Did anyone see/hear this NPR Report today? I thought it fits in well with recent threads about kids who don't like making mistakes, are perfectionistic, etc. It hadn't really occurred to me that there were cultural factors in play as well, although of course it makes sense. This makes me glad that we are not using grading in homeschool, because I think that would be the sole criterion my dd would use to measure her success.

I'm not sure I have advice, exactly, because I'm dealing with the same thing and haven't found one particular strategy that works every time. However, I'm now absolutely convinced that one of the greatest gifts I can give my children is learning the value of struggling through difficult problems (academic or otherwise). Once my dd finally gets something (with maybe a little guidance), I always help her recognize that feeling of accomplishment which results. She may still be complaining about how hard it was, but I can see on her face that she is secretly pleased with herself. Hang in there, I think it gets better!:)

Lose weight and keep it off! :D And then maybe tackle world peace...:lol:

I let dd fill in the projected winners. I sent her to bed about 15 minutes ago, and she wanted to make sure that I leave it for her to finish in the morning. I was a bit shocked how interested she was, but I guess I should have realized it yesterday when her stuffed animals held an election! She was also fascinated watching me vote.

:grouphug: I know this feeling, too. I can't watch too much HGTV because of it!!

Today my dd and I attended a local ice hockey game at a new stadium in our city. It was their "education day" where they offered tickets and a sack lunch for $5 per kid. Over 9,000 kids were there from local schools. We went with my local hs group, and I guess they didn't know where to put us, so they gave us a box suite (no extra charge). I was tempted to have the suite attendant bring me a mixed drink, but managed to restrain myself (it was before noon, after all)! :001_smile: Sometimes it pays to be a homeschooler...

:hurray:Congratulations!!

I agree with pp's that this issue is so frustrating and disheartening. Recently my book group read Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman. This (not at all serious) book was written in the early 90's, I believe. One character in the book represented famine. He congratulated himself on inventing food that would simultaneously make people fat and starve. I guess the book wasn't fiction after all...

Thanks to the OP for this thread--it's been very interesting to me. Both dh and I are dual citizens (UK and US). We were both born in the UK with American mothers and British fathers. Our dc are also dual citizens (born here), so we travel with 8 passports. We made sure to apply for the UK passports for dc so that they can travel and work anywhere in the EU. But I confess I was pretty ignorant of the official rules regarding dual citizenship!

That makes no sense...but I think for someone dead set against hs, they will use whatever you tell them, however illogical the argument is. I guess I'm just glad my MIL is silent on the issue of hs (other than her initial comment, "Oh that's a shame."). :D

I confess I've had this problem myself. I have to bite my tongue sometimes not to correct others' spelling, etc. In high school my world history teacher kept talking about the Thames River in London, pronouncing it phonetically. I couldn't take it anymore and finally corrected her. I figured I owed it to my classmates! She didn't much like me anyway, so wth...

Thanks, I may have to give that a try!

My dd7 had to see an oral surgeon today because she has sores on her gums. We believe she is picking at them at night (a tooth is coming in, which I think started it). If it isn't better in two weeks, they will have to do a biopsy to rule out a more serious cause. Dd acknowledged that she might be picking at night when she is trying to go to sleep, so we thought tonight we would try putting band-aids on her fingers. Any other suggestions? We are really hoping to avoid a biopsy...Thanks!

Perfectionism rears its ugly head in our house almost daily. My biggest challenge is to not lose my cool, because it definitely makes it worse. Sometimes I leave my dd crying and/or screaming about how hard something is. I tell her calmly that I will be back in a minute, then I go make a cup of tea for myself and for her. Usually, she will have calmed down and worked out whatever was giving her trouble. I don't know why learning some things is so painful for her and why making mistakes gets her so upset--while other things she will easily let slide. I just hope she continues to mature and work through it...exhausting, isn't it?

:grouphug: I struggled with this a bit as a child, too. I remember in school other kids asking me if I could talk. I think for me it gradually improved, but I know from kids I've worked with that it doesn't always dissipate on its own. I'm guessing that she does feel anxious, but might not be able to identify it as anxiety because it's such an ingrained response. She probably recognizes that there is nothing "dangerous" in talking to others, but it's hard to convince her "bird brain" which kicks in the fight-or-flight response without any rational thought whatsoever! I think if she's willing to work with someone, a cognitive-behavioral approach could be very effective. I like Aureen Wagner's Worried No More, which can be used with many different types of anxiety. Good luck to you and your dd...

So glad to know I'm not alone! My dd is not "mathy" at all, although I have noticed that she gets the concepts pretty easily, even when she can't (won't?) solve simple addition problems. Like your dd, I have a feeling that if I wasn't the one asking the questions, there would be a lot less aggravation. Oh well...

The other day, my dd7 struggled to solve 3+6. Part of it was stubbornness, but it took her seemingly forever. I even suggested she count on her fingers, but she looked at them and said she didn't remember how:001_huh:. That same night, she spontaneously came up with this problem while we were eating dinner: "I have some cups of lemonade. I give 4 to you and 3 to dd4. I still have 3 more than Daddy, who has 5. How many did I have to start with?" She figured this out without looking at her fingers, in easily a quarter of the time it took to solve 3+6. :tongue_smilie: Go figure!

IMHO public schools push writing far too early. They also seem to push quantity over quality. If he's reading that well, it's likely he won't have any significant difficulty writing. If he can narrate, he is likely ahead of the curve. In other words, don't sweat it!:001_smile:

Love this thread, too! We had a butterfly emerge this morning (my dd7 is a butterfly enthusiast--this about the 20th we've had over the past few years). I told her to go let it out on the butterfly bush before we started school. She went outside and then came back in with the butterfly, saying, "The wind and the rain have redoubled their fury, so I brought it back in." I looked outside at the gentle rain, and added a word to her vocabulary: hyperbole!:001_smile:

Most of the major achievement & cognitive tests, like the Woodcock Johnson, use large samples of people (several thousand, although it depends on the test) from across the nation to "norm" the scores. They usually try to include a representative sample that mirrors the population in question. Hope that helps!

This is ridiculous but doesn't surprise me much. I've heard of neighborhoods where they don't want trees because of the mess the leaves make... I also remember when I worked in an after-school day care my senior year of college. We let the kids use sidewalk chalk on the school sidewalks and the principal was very upset--apparently we were encouraging graffiti. Aren't there enough real problems in the world for people to get upset about? Now we have to go banning sidewalk chalk? :confused:

I was kind of prepared for a lot of these questions since I had heard others' horror stories. But what I wasn't prepared for was how sometimes people can ask them at such inappropriate times/places. The 2 minutes before my dh's choir concert begins isn't really a time that I want to discuss my educational choices! My biggest defense is to just become as vague as possible. I use the line "we're just trying to do what we think is best for our dc at this point in time" or some variation of this...I love talking about homeschooling if someone is genuinely curious, but otherwise I just feel that I'm being judged, and I don't have the time/energy to care about what they think!:D

The codes for psychological testing can be found in this link:http://www.pearsonassessments.com/NR/rdonlyres/69DCA659-1B93-432F-B2FD-7154EEDA5E42/4297/BTG_WINTER06p5.pdf It's 96101 for most kinds of testing. Most psychologists bill per hour, not per test. It makes more sense to do it that way because every child takes a different amount of time to test. Some insurance companies require us to name all of the tests we plan to administer, which is frankly a bit of a pain because sometimes you don't know until you administer one test (or get to know the kid a little) what tests you want to use. Or sometimes I may use only a few subtests from a test. Psychologists also bill for the time it takes to score, interpret and write up the results. For example, if I test a kid for 3 hours and spend 1 hour interpreting the results, I may bill for 7 to 8 hours of testing total. And yes, it really does take that long to write a decent report (not saying that all psych reports are decent, unfortunately). If you want to know the specific tests the psychologist plans to use, you might need to talk to him/her directly. Hope that Helps!

That sounds yummy! Thanks for the recipe. On the subject of curry powder, I once read this line on a take-out menu for an Indian restaurant in England: "We never use the rancid ambiguity that is curry powder." Loved that phrase so much that dh and I often talk about "rancid ambiguity" when referring to anything heavily processed!:001_smile:

Both of my kids gave up naps by 2 1/2 or 3. They go to bed at a reasonable hour (8 to 9) but are up fairly early (6 to 7). What is remarkable about my dd7's sleep is that she rarely napped in the car (or plane), even if it was late at night--and still doesn't. We flew to Australia when she was 2 1/2, and on the return trip we were delayed. Out of 30 hours of travel, she slept 3! And yet she recovered much faster than we did...:tongue_smilie: