One of my best, lifelong friends has severe mental health problems. He, too, had an extremely bright future when we were teenagers. Due to mental illness, it has not turned out that way. He is still my friend, and I still love him. However, I have drawn boundaries. I do not give him money, no matter how many times he is homeless and out of a job. I do not answer the phone at 3 in the morning when he is calling to (again) threaten to kill himself. I do not give him rides when he announces some crazy scheme that will never pan out. I set these boundaries long ago, and I have not been drawn into his drama. You cannot fix Zarah's life. Only Zarah can fix Zarah's life, and it doesn't seem like she is interested in doing so. She will use you as much as she can until she no longer has a use for you. It sounds harsh, but the experiences of many people have borne this out. I have watched my friend use up people who played into his drama until they either ran away from him or he got mad at them for finally drawing boundaries and dumped them. And honestly, if you want a friendship with Xena, you have to prioritize her over Zarah. "I want to be friends with you but also with the woman who's cheating with your husband" doesn't really fly. You seem determined to try to continue to balance all these plates spinning on the ends of sticks, so I'm not really going to say anything more. I hope you give consideration to the pretty much unanimous opinion in this thread to get away from these people. Good luck.

My opinion: you have shown that you can be dawn into drama. (This is not a criticism, just a fact.) Unless you are willing to continue to be drawn into drama, stay away from these people. All of them. I understand that you want to be kind, but Zarah has not been kind to you. Don't allow yourself to continue to be taken advantage of. You did the right thing and informed Xena. If you continue to act as a conduit of information, you are allowing yourself to be drawn into the same drama, just on the other side. Your curiousity about the outcome of events is normal, but pursuing that curiousity is not healthy. Good luck.

Ryan Lochte is 32. He's not a youth. He's an entitled jerk. He and Brock Turner make swimming look awesome ... not. FWIW, I knew nothing about Ryan Lochte before this and did not know he had a bad-boy reputation.

Crazy. I could honestly see this going both ways: athletes involved in something they shouldn't have been and trying to cover it up, or corrupt Rio police force unable to effectively deal with crime and trying to scapegoat the athletes. Probably a bad idea for Brazil to detain them/confiscate their passports. It's just more bad press.

My kids play travel hockey. It's very expensive and very time-consuming. When my 5 year old dd said to me, after taking Snowplow Sam skating lessons, "I want to play hockey!" I had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. If we didn't have two kids playing travel hockey (my ds actually turned out to be an elite-level player), my dh and I could do more home improvement, take more vacations, and generally have more disposable income. Hockey is extremely expensive; ballet is probably similar when you get to the higher levels. That said: No one "has" to move to travel soccer, or travel hockey, or travel anything. It's a choice. Sometimes I'm annoyed that we made the choice to go the travel route, but I recognize that it was completely our choice. I wouldn't, honestly, keep a kid out of an activity for fear that once day it might become expensive. You can say no, we can't afford that. In fact, we have turned down teams for ds that were just way, way too expensive. DD is in her tenth year of hockey; there are limited options for girls around here (she could, of course, play with the boys, but she's very small, and we feel that the checking would be unsafe for her), and we are sorta "stuck" paying for an expensive girls team. On the other hand, she is also a student coach and a ref, so even if we decided we couldn't afford her girls team, there are other options for her to participate in hockey. I'm not picking on you, happypamama, because everyone has to make the right decision for their family. I just used your comment as a springboard.

I'm sorry you are having such a hard time. I have two pieces of advice that are based on my experiences. 1) My oldest child had issues very different from your son's, but they did leave her, for several years, unable to effectively participate in group activities. We just stopped going. The stress (for both of us) was too great, and so was the ongoing sense of failure. If your son's behavior makes him stick out in a negative way, I would focus on doing things one-on-one with him or invite just one friend. Try to set him up for success, not failure. If Mom has to stand right there and constantly redirect, that can feel like failure for a kid and be discouraging to both Mom and kid. 2) I recently had my youngest evaluated by the school district (he's homeschooled, but private evals are pricey). I am unsatisfied with the results. As was mentioned upthread, the school evaluates to see whether a child qualifies for services, not to diagnose. Their report told us nothing we don't know. I've decided that we should get a private evaluation, which will look at a far greater range of information and provide us with a diagnosis. Before I had the school evaluation, I didn't really understand the difference in what I would be getting. Now I do. Good luck to you. :grouphug:

Lying to whom? Filing a false police report? Or telling the press? Or what?

Why is Brazil trying to detain the swimmers? Have they been accused of a crime?

I don't think it's lacking in empathy or compassion to ask a 10 year old to spend some time (20 minutes, maybe?) a day to finish a job he committed to doing. In fact, I think it teaches a child that a big job can be accomplished in small parts.

My copy has a footnote in one of the beginning pages of the story that mentions that Mary died of scarlet fever when she was 3. Funny that I, too, thought of Lillian and the skates when I read the OP. I'm proud of myself that I still remember all the Gilbreth children and in order: Anne, Mary, Ernestine, Martha, Frank, Bill, Lillian, Fred, Dan, Jack, Bob, and Jane! For a while when I was a kid, I wanted to be called Ernestine.

If you hired him, then he does in fact have a right to terminate the agreement. I would not force him to finish. He may have simply bitten off more than he can chew. However, if he agrees to do a job and then won't finish it, he forfeits the right to be paid. Were it me, I would offer him extended time to do the job. Let if go for a few days, and see whether he's willing to finish it next week. If he won't, then I'd: 1. Remind him this decreases my trust in his word. 2. Remind him I won't be handing out paying jobs in the foreseeable future. 3. Remind him that when he agrees to do a job, he agrees to do it right, and if he's not willing to do it right, don't take the job. All in all, he's 10, and I wouldn't make a huge deal of it. But there are consequences to flaking on your word.

My dd read Crenshaw last year when she was 13 and said it was very depressing. She was irritated with the librarian who suggested it to her. I would add Frindle to the list. My kids loved it. It raises some really interesting questions about kids' freedom of speech and authority but is still very light-hearted. We actually like a lot of Andrew Clements' books. Your son might like The Saturdays. It's the first of a quartet, and we liked them all. My son really liked Socks and Kenny and the Dragon (a retelling of The Reluctant Dragon).

I have a Canadian friend with kidney problems who lived and worked in the US for a few years. He says the US healthcare system is a complete mess, and he vastly prefers the Canadian system. He tells me he can't understand why Americans put up with what we have. I have a Finnish friend with Crohn's disease who moved to the US and became a citizen. He says that the thing he misses the most about Finland is the healthcare system, and the worst thing about living in the US is the healthcare system. Really, it seems to me that just about the only people I hear complaining about other countries' horrible healthcare systems are Americans who are trying to justify why we shouldn't join the rest of the modern world and provide universal care.

Ha!

... about my kids getting enough socialization! :lol: My uncle lives 18 hours away, but we talk semi-regularly. During our conversation today, he expressed his deep concern that my dd really needs to go to high school now so that she will "have a chance to be socialized with other kids." I think he was a little surprised when I rattled off the list of all the activities she participates in. At least he cares about his great-niece and great-nephew! :hurray:

I would not want a state-run program. I think that would be a nightmare and that there would be huge disparities in care, which is contrary to what universal coverage should be providing.

Half

My husband works for a company that was recently purchased by a larger company. The parent company is family owned, and the owner is committed to treating his employees well. He has the bargaining power to negotiate good prices and the humanity to do so. :D

Ten years ago, when I was in my 30s, we were paying >$1500 a month for our insurance. Now we pay $238 a month (family of 5). Insane premium prices are not the fault of the ACA, and the companies that tell you that are lying to you.

My dad is on Medicare and has been for years (he's nearing 80). He's currently being treated for cancer, and there have been no issues with his coverage. If his doctor says he needs it, he gets it. I am handling a lot of his care, and I honestly cannot imagine the nightmare it would be if I had to deal with insurance. I have spent 12+ years navigating the insurance system with my kids who have chronic illnesses, and I tell people I could have gotten a PhD in all the time I have been on the phone with the insurance companies, trying to force them to pay for contractually obligated services. I've had to sue our insurance companies twice.

I do the best I can with Latin pronunciation and don't stress about it past that point. If I happen to run into a native Latin speaker who takes me to task for my poor accent, well, I'll take him to task for his rude manners. ;) I have heard the woman on the PL dvds. She has a heavy Southern accent and, personally, I found her difficult to emulate. (Nothing against a Southern accent, but I found it difficult to try to emulate Latin pronunciation from someone who speaks English with what I consider an accent; I had the same problem trying to learn a European language from a South African.) My dd and I use Latin Tutorial on YouTube to work on our pronunciation. The guy is a high school Latin teacher, and he covers a lot of grammar and vocabulary. If we can't find the word in question in his videos, we wing it!

I never mastered the Flemish /w/. I think it sounds legit, but my friends assure me it's not. :(

I do think Latin is important. I don't think Latin in early elementary school is important. I never had Latin in school. I was a beginner along with my dd. I posted above that I started my dd in a high school text, but I forgot that we actually started in Getting Started With Latin. We went through it in about 3 months, but it was the book that gave me confidence that I could learn/teach Latin with my dd. It's an amazing book that demystifies Latin. It doesn't take you far, but it's an excellent springboard. I highly recommend it for fifth grade and up (as long as your child has a decent grasp of basic grammar). I was worried about how well my dd was actually doing in Latin (I thought she was doing well, but as I never studied Latin before, how could I be a good judge?) until she took the National Latin Exam. She got a silver medal (one question from receiving a gold medal) with a score far above the national average. I knew then that she (and by extension I) was doing well. :)

That may be so, but since Latin is no longer spoken, I think it would be difficult to find an appropriate amount of materials that are engaging to young kids that would provide a true immersion experience. I'm not sure most 2nd graders would be fascinated by Caesar's Gallic Wars. ;)

To be clear, I think the insurance system is crap and that we should have universal healthcare. That said, we don't have universal healthcare. We have an insurance system. Our family has to have insurance because our kids, collectively, require $4000+ in life-saving medication every month. Dumping insurance would not make that more affordable for us. So, we have this insurance, and then when I go to the doctor, it's inconvenient for him to accept my insurance, so now I have to pay $100+ to see him or take my kids? Instead of a small copay or free preventive care? No, thanks.