Platinum Tel. You can get an android phone for $60 and then their lowest pay as you go card is $10 for 90 days of service. 5c per minute talk, 2c per minute text. 10c per gb of 3g, but wifi is free of course. You can literally have you emergency smart phone for $40 a year. It is the cheapest prepaid anywhere. No extra monthly fees of any kind.

no help on the GED, but just thought I'd say that I live about 5 min away from Cal Arts :o).

here's the google image page :o) http://images.google.com/search?num=10&hl=en&site=&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1366&bih=667&q=santa+clarita&oq=santa+clarita&gs_l=img.3..0l5j0i5j0i24l4.1486.3026.0.3233.13.13.0.0.0.0.156.829.10j3.13.0...0.0...1ac.TUpClvsvTjc

here's another good website :o) http://www.visitsantaclarita.com/

absolutely. Come to http://www.santa-clarita.com/ . It's a great city to live in, despite it's unfortunate proximity to Los Angeles LOL. It's north of the San Fernando Valley, surrounded by mountains with tons of hiking trails & biking trails. Mostly politically conservative (our Representatives are republican), & very well run as a city. Has literally everything you mentioned. Literally. Everything. Lots of wonderful chuches to choose from, and tons of homeschoolers. Very culturally diverse, with a significant asian/Korean/filipino etc. community as well a lots of hispanics & other cultures. Excellent parks and rec department. Tons of community stuff available. Just a wonderful place all around. It got the nickname "awesometown" :o). Kayleen

genetic predisposition. Have to make myself exercise. Love carbs. Thats it in a nutshell. Over the last 3 years I've been gradually working on all of it with Sparkpeople, a biggest loser group at church, etc. and I've lost almost 30 lbs. I still need to lose another 25.

ditto sparkpeople.

the homeschooling section is really the only section that she regularly farms out. But she posts occasionally. All the other sections of her blog are virtually all handled by her. Put "ree" into the search window of the homeschooling section and you can go back through posts she has written over the last several years. Heather Sanders and Kristin Chase write the most for her homeschooling section. every once in a great while she'll have someone contribute on the entertainment section, which is actually the case today LOL. It is sort of like a magazine, though, even though she writes almost all of it. She's a very entertaining writer, and I enjoy her blog.

50. I was born in 1966, he was born in 1996 :o).

ok, my older son had/has similar issues, and 8 is very young still. My son is now 15.5, and has improved a lot. If the other mom really is great and supportive then educate her a little about spd, and supervise interaction as much as possible so you can coach the situations as they come up. If she knows some of your son's limitations socially, then she can maybe coach her son a bit on how best to deal with your son. Maybe do some role play with both of them. The more you supervise, the quicker you can intervene & coach or end the play session altogether. My son is a teensy bit aspie-ish, and, yes, there are certain people that can just get his goat twice as quickly as others. Look at this as a learning opportunity. If the other mom was unconcerned, my advice would be different, but I would try to work with this. Be proactive, and before he goes out, have a standard list of social reminders for potential situations & how to respond. Go over them every time. Be concrete. You know, I'm sure, what "stuff" comes up that makes him mad, or what the other kid does that sets him off. Target those things in a proactive/role playing way ahead of time. Frequently. And he'll get better with age and working on it.

I've been there. It's all about portion control, and everything everyone else has said. Cutting carbs will really help with the cravings.

Go to Amazon...they have sellers there selling new for under $40 as opposed to 180 direct from great courses.

our high school co-op has a $25 per family registration fee, then a $15 per class per semester co-op fee to cover cleaning supplies etc. The fee to the instructors is $300 per class. We require parents to attend 3 of the first 6 class sessions (in whatever class), and we always have 2 parent helpers in each class to help supervise and grade tests/quizzes as needed. The helper schedule is made up every year, and not showing or being late results in a fine. Sometimes we wish there could be a little more grace, but there always those 1 or 2 parents who think they are the exceptions and can "forget". The teachers we get are always extremely qualified, and worth every penny :o).

I guess all I'm saying is that a tendency to literal thinking is a trait common to aspergers, but I'm sure it tags along with other diagnoses as well. there's a lot of info about it in the aspergers community, so I just thought that might be a good place to start investigating :o)

This is very typical aspergers-like literal thinking. My son is like this sometimes, which is why I only knowingly chuckled when you got to the part about ripping teeth out LOL. Oh I've been there. It's not a logical thinking problem per se, but you have to understand that kids like this think in very tight specifics, NOT generalizations. When you said "sort of", that meant "definitely yes" to him about having to do with teeth. And unless specifically told all the meanings of a word, they will go with the meaning they know LOL. And kids like this also can't easily put themselves "in the mind" of someone else, so hoping he would "imagine" someone back then and try to think of what they would do is just not going to happen. My son frequently assumes everyone should and does think like him. If we're talking about teeth, and writing, after all, it might be totally logical that they did that. He wasn't there. Without any other clues, it seemed perfectly logical in his mind. So why wouldn't it have been logical for them? I don't know that there is much other than just learning on a case by case basis that will help with this. It's sort of a hard wiring thing, and i t can be very frustrating. And yes, they do go around somewhat confused. I'd keep at what you are doing. Exposure is probably the best solution. If you look up aspergers literal thinking you'll find a whole host of things to read about this problem :o), and probably some better solutions than I have.

ok, I just watched this again, and I still think she seriously overacts. Granted stage requires some melodrama, but I just think she is way over the top. Hope she can tone it down for the movie.

but have you watched Samantha barks doing the Eponine death scene??? She gasps with every line....it's seriously torturous to listen to. We saw the stage version last summer, which mercifully had a VERY good Eponine. So my dds are not particularly happy that she is in the movie version. Not to mention the vomitous Anne Hathaway...sigh. Why do they have to ruin a perfectly good thing?? Why?

I have a 15yo son who I consider to be 2e. Not officially diagnosed, but obviously gifted in many ways and noted by many people, with lots of Aspie/ADHD/SPD-ish quirks, plus difficulty with visual processing and fine motor skills. He could well have NVLD also. I'm sure he'd be diagnosed as some NOS mishmash LOL. He's getting there, though. I started him on high EPA omegas and Vit d this year with good results, but we still have real struggles.

ditto this. or "Christ changed my life", or "I became a Christian", or "I was born again" (which I know is not understood by many, but it's biblical terminology).

as much as possible LOL! Lets see, I eat oatmeal/cocoa, sometimes 1egg/1eggwhite burrito, fruit smoothies, milk and cereal....Not sure why breakfast is a huge problem. Everyone's ideas are good ones. Just don't fry everything in oil and you should be good to go. In other words, eat what you want as long as it isn't fruit loops, greasy everything, pop tarts, donuts, etc...

I say other, because I did every form of schooling, not just one. I was in public till 3rd, homeschooled through 8th, then went to a boarding school overseas for 3 years of highschool except for my sophmore year when I was at the local public hs in the states. I'm sure there were drugs around at the ps. Maybe there were drugs at my boarding school (small, 180 kids k-12), but I never knew about them if there were. I was basically underexposed to the drug scene growing up ;o). Hope my kids are too.

No way. It's auto focus. I have a zs3, which doesn't have quite the level of control over shutter speed and aperture that the zs6 does. She just needs to learn how to control the focus by understanding how to use the manual aperture and shutter speed settings more effectively in different situations.

I'll third Sparkpeople. Balanced, easy to track my food, lots of good articles, recipes etc. And free.

I love threads like this...it is so easy to dwell on the negatives every day. My son,...my...sigh...15yo 2e borderline aspie/adhd like-fury-hell-hath-no...son, is a fabulous musician and loves theater. He's been taking lessons since he was almost 8 with a teacher whose feet I kiss regularly, and he's been clearly musically gifted since birth. I love hearing him sit down and just play whatever he wants to play. Practicing has always been a bear, but he loves to just play. He also loves theater, and has been doing that since he was 9. He's had numerous leads..he got to fly as Michael in Peter Pan, his first show so long ago, and currently he is doing Joseph and the Technicolor dreamcoat, with the role of Potiphar (perfect for him..he's naturally loud, and can bellow with the best, if you've seen it and know what Potiphar does). Finding people for *him* that appreciate him, and love his unique personality has been such a blessing. They are the ones that encourage me on the days when I just want to rip his big pointed head off. He's learned SO much through theater...some of it the hard way, but thats good, and he's learned how to handle competition (auditions), and it's made him have to focus in the middle of chaos, and deal with peers graciously, and all sorts of good things. AND the directors are fabulous with kids of all kinds, and are a perfect combo of encouragement and discipline. I love watching him perform. He's never met a stage he doesn't like. He's also taken up biking in the last few years, a side benefit of joining boy scouts and having to do the biking merit badge. We got him a good bike for christmas, and he loves riding all over the city (we have a good trail system) to his favorite spots (bookstore, comic store, gadget places etc.) We live in an apartment, but fortunately there are lots of semi-rural to rural areas all around us. I love watching him play with tiny kids, also. Little boys LOVE my son because he'll sword fight with them, push their wagons fast, and be silly without worrying about the cool factor too much. He has a very sweet nature underneath a lot of the blatant obnoxiousness :o). And I know you all know exactly what I mean by that ;o).

have you thought about any concrete behavior mod. on this one...what would happen if he *physically* put his hand over his mouth to keep himself from talking. For like 10 seconds. Could he do it? Maybe start with several seconds with meaningful immediate rewards, and work up from there? If he learns with a physical cue, he might later be able to transfer that to a mental one. Just a thought. I know when mine were small and wanted to touch everything in sight, they had to clasp their hands behind their back, or physically put them in their pockets. Something that physically prevented the behavior we were working to eliminate.