Machines are good to get you going because there are instructions on them and they restrict the range of motion so usually you're not doing exercises with weird form and hurting yourself. But there are other exercises that work the same muscles that don't require a weight machine although frequently they do require some equipment. Many people use a free weight set eventually although this is a hefty purchase and not desirable for beginners. There are also bodyweight or dumbbell exercises that work these muscles as well that can be done at home. For example, you can do chest press on a machine. You can do bench press with a bench. You can do dumbbell bench press with dumbbells. Or you can do pushups and pushup variations if you don't want to use anything. Some exercises are easier to substitute than others. I really love bodyweight fitness and get a kick out of it although right now I'm rehabbing an injury so using only dumbbells :/

Pfft we'll just hire a sub. It's not like you need any sort of special training for this sort of stuff right?

So f(x) goes into a bar. The bartender says "Sorry, we don't cater for functions." Some helium goes into a bar. The bartender says "Sorry, we don't serve noble gasses," but the helium doesn't react. A neutron goes into a bar and has several beers. Upon leaving, he asks for his bill. The bartender looks at him and says "Oh, for you, no charge." Some bacteria go into a bar. The bartender says "Hey, you can't come in here!" The bacteria reply "Why not? We're staph!"

And the guy who fell into the upholstery machine is completely recovered. But the guy who fell into the lens-grinding machine made a real spectacle out of himself.

Or, when it's clearly not working -- when someone posts and it's obvious that the homeschooling parent is completely overwhelmed and the family is suffering -- usually not just educationally, either -- sometimes it's necessary to encourage people to consider other options (which don't necessarily have to be full-time PS, either).

+1 for "take as much time as you need to make sure the basics are solid". There are far too many students in my math classes who have exposure to advanced topics but never actually grokked the basics fully, and this really hurts them in more advanced classes where they need to tie together knowledge from multiple classes or apply what they've learned.

Rosie, If regulations are coming in, what I'd like to see is something with multiple acceptable ways to demonstrate literacy and numeracy are being achieved at a reasonable level. In my personal opinion, while I firmly believe that other subjects are important, I consider what is taught in which grades to be far more subjective, and furthermore I consider those subjects far easier to catch up in when a student can read, write, reason, and do basic arithmetic. So an assessment with an ed psych could be one option. A home visit could be another. A standardized test taken outside of the home could be another. There are probably more that I'm missing, because I haven't really thought about this in that much detail. But passing any single one of these would be evidence that education was happening. And every single one of these should be provided by voucher. Heck, if you want to do ALL of them, have a voucher for them all. And yeah, the proposed regulations you're describing sound like an utter nightmare. Something where I'd be strongly tempted to move even if it meant giving up a lot of ties.

This is actually not at all what I am saying. What I am saying is that intellectually capable children who have the desire to go to college or are interested in a career that requires college (medical school, for example) should have an education that allows them to move towards those goals. I am in full agreement with how much the "college for all" goal hurts kids who would be happier with a more hands-on career or who are just not ready for it at 18 but might do very well indeed at 22. I was such a student and I'm very glad I dropped out and worked for a while.

If you think that public school is a nest of villainy where orgies occur in the hallways and children are taught to pray to Satan (ok, a little hyperbolic here) it makes perfect sense.

Are there enough ed psychs to do the job? I certainly think that a voucher to an ed psych could be one option of demonstrating that your kids are doing just fine, but mandating it may overwhelm the current numbers.

For the "routine" issue, could you go somewhere else for a much milder exercise at the same time? Like, go to the park and gently walk as long as you would have done crossfit? Or lock yourself in a private room and do a gentle yoga video? That way you'd keep yourself in the "This time is MY TIME for exercise" mindset but not beat up your body as much.

1) Try cutting out one training session a week. You honestly might just be overtraining. 2) For muscles I've found that including plenty of foods rich in potassium and magnesium is helpful. 3) For joints and tendons I take glucosamine (ortho doc recommended).

Yeah, wouldn't it be nice if there were some easy answers? I agree with you on the light regulation. Basically something that's so light that unless you really are doing nothing, it's much easier to just do it. So that the only reason to avoid it is either genuinely doing nothing or some pretty impressive paranoia. It should be free as well (if you're requiring people to test, you shouldn't require people to pay for the test). And whatever way they go with, there should be multiple options to demonstrate basic literacy and numeracy, rather than multiple hoops to jump through.

I'd agree, but I'd cautiously speculate that also there's a "local culture" issue. If you're the only one whose kids are 10 and still can't read, you're probably starting to get nervous, but if there are 14 year olds who aren't reading your 10 year old seems perfectly fine by comparison. Kind of like how one of my friends who does nutrition education for low-income families has a lot of people who really don't see a problem with sprite in a baby's bottle because everyone around them does it too. It's considered normal for kids to lose all their baby teeth by kindergarten.

Don't get me wrong -- the high flyers are doing brilliantly. I sure wouldn't want to see obnoxious regulations like some of the high-reg states because I think that puts an undue and unnecessary burden on home educators and does damn-all to actually improve the quality. And there isn't an easy answer just like there isn't an easy answer for school reform. It would be nice indeed if there were. But whether or not people like me think there should be regulations, I predict that they're going to be coming because the people at the state level who collect and collate statistics are noticing, and high-profile cases have been hitting the news in various places.

1) It really is not the same issue. I have never seen this depth of complete non-understanding in a non-disabled student who went to a PS recently. If it were all the same family I'd almost believe an occult learning disability but it's in more than one family. You can say whatever you want about the low standards in the PS but the low end on the homeschooled students is far below that. 2) An exam would solve the problem at the colleges but it's not going to solve the problem of kids who are supposedly high school graduates who aren't even prepared for remedial CC. Where do they go? Private tutors? Those cost money and someone who can't succeed in remedial classes probably isn't making the kind of money to afford them. GED classes? But they have a diploma. Self-education? Sure, but only practically attained by the extremely ambitious.

My issue is that these students are underprepared not just for university, but for CC. Students who are technically high school graduates and place into arithmetic or pre-algebra at a CC have an incredibly low rate of success both at continuing to the next year and at graduating in general, and a big reason is because they are so far behind that they are looking at semesters of remediation before proceeding to collegiate classes and then running out of financial aid eligibility before graduation. This is a subject of nationwide discussion among university educators. Furthermore, CC remedial classes used to be more basic, but now tend to assume that a student has seen algebra and geometry, but just not mastered it. They aren't well suited for an initial exposure as they move much too rapidly for that. Some bright students can make the leap, but most can't. ETA: Btw, the only real modification that would stop this would be refusing to accept their fabricated transcripts at face value. And yes, they are fabricated. They are getting admitted because they have transcripts that say that they passed two years of algebra and one of geometry with certain grades, but multiple students have told me in confidentiality that they never studied those and their parent just downloaded a transcript. So we could require extra documentation from homeschool students that isn't required from general admission students, but that tends to raise hackles as well and doesn't address the larger issue with the spreading myth of "anything is better than PS"

I do think it's problematic and I expect to see some regulations popping up in some low-regulation states. Personally, I've seen articulate and intelligent students who come into my university (admitted under the high school GPA over a certain point admissions process, which means no specific test score is required) ludicrously underprepared for the lowest level remedial math class we offer. Before someone jumps in to say "well PS isn't doing a great job either", I have seen many underprepared students from local public schools, but never ones who had never been exposed to the concept of fractions (I borrowed a set of the elementary ed fractions circles for one person who did visit office hours a fair amount before giving up), variables, or anything beyond basic multiplication or division with a calculator. They try hard, but tend to score in the single digits for the first few exams before giving up. They need to be at a CC taking a pre-algebra or an arithmetic class, but the CC's around here are phasing those out. Before I saw this, I wouldn't have believed it and was pretty opposed to any kind of testing, evaluation, or regulations. After seeing this in multiple students, I don't feel the same way anymore.

Quite honestly, I can't really think of anyone at all whose lifestyle is so healthy that it can't be improved. The extremes are easy to point at, but in between there are a vast number of people muddling along and making some healthful decisions and some less healthful decisions for a variety of reasons, many of which have little to do with health.

I have heard your comments about your kid's Aikido class before and it really, really troubles me. That is not what it's supposed to be like and every Aikido dojo I've ever visited would address the issue of an imbalance of force without expecting the smaller and younger person to speak up and say that they're being hurt (which is often very difficult to do because no child wants to be "the whiner"). TKD is just fine when well done. A good instructor is far more important than which specific style at age 8. Best of luck.

Correct. Worst thing that happens is that your skin turns orange, which is weird-looking but harmless. Ingesting loads of preformed vitamin A (which comes from animal sources) is how you OD.

OP, can your insurance company do a suspended policy? I took my second car off the road and the insurance company said 'Hey instead of removing it like you asked, we can just suspend the policy so that you don't get charged anything but if you come back you won't be a new customer' and I said 'yes please'

What about non-breakfast foods? Like a bunless burger (or turkey burger) and plate of veggies?

Depends on how much room there is left in the truck. I trashed some stuff that cost me a bit to replace because my truck was so full there wasn't room for it and making an extra trip cost more than replacing it.

NY state is very strict about it. I asked in another state and they said 'haha what? use them to patch a hole or something'