I've PMed you. A lot of it probably isn't helpful lol, but I figured I'd just start writing about what we do and maybe you'd find something helpful or reassuring or inspiring in there to apply to your situation.

Thanks for the offer with the template but no need. I'm pretty good with actually making that stuff, it's just figuring out how to go about keeping the records in the first place and what/how to record that I'm struggling with. This is me brainstorming, and thanks everyone for the help with ideas. It'll probably end up looking like a combination of many of these things, I am getting some good ideas, just reading what everyone else does is helpful. I assume by your second quoted sentence that that means you have some experience with mental health hospitalisations. Sorry to hear that :sad:. Thanks for the offer. Thankfully I have been stable enough to avoid that for almost 5 years now (my pregnancy with my second child did something weird and sent me into psychotic episodes and more on top of the preexisting PTSD. Never happened with the first or third, but has the potential to happen if I get pregnant again or, heaven forbid, during menopause). I'm hoping we can avoid it ever being necessary again, but I also need to be realistic, even without female hormones adding to things, I have good months and bad months and there's a number of circumstances that could trigger some really bad months, that haven't occurred but have the potential to (the cause of my PTSD isn't a completely closed situation). But, for now I'm doing well, actually this month is a great month, perfect time to plan this kinda thing.

Sorry this turned out so long. I suppose in part I am upset about the reality of the situation leading to this so this post is part vent and part whine-about-the-extra-work-any-possible-solution-adds, as well as part plea for help. But, it got long, because I suck at writing short concise posts, and because the obvious suggestions wont work for reasons I had to explain. Also, I suck at writing short concise posts. Let me preface this by saying my husband and I were both homeschooled, so I am not coming at this as an uncertain newbie who is mentally unstable, underestimating the task, and possible doing this for the wrong reasons. Homeschooling is second nature to us, I think it would be much harder for me to put my kids in school! I have severe PTSD. It's well managed, effects my daily life severely but I have strategies, the kids are safe and daily routines generally happen, we get by pretty well, our life looks different but it isn't bad. However, I have had episodes necessitating hospital stays in the past and it's quite likely that will occur again at some point over the course of my kids schooling life. If this happens, I know from last time that child services becomes immediately involved. So, most homeschoolers fear of child services coming knocking is a certain reality for me, and worse still is most likely to happen at a time I am mentally ill and unable to cope. Lucky me :lol: I was speaking to my friend who is a lawyer specialising in family law about the situation. Her 6 kids have all been home-schooled (the younger three by her stay at home husband) so she is absolutely on my side here. She's also rather against how invasive the home ed unit is, so definitely on the side of less regulation. This makes me take her suggestion to me very seriously, it's definitely not coming from a place of paranoia or over-regulation. She has said I should keep a daily journal of every educational and social activity the kids do, every day. (especially social, apparently socialisation is still a big deal to child services here and I recognise that from my involvement with them last time). This is NOT required by our home education unit, and in all honestly it shouldn't be required by child services either, the approval of the home ed unit SHOULD be enough for them, however, there's the ideal and principle and what should be, and then there's what is actually likely to happen, and hearing her horror stories over the years, something like this would help a lot. It's not fair or right, but planning for child services to do the wrong thing and putting in the work to have a backup for that circumstance could be very important for my family. They can question my registration, they can't question years of journals. But, it's a lot of work, especially if I want to include examples. Yikes! I wouldn't need examples for everything, but some would help, she suggested photos of projects and the occasional scanned or photographed worksheet/page of writing. Anyone got any ideas of how to do this? Anyone already doing this that can show me their system? It HAS to be easy and quick, I have bad days, if it's a big job I have no hope of doing it on bad days. The ability to make it a consistent daily habit is the most important factor above all else here, a consistent but basic journal will be more useful to me than a very elaborate and detailed one which skips weeks or months at a time. Something which looks visually neat and organised, preferably colour coded, would help me as well due to certain mental health tendencies. Also, should I do a single journal and attempt to include the things the kids do together as well as their separate work/activities? Or should I attempt to keep three journals which would be clearer as to who did what but more repetition and the potential to become overwhelming. Lawyer friend suggested a document open on my phone and just voice-to-text things as we do them, this seems very efficient but not nice and organised and colour coded which gives the potential to become irrationally overwhelmed with it because it 'feels disorganised'. I could perhaps go back each night and edit the notes into something organised, but I'd want to do this at a desktop, I find typing on phones very very hard. I have access to both a windows phone and an android tablet though if anyone knows any apps which would easily do something like this and synch between them at the computer (not onenote, I struggle with the lack of a finite 'page', printing from it seems problematic at best and I would like to be able to print this). Also, incorporating photos seems trickier with this. A friend suggested photographing everything and automatically uploading it to a private instagram account with a one sentence description, a photo journal with it's own timestamps. But this would be hard for me, not everything can be easily photographed and I hadn't intended to keep visual evidence of every single thing done, just periodic examples. Photographing all projects and worksheets would be alright but, on a bad day I might literally be unable to get up and photograph my child doing physical ed or flashcards or other time-sensitive work, and I can just see it getting exhausting photographing every single thing they do when I am going to be including stuff which isn't explicitly school-book-work. It just doesn't seem a reasonable plan for MY situation where we are going to try document literally everything My husband suggested text on a word document I keep open at all times, colour coded for book work, non-book work, social activities and excursions/field trips/projects, which appeals (he knows me well lol), but I don't know how I would incorporate photos etc. Embedding them large enough to matter would look messy to me, I'd struggle with that. Maybe giving them specific names, referencing the name in the journal, then having the photos in the same folder, separated by month? But we begin to wander into too-much-work territory, plus, the idea of every single day getting the camera out, putting the card in, loading the photos up, resaving and renaming, etc etc sounds like a big job. I recognise it actually probably isn't, but a lot of this relates to mental ideas rather than reality, I know my common roadblocks and this is a big one. We furthered that idea with taking photos on my tablet and autouploading them to google drive, and having the document on google drive, that way I only have to rename. I guess I could see if there's a voice to text on my google document editor, and then each evening double check, add photo references and colour code on my computer which wouldn't be too bad, best of both worlds maybe? but I'm not even sure if my tablet has reliable voice to text, and typing on a touchscreen is not something I like doing. Any other ideas, suggestions, apps, programs, anything? Help for making it a habit? Layout suggestions, and whether to do one journal or separate ones and if I do a single one how to define stuff all the kids did and stuff only one kid did neatly and concisely (since being concise is obviously not my strong suit!). What about the stuff we do every day, just write it in every day? Also, one final thing. Lawyer friend said I should try to phrase things as achievement based. So rather than 'I taught child addition tables' write 'child practised their addition tables'. That seems like it could be hard to apply for some things though, what if I am just assigning a few worksheets or they're just listening to me teach something 'lecture style'? Any suggestions or ideas for how to implement this? I'm going to ask my friend for clarification next week but thought I'd pick your brains here.

This video has been invaluable to me and my husband, and my best friend who is also male. It's helped immensely to explain something ive been previously unable to get through to them.

IMO your problem isn't so much the age gap but that she isnt used to amusing herself. At school she would be told what to do, directed and scheduled. In a homeschooling family, the younger ones amusing themselves is a learned skill practised daily. My 4yo and even my 2yo can amuse themselves when I am working with the 6yo (and in turn, the 6yo is more than capable of doing the same when I'm spending time with youngers) but that has been grown into, the 2yo has had morning alone-time during school since infancy, the 4yo has had years of practice. Having your daughter come from the environment of school and having sporadic days where she needs to amuse herself for hours at a time, something she likely hasn't had a whole lot of practice with, is probably just plan out of reach. So on that note, rather than try and expect her to amuse herself for too long, I'd probably try to have structured activities ready. If you're ok with screen time, plan for it, find educational apps or documentaries, things you're ok with her looking at. Do you subscribe to any of those craft kit boxes? Or perhaps you can make, or find at the craft store, a bunch of all-inclusive kits to make specific crafts. Put them on the shelf to pull out and let her loose with on days off. She may be getting too old but some homeschoolers have busy-bag type things, reusable activities stored in a zip lock bag that can be pulled out one at a time, and are reserved ONLY for use during school times. Alternatively, can you find one or two special school-only toys. Sensory boxes, if you have the supplies on hand, can keep them busy for prolonged periods. Keep a bag of water beads or sensory foam or whatever on hand, again, only for days off from school. What you're going for here is novelty. She might not happily play with the same old blocks, but, a brand new toy could hold interest for hours. So plan to rotate through a craft, a busy bag and a documentary, or a sensory item, a school-time toy and an educational app. Since these are one-off days you have the opportunity to plan for them so it's easy to just pull a few things off the school-time activity shelf.

I'm out for the night, but, I think this sums up what a lot of people who I know voted trump are feeling. If you actually want to look beyond the labels of racism and hatred and see why half your country 'supports' this man, look into what these people think is so broken that they're willing to tolerate his racism and hatred for the glimmer of hope that he might be able to break and rebuild it. My prayers go out to everyone tonight, on both sides of the vote, and especially to those with family serving in the military, because I acknowledge the uncertainty and fear this brings.

If half the country is supporting something (in the loosest sense of the word...) perhaps it's time to sit up and listen and try to understand them, rather than shut your ears and declare the sky is falling. I don't like trump. I hate men like him. I happen to think he is the lesser of two evils here, but that's not really important. What's important is that half the country's opinion has been dismissed in one quick sweep under the labels of racism and hate. If we call it racism and hate then we don't actually have to listen to, or take seriously, the real issues leading people to vote for trump.

I don't usually post on chat, but, I need to get something off my chest. This isn't a small minority voting for trump. This isn't just old people and nasty unliked people. This is a majority of your country voting for him. Do you truly believe every single one of those people, the majority of your country, voted out of hatred and racism? If you do, then you have a very depressing 4 years ahead, surrounded by a majority of people who you believe are hateful racists. Or, perhaps, there are other reasons and beliefs at play, and that some people voted for trump who don't agree with every racist or hateful thing he said. It's possible to vote for someone and still dislike half of what they said, it seems to me people aren't exactly fans of Hillary either. I just can't get over the number of people who are calling the MAJORITY OF THEIR COUNTRY (if he wins, obviously) racist and hateful and xenophobes. This isn't a small group of bad people we're talking about here.

:party: Just a bump for the other side of the world crowd

A bit of a shameless plug here, a friend of mine is trying to kickstart a plug-and-play Uzebox system, and it may appeal to some homeschoolers with kids who are learning to code or create games. Just a quick note, this is NOT a teaching system per-se, it wont teach your 8 year old how to code. But for an older child/teen who has experimented a bit with coding languages, this can be a fun way to use and develop skills, with something usable to show for it, their very own custom game! The source code for many pre-existing games is available to download and learn from as well. Could make a great Christmas present for a techie teen! This is based in Australia, however he will be shipping to the US and, I believe, a number of other countries. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/simmonespring/uzebox-dtv-retro-gaming-goodness-in-the-palm-of-yo/

My 1st-grade-level-work DD does 30min math, 20min reading (plus independent reading time at night) and 10min handwriting a day at the moment. Of that, she does the handwriting, half the reading and about half the math independently, so about 30 mins total, spread out in 10min blocks. We only school 4 days a week though. There is also about 30mins of group stuff with her sisters which is where we cover content/art/music/culture in a very light way, we don't do a formal history or anything right now. I want to add 15min logic to her routine in a month or so. And, finally, she usually does a big science lesson with daddy every few weeks which, when they do it, lasts a good two hours. Once she is more fluent I intend to add some assigned reading time but that wont be until after christmas at least.

I may well be flamed for this, I was last time I talked about this topic. I don't read aloud, and I don't apologise for that or feel guilty I do read a picture book to the preschoolers each morning, 5 mins. But I don't read chapter books aloud, ever. I tried audio books and they had no interest at all. DH and I were homeschooled and neither of our parents read aloud to us, ever. We managed to grow up into highly literate adults who read for pleasure anyway. I don't feel I missed anything and I'm quite sure I'd have not taken in any of it anyway, as I really don't learn well via listening. Reading aloud is highly valued on this particular forum, but this is a cross section of a certain type of homeschooler, there are actually plenty of homeschoolers who don't. If you want to do CM or strictly classical education it becomes necessary, but if you take another style or are more eclectic, you can homeschool just fine without it.

Rainbow resources is my go-to. If you order a fair bit at once the postage isn't "too" bad comparatively. I don't believe there is a local reseller

In my family growing up, a 5th grader would be doing about 3-4 hours of work in the morning, plus an hour or more of required reading in the evening (often allowed to choose their own book, but reading before bed was required as 'school'). That was broken up, as a very rough guide, at 45 minutes math, 45 minutes literature study/spelling/grammar/poetry/etc, 30 minutes writing, 30 minutes foreign language, 1 hour history, social studies or science on rotation, 15 mins typing, then the hour of reading in the evening. I believe the often quoted guide is 1 hour per grade. I don't agree with it entirely, but, I know a number of people on the boards run with it.

An in-home art and music teacher 2-3 times a week, definitely. Self defence classes A huge home library of books Individual tablets/computers instead of sharing mine Honestly, that's about it. I'm pretty happy with what we're doing right now, which is nice.

Just got a chance to read that article properly (I only saw it after I got home) As it was explained to me, Australia seems to follow an almost identical protocol as the one described here, except that I was given the option to skip the medication and go straight to surgery if the hormone rose, while it seems this protocol considered surgery the last resort.

Home from hospital. My country handles ectopic care a lot less aggressively than the US, based on the research I've quickly done these past few days. Surgery or Medication definitely happen, but watch and wait is considered a very valid option in a lot of cases too. Thanks for that link MercyA They found some blood in the pouch of douglas and still no sign of anything in the tubes or anywhere else. The mild pain I had had passed. My hormones had spiked up to 2500 but the lack of visible tissue plus the blood higher up made them fairly confident that it was resolving naturally (it is, apparently, not unusual for ectopic pregnancies to self-resolve, it's just that many never get the chance). The decision was made to watch and wait overnight, so I stayed in the hospital. This morning the hormones were down to 2300, and still no pain and only very light spotting. Three Gyns are all in agreement that it has probably been passed by the body naturally, back up the fallopian tube, and we saw a hormone spike when this happened, but it has now all passed and will absorb safely. I am on strict orders that if I have any pain, lightheadedness or vomiting that I am to call an ambulance, but it looks like I will be fine. We are now seriously considering whether our previous 'strange miscarriage' was a second naturally resolving ectopic.

transvaginal

A quick search shows me this A transvaginal ultrasound showing no gestational sac with an hCG level above 1,500 is considered fairly certain evidence of an ectopic pregnancy.

I'm on my way to hospital this afternoon, I'm quickly trying to research all I can to be prepared when I see doctors. By dates I am 8 weeks pregnant. Last week I bled and passed uterine tissue in a way that very much looked like a miscarriage, with cramping that stopped as soon as tissue passed. My HCG has continued to rise, and is currently at 2000 (up from 1300 a week before, the day after the tissue passed). I had an ultrasound 24 hours ago which showed nothing in the uterus, and nothing visible in the fallopian tube or around the ovaries. Today I have had mild pain on the right hand side, not cramping and not severe, constant and fairly low down. They want me to take the medication for ectopic pregnancy though there is nothing visible on ultrasound, so we can't prove without doubt that it is ectopic. I am firmly pro-life but I also recognize ectopic is life threatening to me and I will terminate an ectopic pregnancy if that's what this is. I wish, so much, that it had been visible on ultrasound, and I am praying something will be visible on the ultrasound I will inevitably receive at the hospital in a few hours, because it will make what's happening much clearer. Is there anything else this could be but ectopic? I realize 2000 at 8 weeks is too low for there to be much of any chance of the baby being viable even if it isn't ectopic, but, viable or not, this is my third miscarriage in a row, so if there's a chance it's another cause I want to identify that as well. Should a baby be visible in the uterus at a hormone level of 2000? Can you pass uterine tissue and remain pregnant if the baby is in the uterus? Is there any other options here but ectopic that I can bring up to check? And, on a slightly related topic, can an ectopic pregnancy resolve itself without intervention? I had a previous miscarriage follow an almost identical pattern, but the doctor did no follow up. I continued to have pregnancy symptoms but three weeks after the tissue passed I had another round of heavy bleeding, which is when pregnancy symptoms suddenly disappeared. I am now wondering if that could have also been ectopic.

I can't tell you how angry that sort of 'wilful ignorance' makes me. There is a small, small subset of well paid, healthy, happy sex industry workers. They are the ones talking pro-porn and doing interviews. They're the ones Diary of a Call Girl and other shows try to represent as normal. And yet even some of those have come out later to say they regretted it. And most are not in that privileged position. Women in the sex industry experience Post Traumatic Stress Disorder at rates equivalent to veterans of combat war The average life expectancy of a porn star is 37.43 years Between 66%-90% of women in the sex industry were sexually abused as children In one survey, 89% percent of women in the sex industry said they wanted to escape, but had no other means for survival. A lot of people who are ok with porn are against prostitution. As much as the two sides have their own little fued going (each thinking they're more respectable than the other) I've been on both sides, and there's not many differences. In fact, if I had to go back and choose, from my experiences, I'd prefer prostitution over porn any day, absolutely no doubt. Yes, definitely a much better, more consensual option. :cursing:

I'll never understand how people can sit here complaining that a wife having sex when she feels 'meh' is rape/abuse And then turn around and say porn is fine. Nevermind the women who are forced or coerced into it, and trust me, while more and more are doing it 'willingly' there is still a large group of forced and coerced, especially with the online, independent stuff. Never mind the abusive backgrounds that make them more likely to do it 'willingly' if they fall into that group, because frankly I've never met a porn actress who hadn't been abused in the past (and I've met a lot). Never mind the higher rate of death among porn actresses. Never mind the black market and trafficking that is inherently connected. Never mind the girls put on drugs in order to be able to do the acts which are often painful, and how entirely unpleasurable it is for the women. Never mind the escalating intensity and edgyness which has increased hugely in the past 10-20 years. Nevermind that porn is causing teenage boys to expect acts which would have been considered unusual or kinky a generation ago, like anal. Nevermind what those women are going through to create the porn, because whether they're 'willing' or forced, taking drugs or super clean, what they're doing is something most of you would never do yourselves. Obviously supporting and giving money to that industry (because ads give them money as well) is a far better thing than a wife loving her husband and choosing to change her meh into a 'convince me'. I've been involved in the sex industry on many levels. The girls who go in, with no abuse background, totally by choice, are very rare, even if they're what people ignorantly choose to imagine everyone is. If you've watched porn for any reasonable period of time, I absolutely guarantee you, you've seen and given money to at least one rape, at LEAST one. Depending on the style of porn you watch it could be much more. And even the non-rapes are often more coercive than a wife changing her meh to yes.

This whole thing is just.... wow. No, we don't see that it does. It doesn't. This kind of closed minded, 'I am the only important person here' attitude is what gives a lot of womens rights advocates a bad name. Yep, no means no. But, your partner has needs too. You shouldn't give up yourself to them, but you should assess WHY there is such a mismatch if this is happening regularly. And it's not wrong to feel eh about sex, but do it anyway sometimes, and often find you enjoy it by the end. Just like sometimes I feel eh about playing a game with my kid, but I still do that. If it's an unhealthy dynamic then it's one a majority of posters here seem to be sharing. And I personally would be very offended if my husband just said 'No' for no reason, with no discussion. He would be in reverse. In a healthy marriage, communication happens. If he was not communicating why he was suddenly disinterested in sex I'd be really worried something was wrong, I'd begin suspecting porn or an affair.

Regarding sexual comparability... I've never understood that argument, at all. I am high-drive, he is medium-drive.... sometimes he chooses to show his love for me by doing it anyway (which I suspect people will have less of an issue with than if I was doing it for him!) and sometimes I take care of myself and don't take his no personally. And sometimes the roles are reversed. We have some different sexual interests. No big deal. Sometimes we do it gentle, sometimes we... don't lol. We both learn to compromise on our interests and have each learned to enjoy what the other likes (as well as the shared interests we have, and that we discussed before marriage). A couple of interests fall out of each others comfort zone, so we respect the 'no' and let it go, you don't get to have everything you want in life. Porn? Asked before marriage. Premature ejaculation? Seriously, you'd dump a guy for that? That can develop later in life as well. Just not seeing the whole comparability thing. Yep, our early sex sucked lol. In fact now, in our 7th year of marriage, I think it's better than it ever has been by a long shot, we're really getting the hang of this. I think that's how it should be. As for no means no, I got trapped into this debate on another thread the other week. All I can say is, different people have different boundaries. Also, it is possible to give prior consent, like 'I am ok with you rubbing my back if I'm not in the mood'. None of us are talking about husbands just doing it anyway, but hormones are fickle and sometimes a bit of 'warming up' isn't a bad thing, it's part of foreplay, and I personally consent to that form of foreplay even when I am not in the mood. DH knows my 'not really in the mood' from my 'absolutely not'. He would never continue if I said NO. But I don't respond to his interests initially with a NO every time, only when I truly mean it. I respond with a not really more often, and that not really sometimes turns into a yes and sometimes turns into a NO.

*rolls eyes* Yes, I do also know an asexual. Two, I suspect, but only one will admit it. They were not the people I was talking about and I think that was fairly clear. Do we really need to put a disclaimer at the end of everything? I think it was pretty clear I was generalizing to the common person. The common person enjoys sex and would find waiting for sex a challenge, at least at times.