We don't have student led conferences here and from the description it doesn't sound like they would go over well with parents in my community. That being said, do you have other access to the work they do, either through Power School or Google classroom or another on-line platform? While some parents I know are fine with hearing that everything is great and there are no issues, others are in constant contact with the school and teachers. If you considered this "conference" a non-conference then look at it as an extra meeting. Can't you e-mail and/or call to schedule another appointment to talk about your child. I know some parents that constantly e-mail teachers with questions or ask for calls. Some just pop in after class. In my experience teachers have always been great about responding. Teachers here are mandated to send an e-mail home to parents every quarter outlining how their students are doing and providing a general overview, from kindergarten through 12th grade. If they will not come to you, you will have to go to them.

I always enjoy it with a classic wedge salad. If the soup serving size is a bowl, there isn't much more you need, especially with chocolate lava cakes for dessert.

In many states I believe this would be statutory rape. Although the age of consent in many places is 16, for those under 18 their partner cannot be more than 4 years older. I'm not sure of the laws in your state.

Are you certain that the teacher wasn't just making some sort of unfortunate joke about her being under 18?

I'm making stuffed shrimp tonight. It's my son's favorite and he recently broke his arm, so I'm indulging him a little. It's labor intensive and I would normally make it on a weekend. Not sure about the rest of the week yet.

This is done differently here too. When the girls sell individually they take orders. The troop is then sent exactly the amount of boxes too fill the orders. If the troop decides they want to do a cookie booth they can order cases to sell from a "cookie cupboard." After the booth sale the unsold boxes are returned to the cookie cupboard.

Wow - We received 25c per box no matter how many we sold or how many girls participated. 35c with no incentives.

Agreed - We were happy when the girls realized that too and voted not to receive them in favor of the extra money.

That's not how it is supposed to work. The troop gets a specific amount per box sold. Period. That amount can increase if the girls vote not to be awarded incentives but unless things have changed drastically it shouldn't matter how many girls participate.

I was the cookie mom for my daughters troop for a number of years. We had 18 girls in the troop (give or take each year) and were active from kindergarten through 8th grade. Our troop was part of a service unit that included 30 or so other troops from our town. I mention this because it sounds like our GS cookie experience is very different from yours. First off most Daisy troops decide for themselves if they even want to sell cookies. Ours didn't - We just felt they were too little. Once they started selling some girls decided they didn't want to participate. Very few girls sell direct or pre-sales. Of the ones that have - 600 boxes would have been an enormous amount of cookies. Most troops don't even sell that much. Cookies that girls sell in the pre-sale are credited to those girls and those girls alone. We would also then do one or two cookie booths. Some girls only participated in the cookie booth sales. We would divide up all sales made from cookie booths and divide those boxes among the girls that participated. When they were younger they voted to be awarded the incentives (which included bandannas, water bottles, etc - whatever GS offered that year). Only girls that reached the corresponding amounts were awarded the incentives. As they grew older they decided they would forgo the incentives in favor of earning more money per box for the troop. Every girl that participated in selling was awarded a patch (not the badge unless they earned that). I will say again - we would never take boxes from one girl to give to another, especially if it affected the credits they were earning for summer camp. I'm not sure about the cookie ceremonies or incentive trip you mentioned because we didn't really have those things.

Kids that would do this to your dc are not their friends. I think it is pretty normal for friend groups to evolve and change as kids grow. Most of the tween and teen drama I've seen centers around a kid who isn't accepting of this. Some kids have a bestie that remains their bestie for life but that isn't always the case. I know it can be hard and in this case the kids are being really rude, but hopefully your kids will come to realize that they don't really want to have much in common with people who act like this. Let them develop closer friendships with some of the other people they know and give them a chance to find others who value their friendship.

I also say Emmet Otter's Jugband Christmas - My all time favorite!

My sister had this when she was about 10 - so around 30 years ago. At the time it required surgery but I'm not sure what modern treatments would be.

In my experience this is fairly common. Kids who have any sort of intestinal or bladder issues usually can just excuse themselves and leave a class to go to the bathroom any time they want. All it takes is the parent speaking with the school nurse and getting permission. Sometimes a doctor's note is required. The nurse then makes the teachers aware and it's not really a big deal. The teacher can tell who is abusing the privilege and who isn't. Sometimes kids who have more serious issues are allowed to use the closest bathroom even if it is a teacher's bathroom or sometimes they will always go to the nurse's office for more privacy.

My daughter went to camp with a girl named Maple. Her twin sister is Harvest.

I didn't know it was a documentary.

My kids' last day before break is the 22nd and they return on Jan 2nd, so 10 days including the weekends. It is basically they same as when I was a kid, we always went up until the day before Christmas eve and then returned the day after New Year's Day.

Over the past few years I've come to know a few high school students struggling with depression and thoughts of suicide. While they were getting the care they needed from licensed professionals, what surprised me most was that each one of them chose to attend a college or university quite far from home. I would think that a student needing additional support would want to be closer to family, at least with a reasonable drive time of a few hours. That way if they needed to be near their family or friends or a trusted doctor they wouldn't be so isolated. Currently my daughter has a friend who is a college senior who has depression and crippling anxiety. She is looking at schools half way across the country and I keep asking her mother if perhaps it is better if she is closer to home. They are so intent on a prestigious school that they aren't giving her mental health the priority it deserves. I wonder how often prestige or finances in school choice override other needs.

There's the mummy game. The kids split into teams with one selected to be the mummy. They race to completely wrap the mummy with toilet paper and the team that does this first wins.

I know a girl that has been selling sock snowmen at vendor fairs for a few years. She does very well. You can just Google or look them up on Pinterest, I wan't sure if I could paste an image found elsewhere.

We have had a Honda CR-V and and Hyundai Santa Fe and vastly prefer the Honda. The Hyundai had problems here and there that cost $500 - $600 to repair. They started to add up. The Honda was great and never had an issue. When we sold it it has 250,000 miles and sometimes I still see the person who bought it driving around town.

I think it has something to do with names or expressions. People often use names and/or expressions without actually thinking about what the words mean. I one was listening to a conversation where people were talking about Nobel prizes. They kept calling them the "Nobel Peace Prize for Physics" or the "Nobel Peace Prize for Medicine." When I corrected them, it dawned on them that they didn't really realize what they were saying. These were intelligent well educated people. I also can't count the number of times I've heard people use the term African-American to refer to someone who isn't American.

I haven't read all of the responses but in my area special needs students can stay in the public high schools until age either 21 or 26 (I can't recall) for for a variety of services including job training and placement. I believe this can happen even after they graduate, although I am not familiar with all aspects of this program. I have have a friend who works as a paraprofessional for a school system and focuses primarily with these students. I know she brings the students to a variety of different employers to see what would be the best fit for each student and then works to train them for those positions. Perhaps a local school in your area would have someone you could talk to who can offer different options in your community. They would know which employers would be most receptive and may even have ideas about what type of job would be a good match for your son.

I didn't see you mention that you would like parents to contact you prior to class if the child will be absent. Is that something you would wish to include?

Not really an actor but Mick Jagger.