I agree with everyone else. That was a crappy thing he did to not call when it was lost because he was waiting to get to keep it. I would do a public review and say you will contact the police if it is not returned.

Poor home conditions like mold are very common in low income housing. It is common for there to be lots of house issues in low income housing. It is also common to share houses with family but they are not home a lot because they all work several low income jobs or for the adults who are home to not really watch over children that are not their own. Kids are left alone at younger ages. There is a lot more stress in low income schools. Most parents do not have time to volunteer or work with their children. The class sizes are bigger. I toured lots of schools in my neighborhood and in the low income schools the curriculum was the bare minimum of the standards. The end of the year things the kids were working on in these classrooms when I was touring looked very different then the end at the charter schools or the schools in better neighborhoods. There can be a difference in teacher quality and classroom size plus the needs of the kids. Food quality is also less due to money and time. Also kids from poorer families do not have access to the activities that kids with more money have. Poor families sometimes do not have access to a vehicle so going to the library is too hard. Not to mention they have a small house and they are busy so the books become lost easily. Poor Immigrants tend do better then other groups in poverty. It is not common to move several income brackets. There are cases where it was done but it is not very common. The obstacles are there in our society that make it much harder depending on the circumstances you are born into. It most certainly exists,

I have used reading pathways with her and it has helped her able to break apart a multi syllable word to read it but she does not know any of the more advanced syllable rules. Something like that but with more of the advanced rules. She would probably do well with more lessons. She picks up decoding and spelling pretty well. Your resources look good Elizabeth but I just am not sure I will be good at implementing it. I also do not have a printer at the moment.

I want to work with dd on reading this summer. She can read and spell at a decent level but has not really made progress in a while. She picks up on spelling really well. Is there any low cost resources to help a kid progress to a higher decoding level.

Is the program only for MENSA members or can any kid complete the list?

I started skimming through the statistics and I learned a lot I did not know. I hear before that pedophiles have something cross wired in their brains where instead of wanting to comfort and take care of children and be sexually attracted to adults it was the opposite for them. This research is interesting because most pedophiles also have sexual relationships with adults too and that most are heterosexual even ones who victimize bits. It seems like the worse offenders were often boys who were molested themselves and especially if it happen more than 50 times. They were more likely to offend more times, daydream about it and victimize both boys and girls. It is just so sad how then the cycle will continue with the boys they victimize. I wonder if intervening early with counseling for the children victims would be able to stop the cycle for some. It also seems that it often starts at younger ages for boys who were victims.

The WHO mentions 3 trials dine in Africa. those trials were not well done. The AAP does not recommend routine circumcision of boys. There is a huge list of countries that ban the practice based on medical reasons or who do not recommend doing it. It is not at all compatible to vaccination. More men have intact genitals then don't.

Forced consent is not consent. She no longer consented to having him circumsized so you cannot force it. I would be completely devastated if someone forced me to circumsize my ds. Cutting off the foreskin is not a benign action. The foreskin very much has a purpose and removing it greatly reduces the sensitivity and function. In countries with no history of circumcision the rate of needing to be circumsized later in life is less then 1 in 1000. If a boy does not want a surgery to remove part of his penis why would you make him? You cannot fierce someone to consent to something that is not medically necessary. Years passed since the original agreement and the mom found out more and felt differently. The dad did not have to force the issue with someone who was against it.

I live in a very cold climate and I used a convertible using fleece suits or ponchos on the baby. If we were going to be outside for a while I had winter stuff stored in the car to get on after we arrived but that be needed anyway even with a car seat with a fleece cover. To walk into a store or a building it is not a big deal to have on the fleece suit with gloves and hats.

Convertible car seats are just as safe as an infant seat if the straps are low enough. Actually there are a few infant seats that did not test well. The car seat tech parents on the car seat forum who are anal about car seat safety even say that a convertible is just as safe as an infant seat if the straps fit. It is not less safe for a a baby to use a convertible car seat. I never had the arm problem with carriers and grocery carts and I am not tall and my arms are not long. I never felt like I didn't have enough arms but maybe it makes a difference what carrier you use. To me having a baby in the carrier was so much easier to manage then the car seat. Those things are so heavy to me and make my arm hurt. I can barely carry it and add a heavy baby and it is much worse.

I skipped it for my first two and it was fine. If baby fell asleep I popped them in a carrier at stores and learned to transfer them at home so they stayed asleep if they fell asleep in the car. That was a non issue. I pre tied a front wrap when they were little and did a back carry with a mei tai as they got older. Strollers work fine when you need to put them down. Some convertibles do not fit newborns tightly enough though. I did not realize it with my oldest and I had one of the ones that was said not to fit newborns. She looked fine to me at the time but I did not hear about it until she was older. The second convertible I had was better for newborns. I only got a infant seat for my youngest because it fit the best in the car at the time with 3 across. I rarely took it out though it was so heavy and cumbersome. It was easier to manage the toddler and preschooler with a baby in a carrier.

The Girl Scouts do not discriminate and accept all girls regardless of who they are in love with or what beliefs they have or do not have. Not discriminating has not created a bunch of heathen girls who all think the same way. Girl Scouts has been great for my dd. I hope the Boy Scouts will be the same in the future. I do not understand shielding kids from the fact that people have different beliefs. If the Boy Scouts changes to not allow discrimination against religion or sexual orientation there would be troops that excluded people and discriminated to take its place but all kids could take part in the bigger scouting organization and the benefits that scouting offers to those interested in scouting.

This is great news. I just hope they also accept children who do not follow a religion in the near future. We technically go to a church (UU) but my ds is an open atheist and he may decide to not go to church in the future. He is looking forward to getting to join the cubs scouts now that he finished kindergarten. I hope in the future he is not prevented from becoming a Boy Scout because of discrimination. I could see him still being into it when he is older. It annoys me that people deem us unworthy and untrustworthy and would discriminate my child because we have different beliefs.

I am so sorry that times are so hard for your family right now and the process is so hard. Do you have any food banks in your area?

I considered it when they were able to stay dry during the day, go without diapers and initiated going to the bathroom by themselves even if they still needed help with wiping for a bit. Night training sometimes took longer but even some older kids wet the bed at night and I consider those kids toilet trained.

He did score low in rapid color naming. Do you have the link for that? What level is your son in Barton OhE? I am hoping Barton will be helpful. I am just worried it will be but then we will not be able to continue. I will ask them for what I can due fluency wise and to sit in on some sessions.

Ds has had an OT evaluation at 5. They did note a lot of issues like he did not have a dominant hand (still does not) he used a fist grip and he did not use his hand for stabilization. He did not color or write at all at the time. They could not help him because OT is an add on service. His teacher and the principal were aware of this before he started. I worked on a lot of pre writing with him in the year before and finally got him writing the summer before he started. A lot of the boys this year started the year struggling with writing but all got better and faster as the year went on. I used therapeutic putty daily based on his teacher's recommendation and it helped at first but he still could not finish stuff on time and if he tried it was so sloppy. At the conference his teacher told me he is brilliant but he would not be able to keep up with writing next year with the increase in writing and maybe he could get an IEP or RTI. She said he is up here and put her hand up high but his skills are down here. I knew this all along and was so thankful she saw him for who he was. I got testing at the tutoring place after that and they did run a CTOPP. He scores were not too low but they did say he did exhibit a lot of signs of dyslexia and they did pick up some discrepancies that are common in other testing they did. He scored good in sound naming, average in most areas and had two low areas. We work a lot on phonograms. At his school they work on naming them fast. He was the last in 2 classes to get his phonogram speed test but had practice naming them fast. He tested as reading at .8 grade level which is grade level technically. He has been at this level for ages and progress has been slow though. He struggles with the books they send home with him but he must do better the second time around at school. I worked with him before school started with AAR and did daily phonogram practice once he started school. I requested testing and they held a meeting about it. I knew that it was going to be a battle but this time his teacher was different even though his writing has not changed. They said they could test over the summer or the fall but if it was done in the summer they would not be the one to do the IEP and they could decide to reject it. If it is done in the fall they will be there for the IEP. Our school year ends next week so there is no time for another meeting and I do not want to go through that again right away. I really felt like everyone was against me even the one person I thought wad on his side. The principal would help but she goes with the tone of everyone else. I believe we do have the discrepancy model but they said there needs to be an discrepancy and a need. He gives to a charter type school where the academics are advanced and they use the Spalding method for reading and spelling and learn to write through copy work dictation and correcting errors. The neighborhood school uses a site word heavy method and remediation is more of that and they tend to have more kids who are lower readers. He had a sensory profile a long time ago and it did come back as having sensory issues but we lost insurance then so he could not get therapy. The school did not care about sensory issues and he does ok at school because it is not noisy and very structured plus it was only a short day. I would sit in on sessions but I have two other kids and nowhere for them to go so I do not know that is feasible.

They originally suggested something like me doing the fluency work once insurance runs out but now that we have a tutor assigned that seems to have changed. They said they have to go by the program and there is nothing I can do with him. My ds is not one who handles challenges well lol and yes he seems to have add or attention issues especially for stuff like reading lessons. He hates doing it. My ds's writing is even worse then his reading. He seems to be 2E but he hasn't had testing except through the tutoring place. We will be testing in the fall through the school but it is unlikely that he will get help. They are even making it seem like testing will be a waste. Ds used to have articulation speech issues but they cleared up with a really good speech therapist. Ds has really good long term memory, has an amazing ability to narrate long chapters, a excellent vocabulary, likes and understand books like Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh, The Mostly True Adventures of Homer Price etc. he is good at building things and Legos and k-nex. He built an engine the other day out of k-nex. It did not look amazing but he described how it worked and he understood how engine work and what parts they have. He is great at reasoning and putting information together from different sources. He watches adult science shows and lectures. He likes older kids. His academics on the other hand he struggles with. He has basic phonemic awareness but he is not reading well. He stumbles through 1st grade books and this is with lots of support. He makes a lot of mistakes. He cannot finish his work on time. He never choses to write and cannot spell beyond a cvc word. He reverses constantly and is a very slow deliberate write who copies one letter at a time. He is 6.5.

I will be following this one Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts Free archery lessons through Parks and Recreation I am looking into either a Lego league or Destination Imagination type thing Chess club when they had one Online hiking groups with other parents

Ds gets 30 tutoring sessions mostly covered by insurance. That makes tutoring affordable while he is covered. That only gets us 4 months though and maybe through level 3 they said. After that the cost becomes expensive and we could not afford the two sessions a week. I did not think I was up to it myself but maybe I could. It suddenly makes the program seem affordable. How does implementing Barton compare to something like AAR? Are the videos all you need? Needing to watch something and figure it out is something that will be a bit of a struggle for me. I am not good at organizing. I also worried I will get discouraged pretty fast that it is not working when maybe it just is going to be a struggle.

The timing around ovulation with boys right around ovulation and girls a few days before has been proved false with studies. I will see if I can fund the studies but I remember reading them. Plus there would be a lot more boys if that was true. Sperm can live a few days in the right environment but it is more effective to time closer and the chances are higher. There is supposedly ways you can sway but according to this gender site but it has to do with changing the ph environment or something with supplements. I have no idea how effective swaying would be. I think it can be either a women or a man thing and that either favor boys in this family. I heard in times if war or stress that more of one sex is born or men who work in certain fields have more of one sex.

I dreamed of having an off the grid house with solar panels or wind energy and animals. Once the kids were born I realized how hard it was to make that come into fruition with having to work, needing somewhere to live while it is being built having money saved and figuring out how to build and grow things , plus take care of animals while doing the mothering thing and quickly realized we just were not in a position to do it. There are families that are able to and that is great they can make it work. This is also similar to The Glass Castle. It seems like if what that person said is true the father is dysfunctional and probably has substance abuse problems and more and it causes depression in the mom. To bad that this was not the wake up call for her to get them in a better situation with hopefully supports in place without him. It also sounds like they need to rehome those animals because the just cannot handle the waste and I do not see that changing. It is hard to have a family that size and animas to care for.

I am usually very much for not taking kids away from a family. I also have experienced that kids can be taken from a family where I do not think it is the best move. I think it is better when CPS works to keep families together rather then take them away. There have been other families that have been snarked on online that I do not think those children should be removed. With the living environment of these children they needed to be removed. It is sad how the parents obviously do not get it. This should have been a wake up call but it is not. There are in denial. It is sad that because of media attention most people who really do not know the full story they get all this money from gofundme that they will probably not put to good use. It makes no sense to be against stable government help to get back on your feet but mooching off others is totes cool. I missed the burn incident and the turtle incident but they are living in squalor right now and they are lucky to still have all ten children. You can see how the land deteriorated through the picture of the dirty pond. I have seen better buildings in shanty towns. People who live in shanties do get better supplies like brick when they can and improve their conditions. In Alaska there was this really large fundamental family that lived off the land in primitive conditions. They illegally cut trees down where they were not suppose to and people were not crazy about their presence. It later came out the much older father was abusing his children and raped one of his daughters. The children all fled when he was caught. It reminds me of this family I knew a while back where the dad was this very controlling religious guy who did not think women had any insight. They were basically homeless and had a huge family but the kids were all grown by then.

My childhood cat was a feral kitten we took in at 4 months. We had to work slowly to get him to trust us. He was a great cat. He was skittish around people he did not know but socialized with our family or people he got to know.

As far as evolving norms I think access to clean water, an adequate waste removal system, a place to prepare and eat food, and warmth during winter in cold locations is neccasary especially in a industrialized nation. There are places in the world where that is not available for some people but that is not something that is good and people work to change. I do think our standards are high and it is more than fine if people make do with very little or unconventional ways of getting the basics. I agree that that case of the mom that it was wrong to leave the child alone and that it make sense to be involved after that incident but that case is a case where they should make sure that the child is not left alone again and provide support. The things they mention were all nit picky like taking him out to eat or him sitting on a chair. The original incident is the only thing that warrants action. It varies by area with CPS. In my area I know of at least 2 cases where they took children from loving homes with no gross neglect, abuse or drug use. In one case the mom eventually got her children back but it was an ordeal and in another it seems like it is unlikely. Once they make up their mind and it can be very subjective then they really see everything in a negative lens but it can be just cultural nit picky things that do not warrant taking a child away. I remember hearing that where I live now removes just as many kids as where I am from that has over 8 times the population and thinking that parents here must be really bad. That is not the case.