I'm still finding rice from the big rice tub we had several years ago. My husband rarely puts his foot down, but he was very firm on the no more rice bins rule. lol

My biggest surprise when I was in grad school and socializing with the professors, was just how much they swore. Some of these tenured Ph.D.s with hundreds of academic publications were using the F word every third sentence. :lol:

We went through this process recently with my 7 y/o. My biggest piece of advice would be to bring snacks, drinks, and some toys to play with during breaks. Our appointments were broken up--consultation, IQ testing, achievement testing, ADHD interview and ASD screening. We started out sitting in the office and talking about what was going on--areas of concern, areas of strength. P jumped in the conversation, which actually helped the psych see the behaviors of concern. My ds is also somewhat of a perfectionist, but the psych explained to him that we was not supposed to know how to do everything--the tests are made from kids ranging from his age to teenagers. She was really good at working with him, and I think that she got his best effort out of him nearly the entire time. She didn't frame it as a test--it was a series of games and questions to see how his brain works. :) DS thought the IQ test was kind of fun. He especially liked making patterns with the red and white blocks. The WISC has a lot of small sections, and ds had a break after every couple of sections. You can look up the WISC and see the subtests. We didn't do a test for ADHD, but our psych used a standard diagnostic interview, plus her observations of his behavior during testing, to make the diagnosis. We did fill our a questionnaire for ASD screening, then discussed the answers.

My family made it with pistachio pudding, and they called it "that green s***."

LiPS has helped my ds to distinguish f/v from unvoiced and voiced th. He still can't hear the difference, but he can produce the correct sound when he sees the phonogram, and he can write the correct phonogram from dictation if he watches my mouth while I'm speaking. Have you looked at Apples and Pears for spelling? At the beginning of book A there is lots of dictating sounds and tracing or writing the phonograms. Here is a sample of the first book. And here is the sample teacher's manual that explains how it works.

I'll check out the word retrieval book. Last night while I was cooking, he cautioned me, "Look out for the hot fog!" Hot fog? Steam. lol

DS 8 Reading/Spelling: Dancing Bears A1/A2, Apples and Pears A, LiPS, bits and pieces from Seeing Stars and Reading Reflex. I find that if we stick to one format for too long, DS can't generalize, so we use a variety of materials. LA: MCT Island Level Math: Rod and Staff 2, Ronit Bird Cuisennaire Rod ebook History: SOTW 1 Science: Ellen McHenry The Elements Art: Atelier, Wee Folk Art crafts Typing: Probably the Talking Fingers typing program Handwriting: Deciding if I want to fight this battle right now. :) Basic Skills: Executive function workbook from Linguisystems, Social Skills book DS5 Wee Folk Art Harvest Time Curriculum ETC Primer Level MEP Reception Something for handwriting--haven't decided yet Everyone: Field trips and activities through coop. Maybe a homeschool PE class. I need to make a schedule. It looks like a lot of stuff, but we won't do everything every day.

He is five this week. :) He thinks that his way is right. Lol. It is pretty cute, but we are starting to gently correct him so he doesn't confuse people outside our family. We will be getting a speech evaluation this fall, so I will mention this to the SLP.

We are in a similar place. Our old church got a new pastor, grew very conservative, and has been jettisoning members. We went to a PCUSA church last Sunday, but there were no kids. I think this is a problem with a lot of the mainline congregations now. The other churches we are considering are UMC, ELCA, Quaker, UCC...maybe a liberal anabaptist congregation, if we can find one? I think that the local Quaker meeting would be a good fit for us, but I fear that my un-silent children would wreck their ununprogrammed meeting. :lol:

I didn't know where to put this, but I figured that the people who frequent this board would be most likely to know this. :) Is there a name for a pattern of speech in which a child uses a compound word to refer to one of the components of the word? Clear as mud? Here are some examples... We are walking down the notions aisle at JoAnn and N. yells, "Bellybuttons! Look, bellybuttons!" All chains are keychains. Wood is cut with a seesaw. After food is eaten, it goes into his stomachache. Is this just an idiosyncrasy, or does it have a name? Is it a piece of the puzzle? Thanks. :)

I had a similar bite when a centipede was trapped in my sleeping bag with me. That's probably not really comforting, though. :)

Re: losing My kids do well with making it over-the-top silly. "This Monopoly game is an EPIC DISASTER!" "I am having the WORST LUCK EVAH!" "THE CROW IS EATING ALL THE THINGS!" It is extreme, but not destructive extreme, which is my main focus. :)

We are using Wee Folk Art with ETC primer for phonics and MEP reception/year one for math. :)

I'm thinking about this more after yesterday's reading lesson. We have been working on LiPS for about five months now, and while it has worked magic in helping P in distinguish f/v from th/th, he still has a lot of trouble with st and ts. He can't hear the difference, and he can't figure out the separate sounds in /ts/ because his tongue doesn't tap before it forms the skinny air sound. We've tried lots of things--slowing it down, putting it together and pulling it apart, memorizing that the beatboxing cymbal sound is /ts/ :laugh: but he was getting so frustrated we backed off for a while. Yesterday I tried something new. What are the sounds in vest.....vets? Utter frustration. New approach: spell the jacket with no sleeves. V E S T. Spell two animal doctors. V E T S. He needs meaning for EVERYTHING.

I'm surprised that your doctor prescribed doxy for a nursing mom. I am supposed to take a course of doxycycline for a chronic condition (not for its antibiotic properties, but because one of the side effects is that it causes the layers of the cornea to stick to each other more effectively--weird) and I have to wait until I'm not pregnant or nursing. I've been waiting about six years now. Can you call your doctor and ask for a substitute?

In our area, the spaghetti squash aren't ready until the fall. They need to sit outside and "cure" for a bit while the skins harden, then they last for months. :) A few years ago I completely forgot about them until November, and when I went to check on them, the vines had rotted but the squash were perfectly cured. We ate them until they ran out in about April the next year. lol And now I realize that you farm and know all that. lol

It sounds like you are doing an amazing job with your son. :) The available services will depend on your school district, but speech and OT are often available for homeschoolers. One of my friends who lives in the next town over had lots of good services for her homeschooled son with ASD--social skills groups and such. In my district, in a much less affluent city, they offer fewer services for homeschoolers--not because they are discriminating against homeschoolers, but because they just don't have the resources, and they aren't going to offer us more services than they offer enrolled students. A friend who lives a few streets down from me was told that they don't teach handwriting to kids with dysgraphia (except they said "kids like this" !?!?) but wait until they are old enough to type.

Pad Thai

Just to clarify, Nurtured Heart Approach does not encourage taking away credits. If a child misbehaves, and refuses to do a "reset" their credits are unavailable to spend on privileges, but as soon as a reset happens the credits are in play again.

A "doll?" Don't gag 40th-bday gifts usually run more toward bottles of Geritol and boxes of Preparation H? Yikes. I wouldn't want to go, either.

Hmm..I'm in WA, and I consider Safeway one of the more expensive grocery stores. :) I'm in Pierce co though. Closer to Seattle it's one of the cheaper stores, compared to QFC, PCC, etc. Healthcare is expensive here. Hopefully, since your husband works in healthcare, you have good insurance! Land is fairly inexpensive in some of the farther-out areas of Pierce county. You just have to weigh the commute-cheap land balance. Also, because I'm paranoid, I wouldn't want to live in a Mt. Rainier lahar evacuation area. But that's just me. :) There are so many cool things to do in WA. We camped near Mount St. Helens last weekend and spent a day up at the observation center at Johnston ridge. My 7 y/o was right in his element. He insisted that we stop at every visitor center/observation point between I-5 and the end of 504. :)

My mom used to do the encyclopedia deals at the local grocery store--one volume was available each week. If you shopped at a different store one week, you were out of luck. Maybe some purchasers were not as obsessive as my mom was!

Around Tacoma, I would look at University Place, Gig Harbor, and Puyallup. If you want to live in Tacoma proper, the North End and Browns Point areas are considered the nicer places to live. Anywhere in the Puget Sound area will have access to lots of outdoorsy activities. Grocery prices vary widely between stores. There are some local and regional chains that run cheaper than some of the more well-known chains. There is no state income tax, and I think that our property taxes are reasonable, but we live in a small, inexpensive house. :) There is no sales tax on food.

Wow! We were camping over the weekend and I didn't have internet access, but I am glad to see so much discussion today. :) And multiquote isn't working. I has a sad. I have read most of the Nurtured Heart book, and will be starting to use the approach gradually, for all of the kids, and I might even use a secret credit system for myself. You know, to reinforce good habits. lol My 4 y/o, who I wrote about in my first post, has no diagnoses. I will be making an appointment for him, though, to see what a professional thinks. We have been going through the eval process with my 7 y/o, and I found that a lot of the behaviors that the psych asked us about did not pertain to the 7 y/o, but did to the 4 y/o. Our insurance changed this month, and office visits will no longer be subject to the deductible, so I will have to find an in-network psych for him. Or since he'll be five this month, maybe we'll start with the school district. The school psych will be doing some testing with my 7 y/o, and we'll see how that goes. I've spent the last year or so thinking that the 4 y/o didn't warrant a diagnosis, but needed a better discipline system--his negative behaviors are pretty sporadic. Of course, I thought my 7 y/o didn't have LD because his academic problems changed day by day, not knowing that the inconsistency was a sign of an LD. Doh! I remember reading The Explosive Child years ago, before I had children, when I worked at a bookstore. At the time I kind of pooh-poohed the approach, thinking, "My children will never act like that!" lol. My mom likes to remind me that when I was a kid, my pediatrician told her that I was the worst behavior problem he had ever seen. Grumpy toddler calling. :)

My son spoke only in vowels until he was three. He started speech therapy with the school district, and was released only making age-appropriate errors at six. He also has dyslexia, and needed LiPS to distinguish between different sounds in order to read and spell.