I started teaching my kids to play on a blanket when they were 6-9 months old. But even babies much younger than that can be "trained"/taught. Around 12 weeks I started teaching my babies to lay still for diaper changes. I always sang the alphabet song while changing diapers, and made sure the song ended right as I finished. When they started to get more mobile, and tried to roll away while I changed them, I would stop singing, patiently wait for them to stop struggling, and then cheerfully start singing again as soon as they were still for even an instant. Lather, rinse, repeat. As Drama Llama said, it took consistency and persistence, but all of my babies quickly figured out that I would not let them leave until I got to "next time won't you sing with me", and that the fastest way to get there was to lay still for a couple minutes. Obviously they all got annoyed with me during the teaching process, but then it removed SO MUCH conflict for the next year+. It empowered them in the same way adults are by an "Approximately 1 hour of waiting from this point forward" sign or a "Now being served" number at a deli. Neither of those reduce the wait time, but they both allow you to come to terms with it and plan how you are going to occupy yourself.

Because sometimes life does not entirely revolve around the baby. Sometimes I need to listen to a doctor as they give me instructions for medicating an older child. Sometimes I’m at a pre-natal appointment and need to be on the examine table for a few minutes. Sometimes I need to talk to a banker about setting up an account. My children ARE my life, but I only have a finite amount of attention. Sometime I can only give a small child enough attention to keep them safe, not enough to keep them entertained. That is why I put so much effort into helping them learn to entertain themselves from early on.

I guess training by consistency and perseverance. I started as soon as they could easily sit up. At that age they were still sitting in the stroller during appointments, but starting to get restless. At home, at a time they were well fed and rested, I put them on the towel (the exact one I would be using in offices), gave them some special toys, and sat next to them interacting. When they went to move off the towel, I would just move them back and cheerfully tell them, "Play here for now." I would aim for 5 minutes to start. We practiced every day...while I read the kids a story, while I discussed a bill with DH, while I wrote a grocery list, etc. Over time I increased how long I aimed for, and then moved from being on the floor next to them to being in a chair next to them. Once they understood the concept, then I mostly just needed to occasionally remind them. I would also bring back-up toys if they needed something new to play with mid-appointment. If they decided to push the boundary and leave the towel, then I would first remind them and ask them to come back, and if that wasn't enough then I would hold them on my lap. If they were happy, that was fine. If they tried to get down, I would remind them they needed to play on their towel or I would have to hold them again...and I would always follow through, not harshly, but sympathetically and matter of factly. It was certainly not always smooth sailing, but we got a lot of practice and could almost always accomplish the necessary task of the appointment with only minimal strife on anyone's part.

But we weren't in our home. Obviously at home I could modify the environment, but I had limited options in medical offices. And, while obviously I was always supervising my children during appointments, my attention needed to primarily be on the appointment, not actively distracting, interacting with or singing to my 9 - 15 month olds. They were welcome to sit in my lap...but they normally didn't want that for long. And I couldn't schedule all appointments around nap times. Currently we are in psychiatrist/therapist offices about 7 hours every week. Back then it wasn't quite that high, but it was still a lot of hours stuck in offices. Plus, all the other appointments. I never had child care, so I always had to drag all of my kids to my pre- and post-natal appointments, my dental appointments, my banking appointments, etc.

Is that also the only option for teaching babies and toddler to not stand in the bathtub, to not bite other people, to not throw their food, etc? Because somehow I taught my older babies/young toddlers all those things without hitting or terrifying them. The thing I find really amusing, is that, as I said, I mostly had my older babies and toddlers play on blankets while in psychiatrist and therapist offices. And the only feedback I ever got from the medical profession was hugely positive. They heartily endorsed having kids play within clearly marked boundaries as opposed to A. plugging them into screens to keep them quiet or B. not giving them any boundaries and then getting mad at them when they touched things they weren't supposed to.

My youngest HATED being confined to a stroller when all the big boys were "free". It was fine when she was an infant, but once she could sit up, she wanted to move and play. Plus, most of these offices were like 150 square feet (14 sq. meters) and had desks and chairs and bookshelves to work around. Add two adults and 4 children who had to hang out for an hour...space was limited. Each child had a mini backpack that could hold a few toys or books. As soon as we walked in, I would assign places for each child - normally me and the violent, unpredictable 5 year old sitting on chairs or the couch next to each other, and the other three sitting on their towels. I would put the 1 year old's space right next to me. It wasn't ideal, but it was one way of coping with a hard situation...and I don't think it did anyone any harm. Honestly, we still use it to this day. During my 10 year old's violin lesson, I lay out a towel on the floor to define my autistic, ADHD 7 year old's play area to make sure she isn't making too much of a mess, straying around the teacher's house, or getting in the way of the lesson. The towel helps her regulate herself physically and emotionally and greatly decreases how often she interrupts the lesson.

I "blanket trained" my younger kiddos (without ever spanking or threatening them in any way) because my oldest two special needs kiddos had many, many appointments. DH was at work, I had 1, 3, 5 and 7 year olds, and we had to spend a lot of time in psychiatrist and therapist offices. I could not have toddlers trying to ransack the office while I paid attention to the appointment. For me, the easiest solution was to teach the youngest two to each play with their toys on a small towel. It wasn't punishment at all, it was just a physical boundary showing them their play space in whatever office we happened to be in.

We use AAS plus Daily Grams to cover writing minutia like abbreviations and addressing envelopes.

My son in public school has been in Algebra for 3 weeks now...and the only grade he has gotten so far is for getting his parents to sign the syllabus. He got 100%. So 3 weeks in, us, his therapists, his special ed teacher, and even his algebra teacher have no real way of knowing if he is doing the work, understanding the concepts, losing assignments, etc. All of his other core classes have had at least one graded assignment each week, and he has turned almost all of them in late if at all, which is a known issue addressed on his IEP due to his autism, ADHD and anxiety. So I think we can assume that he is missing an equal amount of math work, but there is no data to back that up. I'm not particularly concerned for my son because I think the vast majority of the assigned work is busy work of far less rigor than the algebra curriculum I took him through 2 years ago when I was still homeschooling him. But 3+ weeks of not understanding concepts is a huge hole for a less mathy kid to climb out of if parents are just glancing at the LMS and seeing their math grade as 100% (for getting that syllabus signed) and assuming that means all is well.

In high school we always had the answers in the back of the book to all the odd problems. Some math teachers only assigned the odds, others assigned a mix of odds and evens. We always spent the first 10-15 minutes going over a couple HW problems from the night before that the teacher chose (the ones he/she felt would cause the most problems) and any that students requested. Some teachers glanced at HW daily to mark for completion, others just randomly chose a day every couple weeks to check if HW was completed. My one public schooled kiddo is in 7th grade taking algebra 1, and the system is very different. They don't have a textbook. Their class starts with a lesson created by the teacher, then they have small group work time, then partner work time, and then an assignment in IXL. They only have homework if they don't reach mastery on the assigned IXL. I pretty much hate it. Everything he is learning is sooooooo plug and chug. If the lesson is solving two step equations (which the school testing shows he had mastery two full years ago), then he spends small group and partner time teaching the others how to do it so that the teacher can give everyone passing grades. Then IXL makes him crank through 50ish rudimentary two-step equations that don't even increase in difficulty over time. The one time he did not understand a concept, he just kept randomly plugging numbers into IXL until he figured out the pattern well enough to guess adequately to reach the passing threshold. For better or for worse, he never has homework.

My favorite is Universal Handwriting for my kids that hated handwriting, and were a touch delayed in fine motor skills, but made steady progress once they were ready. It is just so easy and open-and-go. I especially like that they offer the books in Spanish - we start Spanish exposure early, so this was an easy way to incorporate it into their day. For my youngest who REALLY, REALLY struggles with handwriting and spelling, I use a combination of Spelling U See and Handwriting Without Tears, but those would have been overkill for my other kids.

I would do AAR. Kid 1 went through AAR Pre-level, and then I bought the AAR readers. He caught on quickly and never needed any more reading instruction that that, but when we introduced spelling, we went right to AAS and stuck with it all the way through. Big fans. Kids 2 and 3 followed that same path. Kid 4 came along and needed more reading support. I decided to buy LOE, because like you I thought it looked thorough. I found it annoying to implement; DD found it torture even though I quickly gave up on the handwriting aspect of it. We gave up after a month and I just taught her to read on my own using the AAR readers. I understand the appeal of handwriting or copywork included, but it never would have worked for any of my kids. Their fine motor skills were always delayed far behind their reading. Plus, hand writing was just plain despised, so when they were ready my only hope of getting semi-willing compliance was making my own handwriting/copywork sheets about high-interest topics: Star Wars, Pokemon, Plants vs. Zombies, Octonauts, etc.

The ULAT offers immersion video lessons at a very reasonable price.

My public schooler is on the bus for about an hour each way (to a school that is a 2.5 mile drive from our house). So in my experience, a 7:25 drop off means kids are getting on the bus quite a while before most parents need to leave to get to work at 8. Obviously it could be very different in other areas.

Unrelated question, why are elementary students getting dropped off at school at 7:25am? That seems really early. Doesn’t that mean they are done around 2:30pm, and that most of them have to hang out in some type of after care for many more hours?

Classical Academic Press' Writing and Rhetoric series

When my son was in the inpatient mental health hospital, they would dose most of the kids with Benadryl every night to help get them to sleep.

My son's school pulled a similar stunt on parents this year. I went to the school as soon as the building opened two weeks ago to get the Medication Administration Forms I needed for DS. I filled out seven forms, uploaded them to three different Patient Portals for four different doctors to sign, printed them out and took them in with the meds last Thursday (school started this Monday). That is the point I was told that I was given the old form, and that they didn't technically have the new forms, but they would by the time school started. They refused to take the old forms or the meds, so DS was at school yesterday without access to an Epipen, and I had to go in twice during the day to administer his meds since they couldn't. They did indeed have the "new" forms to give me on Monday....it was the exact same form but with the school logo in the corner!!!! So I spent the rest of yesterday photoshopping the logo onto the forms I already had signed. 😖

I've just taught them what I know, and helped them learn any more they were interested in. I've never kept it a secret from them, but two years ago, on the twentieth anniversary, I spent several hours telling them the story and answering their questions. I kept it personal, and narrative, because I wanted it to be impactful. I wanted them to be able to imagine themselves, not at the site, that would be too traumatizing for my kids, but around the country watching it unfold on TV. I told them where I was, what I knew at the time, what I didn't know at the time, how the world changed that day from my perspective. We watched a video of the news coverage and the towers falling. We watched a short documentary about all the boats flocking to the water front to evacuate the people. We watched Jon Stewart's monologue from when the Daily Show returned to the air. We read a summary of the Patriot Act. We read an article about the continued rebuilding at the site even 20 years later. I didn't gloss over who committed the acts of terrorism, but I also didn't dwell on it. I don't think I've ever known their names. I tried to make sure the kids understood that no mainstream religion endorses terrorism and killing, and that also no mainstream religion is entirely free of extremists who twist their religion into intolerance and violence. I also tried to make sure the kids understood, at whatever level they could, that the things they themselves currently think of as true and good and normal...are just the things they have been indoctrinated to believe up to this point. And that in other parts of the world, there are young people living in horrible, desperate circumstances who cling to the beliefs they have been indoctrinated with...and to them, those beliefs are true and good and normal. There are lots of picture books about 9/11, and over the years I have checked many of them out of the library and brought them home for the kids to read if they chose. But I didn't rely on any of them as "curriculum" because I really wanted to read the room and make sure I was hitting the right note of thought-provoking rather than frightening or depressing.

I just checked, and our local Walmart has NIV, KJV, and NKJV bibles available on the shelf...aisle K4. They also have two kids' bibles. There is a very real reason this area is called the Bible Belt.

Our last chain of “grocery” stores are closing around here. Now we just have big box stores: Walmart, Target and Meijer. They sell…everything. As many groceries as a dedicated grocery store (often more), but also clothes, books, home and car parts, school and office, furniture, crafts, party supplies, hot prepared food, bikes, guns, etc.

We participate in a hybrid/virtual program through the public schools. We can't participate in their brick and mortar electives or sports, but we can and do participate in an elective day on-campus they offer just for the virtual students and "community partner" electives where the school pays for art, music, nature, foreign language and sports opportunities offered by local teachers and businesses. There are almost no park days or support groups around here, but that is okay because that would be too unstructured and dysregulating for my kiddos anyway. Instead they do best in courses that are some mix of active learning and structured social time. For example, at their nature class when they have chunks of time to sled, build shelters, play "infinity tag", etc, it is clearly not "Sit at your desks; No talking!" time, but it also isn't a complete, unsupervised Lords of the Flies play time either. At the on-campus elective day this year, my elementary kiddos are taking Strategy Games, Hands on Aerospace, Fun PE Activities, and Songwriting. My 9th grader is taking Graphic Design, Free Art Time, "Logic, Puzzles and Escape Rooms", and Duct Tape Art. They do eat hot lunch there, and have recess, but they love both those things. It isn't anything like a public school experience: most of the classes are only 5-10 kids, there are only five teachers, and the teachers are much more like fun mentors - helping with projects, teaching tools and skills the kids are interested in, playing with them at recess, listening to kids gush about what they are doing at home and at community partners. I love that my kids have adults like that...to talk to, joke with, ask for help. And the hybrid also pays for our Spanish immersion class, Spanish tutoring, Hands on robotics, "Creating Art through History" class, piano and violin lessons, swim lessons and gymnastics (at least a portion of it).

That is not at all how math is taught in local high schools here anymore. It is all PowerPoint presentations and projects, group work, even group tests. Most of the resources are cobbled together from teachers pay teachers. If students have access to a text book it is typically digital instead of print.

My young kids have always done two math lessons a day, but that is because 1) I keep both of the lessons quite short (10-15 minutes), and 2) only one of the lessons is arithmetic and the other is "problem solving". So, up through about 4th grade my kids do one lesson in Math Mammoth, and then also one lesson of Hands on Equations (and before that Balance Benders, Zaccaro, etc.). But when they start algebra around 5th grade, they are ready to consolidate both of their math lessons into one session of ~45 minutes. This is typically structured as 5-10 minutes of teaching time, ~20 minutes of independent work, checking and grading their independent work, 10-15 minutes of correcting mistakes. So, in your situation, my kids wouldn't be happy about doing two lessons that were both fairly dry and boring, especially if one of them was hard for them. And they wouldn't be happy if each of the sessions lasted more than ~20 minutes.

I sit directly on public toilet seats. I touch faucets and soap dispensers. I do try to use paper towel or pull my sleeve over my hand to open the door on the way out rather than touch the handle it with my newly cleaned hands. I do tend to wash my hands before inserting tampons.