in a rural area (and so does he). There is one main road that is blocked off for trick or treating (police literally block it off). The majority of people will have a grill going and strangers are welcome to come ask for a hotdog or hamburger. Those who live on that road know to expect lots of kids. People living elsewhere will trick or treat with the adults joining friends on their front porches (so one house may have four different adults handing out candy). At 8:00, trick or treating is finished and the "big kids" come out and toilet paper houses. By 10:00, the big kids go back home, roads are unblocked and city workers have the mess cleaned up the next morning. The general rule is that if you are dressed in a costume to trick or treat, you are too young to participate in rolling houses. Most older kids are happy to escort little kids around (and get an occasional piece of candy) in their regular clothes in order to roll houses later. I love going there. :)

Thanks everyone :) I've mentioned attachment problems to her before (sorry, I can't remember the term, is it RAD?). She didn't feel that was her problem with S. She may be more open to looking into it now. I am really pushing her to contact the school system and my mother plans to drive down to see her this Friday. I plan to gently push for this to be resolved even if things temporarily improve. My niece has always been sweet around me (although she goes a bit nuts when my sister walks into the room and she is definitely more attached to men than women). Her bad behavior is what I consider typical (coloring in books, etc). I believe my sister though. Plus, the dance studio, pre-school and church are all commenting and complaining.

I love the smell of lavender and vanilla. I use glade plug-ins all over the house. With the cost of groceries going up, I need to cut back. I plan to bring them back when we have holiday company, but for everyday use, how can I achieve the same effect? Potpourri? (I would rather have natural things rather than colored wood chips that smell like vanilla and lavender). Suggestions?

Thanks :) Those both sound yummy.

I'm trying to put some variety in breakfast. I'd like to start serving pie in place of pancakes or toast, etc. I know it sounds odd, but it can't be worse than a pop-tart IMO. I have a good pumpkin pie recipe, but that's the only one I really know how to make. We are gluten free, so I don't need pie crust recipes - I plan to buy those pre-made. I'd love apple, blueberry and any other type of fruit or light sweetened pie. I don't want anything like chocolate since I wouldn't want that for breakfast. My thoughts are to serve a slice of pie, scrambled eggs and a meat of some sort. Thanks and hope I don't sound too weird. :)

My middle daughter has Celiac Disease and braces. My oldest has braces this year. They don't eat anything until we get home and then we spread out the "loot". :) If there is something special they really wanted in their bag (and it's safe) they put it in their stack. Everything else is dumped in one big stack and shared. My gf girl knows what is safe and what isn't. My oldest will be given her treats rather than picking her own (autism). I will purchase a couple of bags of mixed 'good' candy and ate it to the mix. If we have too much, I send it to work with DH or give to his friends.

Thanks for the continuing replies. :) My sister has always had a lack of common sense (although she is apparently a genius in the surgery room) so some of this hits her hard. I called our mother and asked her to call her and reinforce - medication (for sis), evaluation for niece and respite care in some way -asap. I'm hopeful that she will let my niece come stay with us for a week. Because of my oldest daughter's diagnosis, we know a lot of therapists who would probably eyeball dniece and share some thoughts (unofficially). Regardless, my sister is in need of a break, desperately. I could tell from her voice that she's about to snap. Part of it was the dance studio kicking S out. She's not sure what happened and they didn't want to tell her. They met her outside the dance studio with S and put her in the car, telling Sister that this wasn't going to work out. My niece is 3 1/2 so I don't think she qualifies for early intervention (birth - 3). But, would she qualify for testing from the state in the 3 - 5 yr old gap? Editing to add - my mother told me that when S gets angry or frustrated she starts clearing surfaces and throwing everything on the floor.

Thank you for all the answers so far. I wanted to add that my sister is a floor nurse (or is it a charge nurse?) and extremely knowledgeable in many ways. She's just lost at this point. Tap,tap,tap - your great-niece sounds exactly like my niece. I know that Sis keeps hoping things will get better, but they seem to be getting worse. I'm taking note of the things you did and will pass along your kind offer to her and see if she's interested. jelbe5 - I asked the same question. She said that she's greatly reduced the sugar that S receives and has cut out red food dye. I've encouraged her to get a full allergy work-up for as many things as she can. Heigh Ho - I've always felt her language was appropriate for her age. (I have a functionally non-verbal 12 yr old so I tend to hone in on that in kids). I've never had trouble understanding her when she wanted things or was just playing with our girls. Momling - I'll look into that, thanks. I know she's past the window for early intervention, but it may be that she can still fit into some school testing. Jvander - we weren't sure where to take her. I told her to ask her pediatrician for a referral to either a psychiatrist or psychologist or development type person. If they don't check for the things you listed (FAS/bipolar and so on), I'll make sure they do.

My sister and I have an on again/off again relationship, but I'm always there for her and she called tonight with a problem. Many of you have offered suggestions in the past which I have passed on to her. My niece is about 3 1/2 years old and was adopted at birth. My sis doesn't have a lot of medical history for her and the birth father is unknown. A little over a year ago, they adopted their second child at birth. My question is about the 3 1/2 yr old niece, S. S has had increasingly difficult behaviors that my sister finds difficulty in dealing with. Recently, this included: -5 parent conferences with the pre-school this month, including a two day suspension after S kicked another student repeatedly and then told the teacher to shut up because she (teacher) was stupid -lots of difficulty and disrupting her dance class. She was kicked out today and though my Sister has paid through the end of the month, she was told there would be no refund because they feel they have earned more than what they were paid. -Sunday School teachers have changed three times for her class. They all mentioned that S was disruptive. -Lots of temper tantrums and screaming, even over the most minor of things, for example, crayons falling off the table and onto the floor. S is sweet and patient with her little sister, but is aggressive towards other kids her age. She picks up furniture at pre-school and church and throws it. My sister feels like the most horrible parent on earth. She is on medication for anxiety and told me tonight she has put in a call to her psychiatrist for depression medication. She says that while other parents notice S's behavior, they appear impatient with my Sister and will make comments like, "It's fine, just go - we'll take care of S" in an impatient tone which Sister interprets to mean that she is incompetent. S is sweet to adults for a few hours or days, but then apparently becomes unkind to everyone - yelling, screaming, calling names, hitting, kicking, throwing things (including furniture). She asked the doctor whether S had ADHD but the doctor said she was too young to make that diagnosis. She asked her husband what he thought, but he said he felt the behavior was typical for a 3 yr old. My advice (simply) was that she was a good parent, she needs to keep her psych appointment, ask the pediatrician for a referral to a psych (iatrist/ologist) and if the pediatrician won't do it, find another one. Developmentally, S has always appeared fine regarding speech, etc. Any thoughts? I've offered to take in S for a week or so just to give her a break and she's seriously considering leaving her here after Thanksgiving (when they come to visit - they live about 3 hours away). She needs a break. Any thoughts for me? Because she adopted the girls, she doesn't feel like a "real" parent at the moment. I admit she does some nutty things, but I don't feel like this situation is due to parenting at all. (She did say that she was going to ask her psych to suggest someone that can help her with parenting and how to discipline a child like S because she doesn't know how to make her mind her at this point).

When my two (homeschool) girls were in school, they both had problems going to the bathroom. My middle daughter has celiac disease and sometimes, if she needs to go, she needs to go WITHOUT asking permission. That happened approximately twice a year. With permission, maybe four times a year. The rest of the time, she was able to go during scheduled break times. I don't know if the OP's child has to change classes if she is nine years old. Here, class changes do not begin until 5th grade. My younger daughter had stress which led to urine and fecal problems during the day. She was too embarrassed and ashamed to ask to go to the bathroom. The school discouraged using the bathroom except during regular breaks due to vandalism going on in the bathrooms. It was a concern that if a student walked in on the person doing the vandalism, they could get hurt. My girls were still allowed to go whenever they needed and we did provide a doctor's note. And bathroom shenanigans are legendary almost anywhere. :) Especially boys. Water fights, flinging wet toilet paper, even smearing feces along the walls at the school my girls attended. Scissors were confiscated after they realized someone was carving racial slurs into the stall walls. I, also, wish you had posted how many times a day (or week) that your child was using the restroom.

Thanks both of you. :) The hair shouldn't be a problem. She typically wears it in a shoulder-length bob style. She asked if she could make it a VERY short bob and she had it cut last week. It looks absolutely adorable on her in my opinion (she also does cheerleading and it's too short now for ribbons, bows, etc). This is for my 11 yo dd. She's very small for her age and typically doesn't get parts for 'older' characters. I have my fingers crossed for her. :)

I know - odd question. My daughter is auditioning for Children's Theatre soon. They always have plenty of girls try out but very few boys so she centered her audition monologue and song around boys (Peter Pan and Huckleberry Finn specifically). Any suggestions on how to walk, talk or whatever like a boy? I find this amusing but she would seriously like to act like a boy for the audition to make it a bit more memorable.

It's common with those who do not vaccinate. I wouldn't do it but I don't see anything wrong with it.

Oops, I just noticed that you had replied as well. Yes, I hadn't thought about doing that actually. I'm not sure why it didn't occur to me. Thanks for the suggestion. :)

That's a good idea (and I'm not sure why I didn't think about doing that). I don't play, but my other daughter could fill them in for her.

Our goal is to move her off of the prompts at some point. For now, she's learning one song (for daily practice) and we're going to see if her fingers learn the notes (if that makes sense). She's playing "My Favorite Things" as she is hyper-focused on The Sound of Music right now. She definitely needs it right now, but I'm hopeful that we can eventually remove them. We tried taking off one of them and she paused a bit but eventually realized that it was the right note. She just started playing so we'll see how it goes. :)

We're not doing theory with her. My other daughter is also taking piano (and doing extremely well) and she does theory. Thanks :)

Seeing the other posts on piano music made me wonder if you all could help me locate something. My oldest is learning to play piano. Her teacher is actually a home-school teenager (we had been turned down by many other piano teachers). My oldest has autism and is significantly impaired. We have letter tabs on the piano keys and she plays from music that also has letters above the notes. We're hoping that she'll eventually learn where the notes should be and we can remove the tabs. If I'm looking online for music, would that be considered a certain type of music? I look at beginner and easy music, but that doesn't always have the letters on them. It's over an hour to a piano store, so I'd rather not go anywhere to look.

I didn't tell them why I wanted a consult and wouldn't talk to a nurse. I can call and ask about being on their cancellation list. I am not taking the word of our former friend. I have had nothing to do with him since we found out. However, law enforcement can find no evidence that a crime occurred so the general assumption is that nothing happened with our family. (He has confessed to what he is charged with so there's no doubting his guilt). Sorry if I gave the impression that I'm not worried about that, because I am. It's kept me awake many a night. :grouphug:

Thanks for all the suggestions. I'm not opposed to medication, we use it for our oldest and I'm currently on anti-anxiety medication. It just makes me sad to see my youngest possibly needing it. I contacted our pediatrician's office. The first consult visit he has is in early November, so it will be a while, but it's scheduled.

Thank you for your help :)

Bill, I don't do their name scheme. The onety two was too much for me. My middle daughter catches on quickly and I'm afraid I'm guilty of expecting my youngest to do the same. Patience is the key I guess. :)

I have the complete set of mathusee manipulatives (two boxes actually). We went through 1's and 10's up to 100. If I ask her what do we get when I have 5 tens and 3 ones, she knows the answer is 53. Spycar, I'll try to break it down further as you suggested.