I have a junior. It’s a tough year, even homeschooling. Pretty much all the juniors I see as patients are crazy stressed. It’s partially workload. It’s also starting to think about college. For my son it’s also a bunch of other added things...he is taking driver’s ed, he is trying to get a certificate to enable him to have a certain job for the summer, he said yes to a staffing/leadership position within Scouts (that is taking up multiple weekends), he is thinking about swimming in college so having to negotiate writing to coaches, he has other fun thing he wants to do, there are social pressures. It’s an increase in responsibility on all levels. On the flip side...I see him rising to those challenges. He’s stressed a little but he’s also thriving. So it can be a really exciting time. I think there is also some degree of stress involved in coming towards the point of a big change in your life...ending high school. People put so much emphasis on the whole college search process and what you will do and it seems like this make or break point. We’ve tried really hard not to do that and I think our son isn’t too worried about where he will go. Our emphasis has been that there are so many good schools and there is one that will be a fit for him. And we’ve talked a lot about fit (financial, personal, academic) over reputation of the schools. But there is some stress just in the uncertainty aspect of it all. I just asked my son why he thinks junior year is stressful and he said “because everyone else makes it stressful.” 😀

I went to University of Richmond. I also grew up in Richmond. I loved UR and thought it was a great experience. I’ll share my thoughts, with the caveat that it is all from a long time ago so things may have changed quite a bit. I was on a full scholarship (not from UR, a separate private scholarship). I also had a lot of friends on scholarship as I was in a honors/scholars program. I never really felt like most of my friends or people I knew were wealthy. I am definitely not from a wealthy upbringing. I knew going into college that I had to get a scholarship or likely wouldn’t go to school. I honestly can say it was never an issue for me while there. Most of the students do come from outside Virginia. When I was there (and I think it’s still about the same even though that was a long time ago now), many people were from New Jersey or New England because relatively speaking UR was much more affordable than the schools up there. UR is very much a campus school. We spent very little time off campus and being in the West End really doesn’t impact life. There is the city (which is way more hip and arty than when I grew up or lived in Richmond) but you will have to have a car to go downtown. You kind of have to drive to go anywhere, so being in the West End doesn’t make things cost more. There is a Greek system and when I was there frat parties were a big thing on the weekends, but not the only thing by any stretch of the imagination. Rush happens in the spring so you have the whole fall to make friends before you join a sorority (or don’t). There are also no sorority houses (at least there weren’t then) so it was kind of just another club. My roommate for most of my time (sophomore through senior year) was in a different sorority than me and our other two roommates were not in the Greek system. I was a Biology and Chemistry double major. I had a fantastic experience. I had a lot of friends who went to UVA or W&M and I got into both of them but chose UR for various reasons. When I talked to them and compared our experiences in the sciences, I felt like I had a much more personal experience. At the time, the only large classes I had were freshman bio and chem. Everything else was small. I was able to do fairly significant undergraduate research for three years and two summers. I got paid during the summers for the research. Because there were no grad students, I basically just approached the Biochem professor and asked him I could work with him and he said yes. I knew all my professors really well. We would go to their houses for dinners. One of the Chem professors had us to his lake house every summer, we would all as a department go tubing on the James River. We had Tshirts made one summer and all went to Kings Dominion together (with the professors). I went to Florida with several professors and some other students over Spring Break one year to present at a national conference. Yes, all very geeky...but heaven for me. Because of the honors program I was in, I was able to take upper level classes in a lot of other departments and had great experiences in Studio Art, Theater, English (I had enough credits for a minor but not the right classes) and Women’s Studies. My roommate was almost exactly the opposite, as far as majors, a Art History, English and Women’s Studies major. She had similar relationships with professors in her fields. I knew other people who had similar experiences in Physics, Math, Psychology, Sociology. It’s a great school. I’d be happy if my kids when there. It doesn’t have nursing though, so that is a definite downside if she is interested in going that route.

I’ve written recommendation letters for a lot of people because I teach a high school class at our co-op. Once I’ve written one, it’s easy to send it again, even if I have to modify it slightly for a new thing. One thing that is super helpful to me as a writer is when the student tells me things that the scholarship/experience/competition is looking for. Then I can add a few sentences about how the student meets those characteristics. And then change them for the next letter. But leave the main body of the letter the same.

I think the main issue that makes it hard to recommend things is that independent/accountable to someone else tends to be expensive. Cheaper options are going to take more work on a parent’s part. It’s not clear to me if the main hurdle for you is expense or time (or reluctance on your son’s part to have Mom as a teacher) and so it’s hard to know what to recommend.

I did my own Letter of the Week “curriculum” with all three kids for preschool. I got books out of the library based on the letter of the week and thought up a few activities we could do around that letter. So for example A was apple, ant, alligator, etc. Activities were apple prints with paint, apple picking (or just eating), apple pie making, ant watching on the sidewalk. B was bears, books, berries, bees...We sang the bear hunt song and acted it out, ate berries, ate honey (for bees), went to the library to get books. You get the idea. With my oldest we did tons of activities. With my third it was one or two per week. For me it was a way to plan out a few easy activities I’d do with my youngest and for them to have something special of their own. My youngest liked workbooks and having her own thing to do. She really liked the Explode the Code workbooks.

To my office Secret Santa: Wilde Lake by Laura Lippman To my Mom: Kindness and Wonder: Why Mister Rogers Matters Now More than Ever by Gavin Edwards To my Dad: The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West by David McCullough To my husband: Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking by Samin Nosrat To my 16 year old: Math with Bad Drawings by Ben Orlin and Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephan Dunbar To my 13 year old: The Lost Causes of Bleak Creek by Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal To my 10 year old: Guts by Raina Telgemeier and Best Friends by Shannon Hale I don’t have any specific books I hope to get. I did get a gift card from a local bookstore from the nurses at my office which is about the best present ever.

Our state also requires a copy of the high school dilpoma when you send in your notification to homeschool. When my oldest was kindergarten age and I had to send it in the first time I couldn’t find it and my college one was at my parents house and not easily accessible but I had a copy of my Medical school diploma. I stressed and stressed about it because I’m a rule follower but finally dh convinced me to just send it in. He was like “Seriously, let them try and argue with you that it doesn’t meet the requirement.” He was right, it was fine. 😀

I have another one with very high scores (99%) but who likely won’t make the cutoff in our state based on past years. He missed 4 questions total. I could tell he feels bummed although we’ve tried really hard to downplay the test. Most of the schools he will look at don’t give much in the way of NM aid and he knows that. And I told him that it’s a great score and missing 4 questions is amazing!

I have read this whole thread and I think I have won the Thanksgiving lottery this year. We had extended family Thanksgiving a few weeks ago because our niece and her just turning one year old baby were coming to town for baby’s first birthday from Utah. All the rest of her siblings came from far away and they all requested Thanksgiving meal while they were here. They wanted to have it at our house and it was a Saturday I had to work. I said sure, it could be here, but I wouldn’t be able to cook or do anything. We typically do a potluck style meal anyway. So I had kids help me clean on Friday, then dh did all the set-up and some cooking and everyone else brought food. I came home in time to eat. And for tomorrow, we are going to a good friend’s house. I had happened to mention to her that I wasn’t sure what we would do for real Tgiving since we were having the early meal. Plus, I also have to work this holiday so I wasn’t really up for cooking a big meal. She invited us to her house and told us not to bring anything. This is the kind of friend who I know really means it. And we’ve hosted her and her large family (7 kids) for holiday meals and told them the same thing and meant it. So just eating for me this year!

I have taught A&P for high schoolers in a co-op setting. We did three dissections (cow’s eye, sheep’s heart and fetal pig). I took the class to see a live cardiac surgery (a nearby hospital has a viewing dome for the public). The majority of the rest of the “labs” were looking at slides. I used all virtual slides from the computer. You can find the database of slides from many major med school online. My personal opinion was that they got as much out of looking at and identifying things from an online photo of an excellent specimen and good preparation of a slide than from using a microscope themselves, other than the microscope skills themselves. If I was teaching it at home I’d probably do the slides on our own with a microscope as well for the experience but we didn’t really have microscopes available to us as a class. I think Homeschool Science sells a set of slides that go along with the Apologia A&P class. The books we used (Apologia...chosen by the co-op but I think it’s an ok book) also had three other labs. One was to take a chicken bone and put it in vinegar. All the calcium carbonate will get dissolved and you end up with just the collagen. Another was to do a simple nerve two-point discrimination test when studying the nervous system. And the last one was one looking at a bicarbonate buffer system when we studied the kidney. I can’t remember exactly what they did (they did all of those at home) but you could probably google for ideas if you want to do that one. Blood typing would also be a reasonable lab.

Our county essentially has this. It’s called School Age Child Care or SACC. It can be before school, starting at 7 am and/or after school until 6:15 pm. It is also available on holidays and in the summer. I know they have some classes and sports opportunities and things like drama performances. It has a cost to people who participate, it’s a sliding scale based on income. It’s definitely cheaper than other child care options. It’s very popular and there is a waitlist at most schools. Obviously, we’ve chosen (and been able to choose) a different educational path and a different lifestyle. I agree that developmentally I worry about young kids being in school for up to 11 hrs a day. On the other hand, I can imagine circumstances where it would be a comfort for me to know my young kids are in a safe place and to have a cheaper good option available for childcare. I’ve been at a conference the last few days about mental health and one thing that has been repeatedly said is “we can’t fix poverty” (we, in this case, being pediatricians). What was meant by that is that so often when we, as pediatricians, are faced with really tough familial situations it feels hopeless. And it’s true as an individual doctor, I can’t fix poverty. Instead, we can focus on the needs of that particular child a that time. We treat the anxiety and depression while acknowledging that it isn’t enough in a broken situation. We can also advocate for systemic changes that would benefit families while we treat the particular child, but the systemic issues are going to take longer to fix. The proposal by Harris is a little different since she’s running for and office and should be looking to also fix the bigger systemic problems...but the reality is that those will take longer to fix and while working on larger economic policy issues, it might make sense to offer a more viable solution for childcare to families in need right now.

My current 8th grader has ADD and is very distractible. He spends most of the day doing schoolish things but he probably only spends about 3-4 hours in actual work. He knows himself very well and chooses to homeschool because he likes to have the freedom to do what he wants during the day. He will know that he’s totally unfocused so will walk away from Math and do something physical, for example. He’ll get the Math done but just needs to do it his own way. He does a lot of independent things that are learning but we don’t “count" as school: knitting, teaching himself how to draw on the computer, drawing and painting, unicycling, etc. He has a leadership position with Scouts this year which is very good for him as it requires a lot of responsibility. I don’t count that as school but he ends up doing a lot of research and writing and planning for it. (Just to add...I don’t count it all as school because I don’t have to keep those kind of records. If I did, I’d figure out a way to count it all. I also don’t count it or call it school because his personality is such that when anything gets assigned as school, it loses it’s appeal.) My current 11th grader is a more traditional learner and he probably spent an average of a solid 5 hours a day doing more traditional school subjects.

I had a horrible case of chicken pox as a kid. I had it in my mouth and throat and could barely drink. I had it on my eyelids. I had super high fevers and basically spent a week in bed barely able to even get up to go to the bathroom. A week later I had a ruptured appendix and was in the hospital for a week covered in scabbed over pox. It was a rough 7th grade. 🙂 I've been tested multiple times because of work and I have antibodies. I will get the shingles vaccine when I’m old enough.

I think you need to be really clear about everything and put it in writing. It sounds to me like the whole thing is a communication failure where you have certain preconceptions and she has others and that is causing problems. That is the issue behind when to pay and not pay. And also I the issue behind some of the parenting/discipline issues. People have very different ideas of what “firm” means. My closest friend and I have polar opposite parenting styles. I respect her and know her kids are happy and thriving. She respects me and knows my kids are happy and thriving. But words like “firm” or “laid-back” or “structured” have different meanings at our houses.

I’ve done it in England, Iceland and France. England was the trickiest at first because of driving on the left, but it just took a brief period of time to adjust. I felt like I was learning to drive again as a teenager. I just had to think really hard about everything at first. But the learning curve was quick, like a day or so. That trip was in 2000 so we didn’t have GPS. Dh just navigated for me using old fashioned maps. For Iceland and France we dowloaded maps to Google maps so we’d have them even when offline. That made it very easy. Honestly, driving in either place wasn’t really any different than renting a car and driving in a different place in the US. The one exception was Paris. I didn’t drive there because I’m not as confident with big city driving. Dh drove and then once we got out of the city we switched. I’ve driven in other big cities (NYC, LA) but Paris was insane. It was like there were no traffic rules and the cars just did what they wanted. Even dh who rarely gets flustered said it was a little unnerving. I don’t drive stick and we’ve never had a problem getting an automatic, you just have to request it.

Books I loved in high school (and beyond): A Not Entirely Benign Procedure by Perri Klass Medical Detectives by Bernard Roueche ( true stories of investigations of outbreaks/public health mysteries) The Deadly Dinner Party (similar medical mysteries) by Jonathan Edlow Every Patient Tells a Story by Lisa Sanders Anything by Atul Gawande, especially Complications and Better. Anything by Oliver Sacks about Neurology...An Anthropologist on Mars, Awakenings, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat are three really good ones, all clinical neurology tales Similar to Sacks...books by Harold Klawans, Toscanini’s Fumble is one Jerome Groopman’s How Doctors Think Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies and the Making of a Medical Examiner by Judy Melinek The Making of a Woman Surgeon by Elizabeth Morgan (interesting from the perspective of a woman who was one of the first in her field) Fiction: Robin Cook’s medical thriller’s: Coma is the classic but there are a bunch The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton The Chemistry of Death and others in the series by Simon Beckett (forensic series set in the UK....pretty graphic but really really good) The Body Farm series by Jefferson Bass (series of mysteries by a William Bass and Jon Jefferson...Bass was the real life doctor in charge of the Body Farm in Tennessee which is the premier lab for forensic research, Jefferson is a journalist who he teamed with to write the books). (FYI, I’m a pediatrician. These were all favorites of mine in high school or since high school. A warning is that my Mom pretty much let me read anything so I don’t really remember if all of these are typically high school appropriate.)

Resurrecting my own zombie thread. 🙂 I found this thread today when searching for something else that I had followed. I thought it might be helpful to anyone else there with outside of the box, school-hating kids to give an update. My now 8th grader is still an outside the box, march to his own drummer kid. But we are still homeschooling and it’s been great. I backed way off for the rest of 4th grade and let him have a lot more autonomy outside of just doing the basics. He remained adamant that he didn’t want to go to school and I respected that. We spent the last few years letting him pursue more of his own interests while still doing the minimum for school. Fast-forward to now and he is a kid who still prefers to do things his own way but he’s engaged in learning (for the most part) and has tons of interests. He has taught himself a lot of skills (juggling, knitting, unicycling, computer drawing, power point, more computer skills that I don’t really understand, photography...). He’s happy and thriving. And he’s also now mature enough to realize that there are some hoops he just needs to jump through for school (like standardized testing required by our state) and he sees the value in doing them and moving on rather than fighting it. Anyway, I’m glad we kept with it and I’d thought I’d update in case it helps anyone else. When I read my old post I even had trouble remembering the struggles we went through.

For classes at home, I don’t give tests or grades on individual assignments. He works to mastery and I give him an A. I will say this kid is a hard worker and deserves an A, so I don’t really feel like it’s grade padding. My son has taken a handful of outside classes each year (so far 3 out of 6 credits a year) and those grades have also been A’s and are more traditionally graded. This year he took one class through the public school system and it was shocking to me how lenient it was graded (and it was an AP class). He missed one exam by his own fault (we both read the deadline incorrectly). He sent the professor an apology and asked for an opportunity to re-take it but also said he understood if that wouldn’t be allowed. The teacher emailed back a very stern letter about how he could still take it but with a penalty. He took it and the penalty was 4 points off...which meant he still got an A on it. That made me feel even less worried about giving him A’s in the classes at home. I plan on saying something in our homeschool description on applications about how our philosophy includes working to mastery. I also think (hope) that since he has outside classes that are similar grades to mine and he has good test scores overall that my grades will seem valid.

I just discovered that my 12 year old though the “f word” was fart for a long time when he was little. He was apparently really confused when people would talk about it being a bad word becuase he thought “hey, we say that at home all the time.”

Complete infertility is rare. Subfertility (reduced sperm count) is not that rare in men, about 15% permanent. I didn’t say Mumps causes problems during pregnancy, it’s rubella that does. The risk of deafness is small but real. More recent studies suggest it’s higher than previously thought. Both my aunt and uncle are deaf in one ear from mumps.

You can’t tell if it’s bacterial or viral until you do a spinal tap. In a small baby especially, they look identical. So you would tap and send off cultures and do antibiotics for 48 hours while you wait for the cultures and viral PCR to come back. Also a baby who has viral meningitis has to be presumed to be herpes meningitis until proven otherwise because herpes meningitis is devastating. So a baby with meningitis symptoms will get at a spinal tap and then often get hospitatlized and treated with antibiotics and potentially acyclovir for herpes until you are sure that it’s not those things. In older kids, it’s a easier to tell and you can make a better guess from the way the spinal tap looks if you do tap. Viral meningitis in itself is not usually harmful and typically kids recover well. Mumps meningitis is similar. I’m not going to wade into this vaccine debate becuase I’ve just decided not to do it anymore online. But as for the MMR....the main risk with Mumps is infertility and deafness, the main risk with rubella is that it is a teratogen and causes terrible birth defects. It is not usually harmful to kids but is given to them to protect pregnant women (who are typically in contact with young children). Measles can be a virus that makes you feel really ill, like the flu, but you can recover from. It can also be deadly. The main concern we vaccinate for is measles encephalitis and pneumonia which are the main causes of death and disability. . It can cause death, the rate is about 1:1000. The rate of encephalitis which can also cause brain damage and permanent neurological complications is 1:1000. It still kills about 100,000 people a year, mostly kids under the age of 5. Before mass vaccination in the 1980’s it was the cause of 2.6 million deaths a year. Those stats are per the WHO.

I wonder if it’s a local church outreach or challenge kind of thing. You know like maybe “in Lent, approach a stranger per week” or something like that. I could see that kind of thing happening in some circles I’ve been in.

First option. Breakfast is mostly everyone on their own, but there are usually a couple of people at the table at one time. Just not everyone. Lunch is usually me and the kids eating together. Now that my oldest is often working independently during the day, lunch is the time we all come back together. We read aloud, play a game or watch something on TV (currently old Amazing Race seasons). Dinner is almost always almost all of us. It’s gotten harder to do that as there are more activities. Mondays I work and the kids and dh actually have a long standing tradition of having dinner with extended family. This used to be dh’s father, all three of dh’s siblings and the kids’ four cousins. As time has gone on that is now usually just dh’s siblings and occasionally a cousin if they are in town. The other nights of the week, I’d say 3 are typically all of us and 3 are most of us but someone might be out at an activity and have eaten early or will eat late.

Just wanted to give a shout out for Simplify Homeschool online classes for middle schoolers. My 7th grade son is taking one on Puzzles and Codes (taught by Farrar!) and it’s been a fantastic experience. He’s a kid who doesn’t like a lot of school and typically doesn’t like anything that seems schoolish even if it’s a topic he likes. But he’s totally gotten into the class. It’s also been a nice gentle first online class. The work is interesting and challenging but not so much that it’s overwhelming. I think he likes the independence of doing it on his own. I don’t know if they will offer online classes again, but if they do, I highly recommend them.

We’re using the Arbor Math books for my 7th grader this year. He loved Jousting Armadillos and it was a great fit for him. We continued with Crocodiles and Coconuts. It’s still been mostly good. It’s a little too wordy for him, he’s much more of an auditory learner I’ve realized. We’ve gotten around that mostly by me reading him the longer sections and then orally discussing it rather than having him read it himself. But my bigger gripe is that there are SO MANY ERRORS in the solutions guide. JA had some and that was a bit annoying but understandable. This is way more and it’s really frustrating. I love the concept of the books, but I’m not sure I’d recommend it to anyone at this point becuase of the errors. Just thought I’d throw that out there since I know it’s a program a lot of people look at.