I dislike it when people bring food to parties and I had already told them not to. I like to cook for my guests and I have a "theme" and make sure that everything goes well together. I have friends who are like me and tell me to "just show up". In those cases, I take flowers and a box of very good chocolates (Ghirardelli or Godiva) for the hostess - these will not upset her arrangements. I mostly found that the flowers were very appreciated. In your case, bring whatever you would like to drink in addition because the hostess said so.

I am the same. It is not procrastination - it is all about where your priorities are. And dealing with the utter boredom and monotony of cleaning, tidying and then the next cycle of doing that all over again. I prefer to read a book than deep clean. When I have a little down time, I read to my child than spend it folding laundry or shining my sink. I do keep a list to get my daily chores done - like making dinner, taking out my trash etc. But, if the house is clean, then I am good. I don't care if a couple of magazines are lying around or if the lego set is on the floor. We will get to it tomorrow! I tried Flylady 4 times and failed.

I started a blog for my child (with appropriate privacy protection and parental supervision). He loves to blog about his interests, trips, cool stuff he built etc. His writing has improved a lot over the past months and I see it as a great creative outlet when combined with pictures of his work that he takes himself (which I upload for him to link to his blog posts). He learns 2 other languages and throws in phrases from them into his posts. We read a lot of literature classics and I buy "study guides" for the popular ones so that I have a starting point to have a meaningful discussion about these books with DS. We spend as much time discussing them as reading them. This is a great way not only to be exposed to language content far greater than a child's ability but to also improve comprehension, narration etc.

If you are asking about whether it is OK in contemporary America, then it is not OK. They need to wait until she is 18 atleast. But then, 2 years is a long time for 16 year olds and she might or might not change her mind by then, who knows. But, my DH's grandmother who is in her 90s now got married in a very similar situation and went on to have 8 kids (well brought up, well accomplished) and tons of grandkids and great grandkids. She was from a different culture where such things were the norm in the early part of the previous century. But, her marriage was broken and she moved in with her older sons when she was in her 30s/40s as soon as all her kids got married and never went back to her husband's home as long as he lived. We always thought that the age difference, even in that generation could have been one of the reasons for her living apart from her husband.

IDK too. I was told to use plain yoghurt 'internally' and it supposedly clears the infection effectively - but I did not want to try it. When I get yeast infections, I take the S. Boulardii strain of beneficial yeast along with my regular probiotic. I use the jarrow brand's S.Boulardii. here is the product link: http://www.jarrow.com/product/265/Saccharomyces_Boulardii_MOS ETA: as the PP said, cut out all sugar in your diet (and simple carbs too) until it clears up.

I think that your children will not fail with those grades. Getting a B or C is far better than developing anxiety at 6 years old. I think that you should focus on teaching your daughters fun math and science. I would suggest that you get fun supplements like Life Of Fred, MCT Grammar Island etc and afterschool for the fun of learning. It is easier said than done. Looking at the big picture, does it matter that a 6 year old studied a lot the previous night for a social studies test? I think that she is feeling a lot of pressure - from your anxiety which might have trickled down to her, maybe? I think that sometimes, too many things going on in a child's life can lead to poor focus, performance and anxiety. I know because I have a child in a similar situation. I am trying to find the right balance in my child's life too. In our case, our child goes to an academically rigorous school. There are 6 tests every week. I started noticing anxiety in my happy child regarding tests and homework. So, I backed off stressing about the importance of them - no test prep at home, no homework checking by parent. I drop off my child earlier in the mornings where they have "before care" to review daily test material and homework. At home, I just let my child learn fun stuff. As a result, his grades are not perfect, but they are not bad either.

Exactly! And my kid does a lot of extra curriculars on a daily basis which makes him sweaty even in cold weather.

I don't own that many dishes. And I don't have storage to store them if I bought them. So, it is always disposable at my house.

Thak you, Alessandra. I am off to check Aereo now. I too need to get rid of DirectTv.

We do not allow any screentime. That also includes no screentime for the parents. I don't give my child the option and I keep him so busy to find time for screen devices. My child is ignorant of popular social culture and that is fine with us. We don't allow minecraft or even angry birds. We only listen to the local classical music station on the car radio or some carschooling CDs. We have been this way for the past 4 years and our life is all the better because of it. Though we have a ton of small and big screen devices at home because of our job requirements, we have ensured that our DS does not use them. I feel that they are young only once (and compliant at this age) - so I use this time to help him explore options that are available outside school in sports and arts - I drive him from pick up to an afterschool activity - piano, swimming, martial arts, chess school, Little league when in season - some of them are multiple times a week and some are back to back classes. We head home and finish homework, test review and any book reports/projects. We afterschool for a short time. Then it is mom's turn to read a literature classic aloud. Then bedtime. We do not do anything on saturday - my DS gets to do Dreambox math and EPGY classes online on that day. On Sunday, he works on Scratch programming for his own fun and plays Sudoku or Chess on his ipad for a short time. My DH watches major sporting events like NBA, NFL regularly - that is the only time my son watches any TV - because my son loves sports, it is hard to put a stop to it - but looking at all the adult content in the advertising that goes on during those events, I am tempted to cut that out too. ETA: My son is a Lego fiend and spends all his downtime building with legos or blocks.

Since I live in one of those hotbeds of extremely high achieving kids and do not see any other kind around me, I am puzzled as to how the families that do not expect their kids to go to college think that their kids are going to build a good future in adulthood - I mean what kind of career path or livelihood do these parents foresee for their kids? And what kind of career path do these kids foresee for themselves? I am curious if these kids know how competitive the real world is and if they think that they have the tools to handle a life, careers and uncertainties that being on their own bring.

I agree that if there is a uniform and dress code, then it is up to the parent to make sure that the child has all the articles of clothing on. It does not look good if your child shows up with missing parts of an uniform for both the child and yourself. And as you said, it is winter time and you don't want health repurcussions because of that (like missing jumpers etc). Just suck it up for a few more years and supervise them putting out their uniforms the night before or just do it for them - hopefully, middle school with be easier for you :)

Followup after my son started soroban classes: they start from the very basics. The curriculum is one that they have developed inhouse. But, even prek kids can start on soroban (there were a few enrolled and doing well). My son started with addition and subtraction of numbers below 5. The problems were simple: 1+2-1-2, 1+3-2-1 etc. The key was to do these operations using the soroban beads and not to use "conventional" math methods to arrive at the answer. The next level is to move to numbers using a single 5 bead: 1+2-3+5, 2+5-1-5 etc. And then it moves on to addition and subtraction using 6, 7, 8, 9 in his current book. The speed at which my son is moving beads and getting to the answer is far greater than when he is doing math with pencil and paper. He is just a beginner. I am thinking that his speed will improve several fold when he learns anzan. My impression so far - the speed of computation is greatly improved using this method - a huge plus for my son with processing speed issues. It looks like more of a "fun" math game for kids in addition to being a huge memory and right brain development tool than a "math concept learning tool". I felt that it makes arithmetic operations "instinctive" and develops a very high level of autiomaticity to it. So much so that arithmetic using this method is faster than entering numbers into a calculator. This program is to be considered an "add on" to any math "spine". It can not replace the Singapore Math program that my son is doing in terms of learning math concepts. And I prefer to teach math concepts and solidify them in my child's mind using a conventional math program and then letting him practice the already learnt concepts on the soroban. The key to mastery of soroban/anzan is verbal practice every day for 5-10 minutes - the parent reads out problems from a sheet of paper and the child uses the soroban to figure the solution. This is similar to regular musical instrument practice - very essential to develop the muscle memory and fluency and you need to make the time commitment to get better at this skill.

We have been in "early implementation" program for CC for almost 2 years now. We have gotten used to it. We have homework that asks to explain the steps used to arrive at the answers. We see a lot of this in the "Critical Thinking and Logic" subject and the Saxon Math homework sheets. For the "Logic" subject: one worksheet had a bunch of pictures of toys. The task was to "categorize" them into groups and draw a picture of the categorization and there were 3 lines in the bottom of the page asking the student to explain how they got the answer. My child cannot draw well - so he drew stick figures to represent dolls in one pile and then some boxes to represent automobiles in another pile. He wrote that he classified the toys based on whether they were dolls or a mode of transportation. The teacher seemed to think that it was an adequate answer. My main problem with all this is the utter waste of time - CC had good ideas. But, I think elementary math as taught in elementary grades in the US that is already slow paced, spiral, unchallenging now moves at a snail's pace with new requirements of sentence writing and coloring and explaining thrown in. I was looking at my son's math homework last night - he needed 6 different crayons to color and draw pictures in order to finish it. I was shaking my head and thinking, this should be called "art homework" with all these "explain with a picture" questions.

Please run, do not walk to the administrator of this so called "virtual school" to complain to them that this teacher has zero qualification as a math teacher and should be re-educated or fired. Ask them to show you how much education she has in the math field. I am so sory that she is in a position to misinform and miseducate kids. Any division operation where the divisor is zero is meaningless or undefined. God forbid if any of her students believed her and then went on to be computer programmers - dividing by zero is known to cause program crashes within computer softweare. Point the virtual school administrator to this website, especially the section about "Division by zero in elementary arithmetic": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_by_zero How depressing ... Kudos to your daughter and you - both of you know more math than this virtual school is capable of teaching.

I have found that getting all your ducks in a row helps. A check list helps. The stopwatch feature on my smartphone helps a lot! And keeping it fun and silly surely stops my DS from going off to play Rushhour or reading a comic book in the middle of getting ready. DS has a check list with 3 sections - AM, Evening and PM chores. His PM chores are to put out uniform and get backpack ready etc. I line up everything like an assembly line before he wakes up - I only get up 15 minutes before him - I set out his vitamins, toothpaste on his toothbrush, water cup, breakfast etc on the kitchen island. I also start my phone's stopwatch timer when he sits down to eat - I let him time himself and see how long he takes today as compared to yesterday. While he eats, I pack his lunch and water bottle for him, quickly go over any test review material with him. I make him change in the kitchen when he finishes breakfast - it is odd, but that is the only way I can keep an eye on him so that he does not wander off. I also play this Superhero game with him while he changes - since he is obsessed with superheroes anyway - if he were to become a Superhero (we name his current favorite one) , how fast could he change into his costume if there was a call for help? He needs to change into his school uniform as fast as his superhero in order to get in enough practice - this works very well for now - he timed himself under 2 minutes today ... And we always race out the front door to see who can get into the car first - and I let him win every time - that works well too.

I think that if you really are against your niece's choices and feel so strongly, you should not go. I would not want an aunt who thought so badly about my lifestlye choices coming to my wedding so reluctantly and putting on a fake happy face. That being said, life is too short. Live and let live. To each his own way. It's NOT my way or the highway etc etc etc. You get the point. Everyone makes their own choices in life and they have their own reasons for doing them. You can be happy for them or be unhappy about those choices and get out of their way. It is as simple as that.

Another vote for Song School Latin (1 and 2) and Minimus - we use these for afterschooling. DS loves them - he started SSL when he was 4 and loved the songs.

What you are describing sounds like "perfectionism". Some kids are so used to doing things easily that when they encounter something difficult, they fear failure and they do not want outcomes that are less than perfect. So, they refuse to attempt it. I suspect that perfectionism is what you are seeing. There are a lot of ways of teaching your child to overcome perfectionism, but it is a long process. Things like music training, martial arts and just academics at a higher level are good ways to teach your child that not everything comes easily and that sometimes we need to make mistakes in order to learn or improve.

Coffee, leftover piece of banana bread, leftover piece of pear, half a banana, 3 strawberries.

Is that a cultural thing? That would confuse me too. How about the restaurants in Wisconsin - do they call the noon meal "dinner" or is it just how families call them?

There was a lot of negativity from the other kids in DS's K class last year because he is like a walking database with a knack for trivia and details and seemed to be showing off while it was just natural for him to talk incessantly (and we encourage him to do so) about things that he knew. He too quickly learnt to hide his light under a bushel because he was losing friends due to envy. My gifted DS, in addition to being humble is also very empathetic and with not show off in front of other kids in order to not hurt their feelings. The most obvious case was when he was provided accelerated work for differentiation at school and he stubbornly refused to touch it because other kids felt sorry that they did not have the more "fun" work packet. I agree with Ruth about setting the bar very high for your child that they don't even know what the norm is. From a very early age, we have put DS in environments surrounded by kids who are leagues ahead of him for his enrichment activities and he interacts with mentors who are brilliant at what they do and he looks up to them. He goes to weekend chess school where at 4 years old, he had to slog for months to get to his first checkmate in a game - he is improving, but it is still a slog week after week for him. Same for sport classes - he is in sports that do not come naturally to him in addition to sports that he excels at. Same with learning instruments - what looked like fun and easy has now morphed into "tricky and difficult" as the bar gradually creeps up - it is a slog to get daily practice in and master new techniques, but he slogs on. So, surround your kid with others who are better than him (and mentors who are good at what they do) and set high standards for him and work with him to keep up his optimism and positivity. That will keep him grounded for life.

I don't even try to give them away on freecycle anymore. I leave it on our kerb with a FREE sign on it and usually it is gone in a few hours.

No. You are not crazy.

Since you want to be nice to your SIL and MIL and go the extra mile for them, make the applesauce. First google to see which type of apple is best suited for it - I made applesauce once in my life in a crockpot and it came out OK. The level of pectin or something else in a type of apple either qualifies it or disqualifies it as a candidate for applesauce. Buy organic apples so that you don't need to peel them (get it from a farm stand or farmer's market so that they don't put wax on them). Put them in your crockpot and make the applesauce a few days before Thanksgiving so that it does not interfere with your other cooking tasks and you get a chance to execute plan B if the sauce does not work out. If you decide against cooking the applesauce, buy the organic applesauce from costco, transfer into a serving bowl at home and take it to SIL's house and do not mention anything about it. Good luck :)