Sounds like a good option to consider that would let him regroup and maybe apply somewhere else for the major he wants. CC has definitely been a positive experience for my kids.

YAY! Such great news!!

I used levels 7-11 with my kids, and it worked really well. Here's a review I wrote when we were working through level 7.

I find I have dreams for my kids even when I didn’t think that I did! I’m also convinced that there’s always going to be some choices along the way that they make that strike fear in my heart! Lots of prayers!

My brother is a Classics professor, and I know it’s a highly competitive field. When he was applying (this was years ago), there would be 200 applications vying for one position. I don’t know what the field is like for teaching at the high school level.

I used it with both of my kids and definitely liked it. Essentials in writing worked really well for my kids, and I used levels 7 through 11 with them. The grading service wasn’t out yet when I used it though, sorry I can’t help with that part!

I think at some point, when you've decided and when she might be ready to talk again (!), that you can lay out your guidelines clearly, even if it's "we'll decide with each student whether it might be best to start at the CC or a 4-year school." or "If you really aren't sure what you want to do or where you want to go, we'll have you start at the CC. Then, when you have researched more and have a better idea about things, you can transfer." or, "College is something you need to really want to do if we're going to do this. We'd love to have you go, and we think it's very worthwhile, but you seem ambivalent. That's okay--but we're not going to push for you to go to a university if you don't have a strong desire and at least some ideas of what you might like to do." I think the biggest difference between your extended family scenarios and your current situation: 1, *you* are not limiting your daughter's choices. In effect, she is by her ambivalence, at least at present. That, of course, can change. At some point, you'll probably want to let her know that. 2, apparently the extended family didn't communicate the why's or assumed they were known (boys go to school, girls don't, or whatever). You don't have to follow in their steps--you can have very open communication and let your children know the "why's" behind decisions. That's such a blessing! Since she has trouble thinking about this, I would narrow the choices for her and choose 2, maybe 3 to visit. She can always expand her search later--but in my experience with kids who haven't wanted to do the research, a big part of it is the paralysis that comes with too many choices. Consider things you even think she might be interested in, and try to choose a couple of schools that might fit her variety of interests (and included in that could be any extra-curriculars you think of.) I never saw the benefit for my kids either--and felt they would benefit more from the continued scaffolding and opportunities I could provide through high school. Some kids really do benefit from that though. All of the schools we've looked into allow undeclared majors. I'd guess that's pretty common, especially for schools that are not elite. Most kids at least change majors!

(Argh, auto-correct! Not "Let"...Latin!)

Does he also have auditory processing issues? I found Latin easier than Spanish because I wouldn’t have to learn how to be conversational in it.

Glad it's working for you now!

I would encourage you to investigate your local CC before deciding that community won't be present there. In my experience, with two VERY different children (one who is energized by being around others though she also needs some alone time, and one who has to be pushed into social situations), the time at CC is what they make it. If your dd is currently the type of person who can find community and get help when she needs it, then as long as your CC has things like willing instructors, a helpful tutoring center, and some active clubs, she can have a great time there. Our CC has an Intervarsity Christian Fellowship group and my dd absolutely loves it and is very involved with them. They've done retreats (combined with groups from 4-year schools too), have a weekly fellowship/worship time, weekly activity days (they played ultimate frisbee all fall until it just got too cold, do board games in the cafeteria etc...) Her time with them is every bit as rich as the time I spent in a Christian group at a 4-year school when I went--I'm so thankful this group is there for her and that she can be there for others too. Being at home has advantages too--time for kids to scaffold gently to the college experience plus freedom to explore various classes (it's cheap to try things out, cheap to change majors etc... Adding a year because of a major change at the CC level is not the big-huge-hairy-deal that adding a year at a 4-year school would be.) You could think of sending a student to a 4-year school as limiting too, because there isn't that freedom to scaffold gently or to explore--there's all kinds of pressure to get done in 4 years that you don't have with a CC. Being at the CC allows my dd to continue her relationships at our church and be involved in our community here with various volunteer activity that she wouldn't be able to do if she went away to school (she'd be starting all over with relationships, wouldn't be here to do some of the things that are meaningful to her now etc...) I think you really have to look at the decision not so much as "limiting" but "different." Just like homeschool vs. public school necessarily means that you have limitations on some things but freedom in others. Not every kid knows what they want at 16 or 17--and the future can be scary. I'd say if she's ambivalent, then talk to her about doing either a gap year or going to the CC. If she says, "I really wanted to start at a 4-year school," then let her know what that should look like (ie, showing interest, drive, having a couple of ideas about majors even if she hasn't nailed one down yet etc...) You might find, though, that she might be relieved about going locally.

There are a variety of strategies you can use. Words like Bible, you may want to help her look at morphology and roots. Teach her that biblio means book. Show her "bibliography" and "bibliophile" and "biblical" and help her see how all of these words relate--and then show her "Bible" and have her see that it comes from the same root and is a consonant-le word. When words rely on visual strategies, help her to categorize words of like patterns together (so have her study ee words together and master those before working on another pattern or trying mixed lists.) The e_e pattern is actually very rare in English. Have her memorize those few words when she comes to them, and let her know that in other words, it's most likely NOT that pattern. You can also incorporate multi-sensory approaches to help shore up weaker visual memory skills. Good spellers in English tend to use a variety of strategies, and knowing the rules is just one of those strategies. It can take a lot of work and practice though--I know my kids needed lots of review incorporated, and help with directly learning the strategies, analyzing words, and deciding which strategies to use to study the words, but they made a lot of progress over time.

When they do get off track, do they have to come home after the activity and finish their work, or are they "done" for the day? For my kids, one thing that helped was making it very concrete that they were wasting "their" time. I would announce, "Now it's free time, unless you have homework." "Homework" had to be done at the kitchen table (not sprawled on the floor or on a comfy couch etc...) That announcement that it was "free time unless" coupled with a reminder at the beginning of the day about the schedule (make it visual--this is school time, this is activity time, then we're home and it's free time unless you have homework...) can really help. But honestly, 6 and 8 year-olds are not likely to work well independently, so do know it's pretty normal too! At that age, mine really needed me sitting with them. We didn't go to early afternoon activities more than once a week because it was just too hard to get school done before then. But if the activities are important, I think I would plan that you are going to need to do some school some other time too. I'll also say that by 5th grade, my kids were needing 4-5 hours to do all of their school work, and with needing to go to an activity, you probably really only have about 3 hours for school in your mornings. I wonder if you could plan on doing math at a different time of day with your oldest so that you could be more available to keep everyone on track for the other subjects instead?

I just want to really encourage you that for many typical learners, spelling and writing don't start to come together until around junior high. For a dyslexic, it might even be high school before you see her start to really consistently be able to use all of the skills required for writing at one time. It requires a lot of working memory and a lot of things really need to be more automatic before you're going to see a lot of that "ah-ha she's getting it." Spelling isn't going to come into the picture as fast as reading did for a student who struggles. Writing requires a student to think about content, creativity, grammar, syntax, punctuation, capitalization, spelling, audience--and then anything else required (a good hook, descriptive writing, answering questions correctly)--it really requires a LOT at once! I'd encourage you for outside subjects to really focus on the content of the subject at hand (history, science etc...). When she's farther along, you can begin to have her edit some shorter things, but make that a separate assignment where she *only* has to focus on editing for that day's assignment. It takes a lot more scaffolding and building blocks to get there with spelling, but she can make great progress with consistent work over the years. Hang in there!

The Hewitt PASS test is another option.

Yes, he understands that. I was more trying to point to his type of work style--he's looking for the type of career that would be a better fit for a specialist personality rather than a "jack-of-all-trades" sort of personality. LOL, no, he's very familiar with cubicles etc...! Again, I was expressing a work or personality style. He's interested in collaboration but wants some kind of career where he would specialize in something and spend a lot of time working on it alone. Think introvert vs. extrovert.

Thanks, I'll mention these to him. He's done a couple of free coding classes online this winter, and also joined a site called skill-share that has short classes from all different kinds of professionals.

LOL, this is not a person who gets "excited" about much (well, maybe a new movie). If he says a meal was "okay" that generally means "I liked this, please make it again." It took me years to learn how to translate! We joke about it, and I tell him, "here's how the rest of the world expresses that thought..." I'm actually pretty excited that he has interest in this enough to keep it on the table. We've been talking about interests and possibilities for 6 years. He's been able to rule lots of things out! But it's hard to rule something in if you don't know about it. I think the "thing" is out there if one of us can catch sight of it. I really don't think so either, but I'm having trouble knowing what to look at instead that involves coding. Web design? He's expressed some interest in graphic design, film, and photography, he wants something to specialize in (versus being a generalist), he wants something to do on a computer that would involve lots of time alone but also some time working as part of a team, and maybe something that occasionally allows for creativity. He likes chess (plays weekly), things that are logical and efficient, and also video games. Greatly dislikes change.

Yes, and if you read the whole thing, they also include some other things. Promising/encouraging, but they also concluded that more studies are needed. I hope someone can do them though--it would be nice to have more solid options out there than just meds!

Here's one interesting study that included l-tyrosine: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3035600/

You don't happen to know what doses they looked at, do you?

LOL, I don't understand either! In fact...I'm not sure that when kids hear about and think about coding, they really understand what it could mean to sit and do that all day long, day after day. I found a video last night on the "perception" vs. "reality" that was really good and forwarded that to him! I'd love to hear your suggestions about "more rewarding ways to spend one's day working on a project" though. Career search has been a long and frustrating process for him (right now he has a Liberal Arts associate's degree and is on a gap year, and nothing really stands out to him in any field or trade, but he's mildly interested in coding. Go figure!) (And lest anyone ask, yes, he's done multiple aptitude tests, interest surveys, personality profiles, both free and paid varieties, trying to figure something out.)

DS is exploring computer coding right now (doing some online courses) and is interested in pursuing more. Has anyone done a coding bootcamp? How do you find a good one? Anyone know pros and cons vs. going to a university/getting some kind of degree? I've been listening to programmers online say that you don't need math, you need logic for this career, but all the university "computer science" degrees require several math courses (calculus, finite mathematics etc...) I think DS would like an option to pursue coding type careers without needing all of the math, but what kind of degree would that be? Thanks for any help pointing us in the right direction!

I gave a letter grade too, for the reasons stated above. I'd have no qualms giving an A to a kid who's good in sports and works hard! Sounds like he's earned it!

I’m sorry. It’s always a journey with our kids isn’t it? Hang in there!