In good news, no one at my mom’s skilled nursing seems very sick! They have signs on some doors saying they have a “droplet exposure protocol” and staff wear face masks (etc — face shields, they separate their laundry too) with them. But I still see the people in the rooms here and there, and they do not look sick. It’s a long story, but my mom can walk and loves to walk, but right now she can only walk if someone is with her with a gait belt. So I walk up and down all the halls with her!!!!!

My mom is in skilled nursing right now. There is Covid all over this facility. I think I have Covid right now. My mom had a mild sore throat for two days and felt slightly tired one of those days. We both had the booster. I am hoping to have a mild case. I do not feel good, though.

I would.

I think if the other outings mentioned work well, a cruise would work well, too. It sounds like he would manage well.

@DeainUSA That is awesome!!!!!!!

I took a break for more reading practice.

@freesia that is great, and especially that he’s moving on from the Covid years!!!!! @Miss Tick I am also pretty content! I know just what you mean!

I have been on one cruise. It would not be a fit for my son or husband. Okay, if we wanted (on this cruise), we could *always* find a place that had very few people and was very quiet. But we could not bypass “going through a crowd of people” to get to these quiet places. I just know it would put them in a bad mood. I also would worry with them, about going somewhere that it’s impossible to leave early. For the cruise I went on, we went out of Galveston. The boarding and exiting process would have been very stressful for them. It was a long-ish process and we definitely were part of a crowd of people.

My son got mediocre grades — he passed everything and only got one D! The D was touch and go. He doesn’t like college, he doesn’t think his intended major is right for him anymore. He applied for vo-tech in December. Here the admissions cycle for that is — apply in the Fall, interview and find out if you are accepted in the Spring, classes start in mid-August. He applied for a computer program, it seems like a good fit for him. He’s living with my parents, and it’s a good fit, he is actually very helpful to them. He told me recently, he wants to get a work-from-home job and stay with my parents for as long as he can. He’s not going back to college for this semester. There’s a new situation where my mom’s health has declined and she needs more help, he may be more of a caretaker for the next period of time, instead of looking for a job. We are going to see how things go with my mom. He has talked to one relative who has a job with computer certifications, and I have talked to a woman at my church who has a late-20s son who didn’t want to go to college and went to a computer program at this vo-tech. It seems like a good option for him. The late-20s son is self-supporting and enjoys his job, it is a 9-5 job and not stressful… the relative’s job is more “on call 24 hours a day, also he manages a team” but he is also paid a lot more (lol). I would guide my son towards “9-5 and not stressful” if it were up to me, that is his personality.

I think there is some balance between: kids can only make as much progress as they are going to make, it is just going to take time, they have to have time for things to percolate and gel…. and… a relationship between time spent and progress made, where more time means more progress. I think there is a balance there, and “enough” time is important, but “too much” time does not lead to greater progress. I also think I am liberal in what I would count. I counted *anything,* not just stuff that would be more formal reading intervention.

I think that sounds like a good amount of time!

My mom was still working when my oldest son was born. She came for a very nice visit when he was about 4 months old. When I was pregnant with my twins, I was having a difficult pregnancy, and she retired early (within the year she was always going to retire, she retired a few months earlier) to come help me while I was pregnant. It was incredibly helpful. Then she left about a week after they were born, she was ready to go home and we were ready for her to go. Then since she was retired, she visited pretty often. We are close and she is very close to my kids. Edit: I always panted during the middle of my pregnancy, I did not have a medical problem, only they were pressing on me in a way to make it hard to drive. My mom would always say “did you run to pick up the phone?” And I would say no. But she was very concerned and I was having a hard time taking care of my older son who was then 3.

I would think about your fire exits and where your drier vent is. I have heard a horror story where someone had a drier vent fire, and it would have blocked an exit from a bedroom if someone had been in the bedroom. Or they worried a child wouldn’t have actually been able to get out the window with the stairs blocked, because it was hard to open, it was something like that.

I’m going to add, my son also did pretty intense speech therapy, he had speech therapy 5 days a week for about one school year (3x/week in school, 2x/week after school at a university speech clinic.) He also had school and private OT, and that included “crossing the midline,” he was losing his place in reading when his eyes “crossed the midline,” causing him to lose his place, as he read. He also had an issue where he would skip the line of text with a paragraph indentation, he would just skip that line and read the next line, and it would be very confusing to him. I took him for a vision therapy consult, and he was already in OT, and that person said “let OT do it.” The OT had said he should have the consult. The vision therapist could have treated my son but his practice was not geared towards his age and wasn’t going to have fun stuff like OT had.

I used some Barton. I did use some Abecedarian — it does not go farther than AAR 4. I had a book about how to increase reading fluency, and did exercises out of that book. My son read in a monotone with no attention to periods or commas. The things he liked for that were putting a horizontal line where he should pause when he was reading. (I would have short passages for him.). I also marked passages for/with him with “scoops” (like a parentheses symbol going under parts of a sentence) to show phrasing. There are also some rules to teach about phrasing, that were in this fluency book — that kids usually just pick up, but my son was having trouble with it. So basically he would practice reading out loud his fluency passages with good fluency, which can be pretty short. I also included just — reading time, in that 2 hours. If it was productive reading time, he was reading something he could read easily for independent reading — I counted things like that. It’s not that I was “doing reading instruction” the entire time, all the time. Sometimes he could do more, sometimes he would be more “stuck” at a level and do a lot more of just practice/review at that level, or I would look for ways to review by basically covering the same material with a different program or something. Something else I did was to pre-read books I was going to read out loud to him, and underline sentences for him to read, that he would be able to read nicely. He liked that and it was pretty low pressure for him, but also “real reading.” Another thing he liked was to read captions to pictures in those “visual dictionary” books (Lego and Star Wars had them at the time) and similar books, he could read the captions and didn’t feel bad about it taking time for him to figure out the words. I would read him the blocks of text, but then he would still like to look at the books and read the captions.

I think that sounds great!

I think the “zone of proximal development” is really solid, it does not give advice about a time, but talks about how students will learn well, and things to look for. It’s not specific to reading, but I think it’s honestly very helpful.

To answer the question… I generally tried for 2 hours when not in school, and 20-30 minutes after (public) school. Often some 20-30 minutes sessions and some 2-5 minute sessions. It’s very possible to build a lot of short sessions in, and count lots of practice/review in the time and not just “teaching a new lesson.” Edit: with a younger child, with a lower frustration tolerance….

For building into a routine, I have kept practice sheets (etc) in the kitchen and run through them at times we are in the kitchen. I have also set a timer to do a short lesson between episodes of a tv show.

How old? After school, or home-schooling? I would say in general — frequent short sessions, stopping before fatigue. It depends a lot on how much kids can do. Try to be always positive and encouraging, and “end on success” — this means end on something they did well. Don’t stop on something too hard. Mix in lots and lots of review and don’t spend too much time on things that are currently new/hard. Give lots of examples, don’t put kids on the spot.

For calling in another country, I think I would try getting an international SIM card before I went. Our cell phone plan doesn’t have international calling.

I see calling cards for sell here and there, I know I see them at a cell phone repair store and an international grocery.

I think I would buy a calling card.

Are the cold drinks mainly numbing your throat? Hot (but not too hot) drinks do seem like they soothe my throat better as far as coughing, but cold drinks can be numbing. Personally — I like something to numb my throat (like a cough drop or throat spray) plus a hot drink. I might have more of a cold than a cough, though, a lot of the time. I have a deep belief that warm things are more soothing but who knows how accurate that is.

There are also anti-glare screen covers for computers.