Alice
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Posts posted by Alice
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1 hour ago, JennyD said:
Oh, I do this all the time. I would wait until they got to the end of the lane and then loudly ask, "Hi, can we circle swim?" Then when they grudgingly accede, I cheerfully say "thanks!" and jump in.
I have very little patience for people who get possessive about swim lanes.
Yes, this.
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On 11/2/2023 at 2:31 PM, HazelAnne said:
In the US it seems pretty standard to remove wisdom teeth before they cause any problems- just incase. I’m curious if this is how it’s done in other countries also?
Anyone have experience getting their wisdom teeth removed as an adult after they started causing problems? Any thoughts on the subject would be appreciated!Mine all came in and were fine. Dentists would always tell me to have them removed "just in case" there were problems. I finally asked one of them if I could take out his appendix "just in case" it caused a problem. He laughed and never asked again.
I did finally have them removed, in my mid to late 30's. I got a cavity in one of them and the recommendation was to take it out instead of filling it for various reasons that made sense to me. I decided to just do all four at the same time. It was very easy for me, I was pretty much fine the next day and I don't really remember a lot of pain. My oldest kiddo had his out a few years ago, his were impacted and we could easily see on the Xray how they were starting to cause issues with the other teeth. He had a harder time than me. I think the difficulty had more to do with impaction vs. non-impaction rather than age.
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I had one too and loved it!
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-Experiences (see a play, go to a concert, take a hike, some kind of adventure, etc)
-Food
-Books- Not really zero waste but you can pass them on to other people
-Some kind of high quality clothing that lasts a long time (wool sweaters, really good socks, mittens/hats, etc)
-If she wants zero waste I'd think about things she needs and get her something that is higher quality than she might get herself
-Dh just got our middle son a set of portable utensils, it's very cool and comes in a tiny cute box. It's to keep with him so he can avoid using plastics places. A good thermos is also useful for that kind of thing.-
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14 hours ago, SKL said:
This also seems like a lot - especially the requirement to do an ap/honors/DE/IB class OR earn a career/tech certification. At least here, earning a career/tech certification requires one to essentially attend trade school half time for two years.
I mean, for some people, the future is finding a full-time job after high school, and that will be pretty darn hard if you don't have a high school diploma. Do employers really expect kids to have a career/tech certification coming right out of high school? It's great if they do, but I don't think it's necessary.
Sorry, I probably phrased it wrong. The Career/Tech certification has a wide variety of ways you can meet the requirement. You can actually earn your LPN in the schools or get a Cosmetology license. But you can also meet it with much less involved ways. I'm not a fan of all of our state's graduation requirements but I do think this is one area where they have tried hard to meet a wide variety of needs. It's not that hard to go to the Academies (where they have the specialized training). If your home school does not offer the program you are interested in you can apply and go to the school that does. They have buses that do the transportation so it doesn't rely on the student driving. My son does a class at another School and it's been pretty easy for him to do.
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8 hours ago, prairiewindmomma said:
It is really annoying.
The twin sister annoying issue to this happens in states where nearly every absence requires a doctor's note to return to school. In some states the note must be faxed from the doctor's office and submitted within 48 hours of the return to school.
I just had a patient tell me yesterday that our school district has decided they can no longer require this as it's an equity issue since it requires people to have access to a doctor. I was very happy because we get really tired of writing back to school notes this time of year.
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My guess is he wanted more specific examples. He should have said that but phrases like "lets certain things through" or "dangerous substances out and necessary substances at correct levels" is pretty vague. What can pass through and what about the cell membrane makeup allows that? What is kept out? How does it maintain the levels of specific ions?
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Our state has two diplomas, the standard and advanced.
For standard: 22 Credits: 4 English, 3 Math (Algebra, Geometry and a third math that does not have to be Algebra II), 3 Science, 3 Social Studies/History, 2 Language OR Fine Art OR Technical Education, 1 Personal Finance/Econ, 4 Electives (2 have to be sequential- like Art 1 and 2), 2 Health/PE.
For advanced: 26 Credits: 4 English, 4 Math (has to include Algebra II and one more higher level math), 4 Lab Science, 4 Social Studies/History, 3 World Language, 1 Econ/Personal Finance, 2 Health/PE, 1 Fine Arts or Career/Tech, 3 Electives (2 have to be sequential)
They also say that they have an Applied Studies Diploma for people with a specific IEP that keeps them from meeting the Standard Level and that is allows the schools to more individualize requirements.
In addition for both the Standard and Advanced they have to:
-Do either one AP/DE/Honors/IB class or earn a Career/Tech Certification (they have academies that have things like cybersecurity, culinary arts, EMT, etc)
-Do one virtual course.
-Get certified in CPR/AED (they do this in Health class as 9th grader)
Have 5 "verified" credits: 1 Math, 1 Science, 1 Reading, 1 Writing, 1 History. These are usually granted through specific tests they take. I think this is stupid personally, as someone mentioned earlier- to me if you pass Chemistry I don't see why you have to do a separate test in it. This has been especially interesting for us as my son transferred in as a 10th grader and they take several of the tests in 9th grade. We discovered through our own research that the State Dept of Education does allow for other standardized tests to count for the verified credits. So for example, his PSAT score in Math counted as his verified credit for Algebra so he's done with that with out taking another test.
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3 hours ago, Lecka said:
I feel like sometimes medical referrals are given that are obviously not needed, and I feel fine about declining referrals I think are extremely unlikely to provide any helpful information.
I am helping another person manage their medical appointments, and helping with transportation.
Tomorrow morning I’m taking them for a referral I privately think is a total and complete waste of time.
I haven’t said anything because, first, I’m not totally sure it’s a complete waste of time. Two, it seems inappropriate. Three, the other person feels like their concern is being taken seriously.
I am wondering if most people just do all the referrals they are recommended? Or pick and choose? Ask more questions?
I have not asked “skeptical” questions because it’s not my appointment, and the other person is not skeptical. So, I don’t know what would happen if someone did say something questioning the necessity of the referral.
For myself I feel like I’ve said “skeptical” things and sometimes I get an explanation that is basically “yes you should do this” and sometimes I get more of an “it’s up to you” vibe.
I just question if there is some conventional wisdom, for this, and what it is, I don’t feel like I really know.
I'm a pediatrician which is a very different world than adult medicine.
I think sometimes doctors do refer for CYA medico-legal reasons. My personal opinion is that is more typical when the doctor knows the patient less well. So I sometimes see someone who has gone to the ER or Urgent Care and been told to follow up with a bunch of specialists.
Sometime it is insurance reasons, they will cover certain things if prescribed/recommended by a specialist easier than by a primary doctor. I had a patient who needed Synagis (RSV shot for babies) a few years ago and they had denied it. I was on the phone doing the doctor-to-doctor appeal and they kept denying it but then I mentioned that the baby saw a cardiologist and they said if the cardiologist would recommend it they would cover it. They already knew the baby had a cardiac defect, they just wouldn't accept my opinion that the Synagis was needed, they needed a letter from Cardiology. I can think of other examples.
Sometimes it's patient preference. I have definitely referred patients who didn't think needed to see someone else but they either asked to or I could tell that they would accept the diagnosis better from a specialist. A classic example is intoeing in pediatrics, it is almost never recommended to do anything. Most of the time I can explain why and the parent is satisfied. But occasionally someone just won't accept that and wants to see a specialist. I know 100% that the specialist will say the same thing, but it's fine if they want to go and see the orthopedist and hear it from them.
I'm not sure if by referrals you meant preventative care or tests, which is what it seems like some people meant in the thread. There are different reasons for those than for referring to a specialist, in my opinion. Depending on the test it's harder to tell if it is truly necessary or not.
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I let my 17 year old son drive all over the country for his gap year, with his 14 year old brother as a companion. At the time I kept asking myself if I was crazy. Things that helped make me feel better about it...
*He had AAA. He didn't have to use it but used it twice last year when driving in college and it was great to have.
*He had driven a lot on long trips so I knew he was a good driver and could do longer trips. I had driven with him in a lot of different conditions: night, rain, snow, ice, rain at night, highway, in cities, etc. He had driven on long trips as a family on vacation and had done what to us were longish trips alone (2-3 hours) before going on his massive road trip.
*I realized that there really isn't anything inherently different from him driving in say South Dakota than around here (and it's probably safer in South Dakota than on the DC Beltway). It FEELS safer and like I have more control because he's close by...but really an accident can happen anywhere. Yes, close by I could get there quicker to help but in a true emergency I'm not really going to be all that helpful. And now with cell phones we could be accessible anywhere even if we couldn't get to him.
*Ultimately I did look at the idea of him going to college the next year and think that I'd have no idea what he'd be doing then. And when he did go to college (and he has a 9 hour drive to get there) it did make me feel better to know he'd had the practice runs of freedom the year before.
All that to say, only you know your daughter. I don't think you'd be crazy to let her drive but if you have reservations your compromise sounds reasonable.
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I went more with an average and didn't worry about it that much. So for example my son is a swimmer, he swims 12 hours a week on average. He didn't swim that much during Covid which was part of his junior and senior year. But he would have if the pool had been open. So I think I just said 10-12 hours a week for 9 months a year and left it at that even though there were some years that wasn't completely true.
I don't think the colleges really care that much. I think they are just trying to get an idea if you have deep interests. If you have a lot of things you participated in for 1 year each for an hour a week, that's a different application than a kid who has two extracurriculars but does them both for four years at many hours a week.
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I left the church we had been members of for over 25 years, it was a long and painful process. There were multiple reasons but their stance on LGBTQ+ issues was part of the reason. We did finally find a new church and have been going this year and it's been really good. Some things that helped me along this journey..
1) I was very open with my kids about why I was leaving. I don't know how old your kids are but mine are teens, although my youngest was about 11 when things started to crack. But I told them about the things I disagreed with in the church and why I felt I needed to leave.
2) I took a long time before I went back to church at all. I went kind of sporadically here and there and visited a variety of churches. But a lot of weeks I just stayed home if I felt like it. I explored my faith in other ways- podcasts, reading, talking to friends, etc. But I didn't force myself to find another church because it had been such a difficult experience and I was just grieving. I had been deeply personally hurt by some of the people that I thought were my friends and it was hard to move on. I'd say I'm still hurt but I feel like in the past year I've been able to move forward. But it took about three years.
3) Eventually I began to feel like I needed the community of a church and I started visiting. I visited a lot of places. The church we are at now is somewhat of a compromise- I would probably have chosen something more liturgical and progressive (probably Episcopalian). However, dh would not have been happy at those churches. We visited our current church for a few times and it became clear that for a lot of reasons it was a good option for us. So I went and met with the pastor, who is fairly new. I was just very open with her and told her I had left my old church for a variety of reasons but that one was the position on LGBTQ issues. I told her that I respected whatever her position was but that I just didn't want to be in a situation of having to leave a church again so I wanted to know where she stood. (The church is a denomination that is affirming but also allows local congregations to make their own policies about specific things.) She obviously could have lied, but I'm not sure why she would. Her answer satisfied me and we decided to continue to visit.
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I have one kid who is a vegan. I am now vegetarian but for many years he was the only vegetarian in the family so we got very used to trying to accommodate multiple diets.
The main approach that works for us is some variation of what we call "bowl meal". So some kind of base (can be a carb- quinoa, pasta, rice, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, baked potatoes, polenta, salad, etc). "Base" could also be a tortilla or flatbread or even a sub roll. And then something main to put on it (usually some sautéed veggies and used to be a meat option but now that's rare). And then lots of toppings that everyone adds what they want (cheese, nuts, pomegranate seeds, sour cream, various sauces, yogurt, green onions, cilantro, etc). We sort of keep all the ingredients and then everyone can adapt the main thing to what they want. And sometimes the base is different.
As for the snacks issue I agree with having some kind of small dorm fridge in her room and letting her just keep things there.
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Almost everyone woman where I live dyes their hair. I think it's fine if people want to but I agree that it shouldn't be seen as such a negative thing to have grey hair.
A funny story....about 10 years ago when I was starting to go grey the hairdresser I was going to would really pressure me to get my hair dyed. (This was Hair Cuttery and I wasn't really wedded to this particular person but I saw her a few times in a row and she would always ask about dying it and tell me how good it would look, etc). I liked the way she cut my hair but it was getting to the point where I was going to request someone different if she kept it up. I was checking out one day and the woman next to me turned and said "Oh, my goodness. I love all your highlights. It looks so beautiful." I just thanked her, smiled at the hairdresser as I paid and left. : )
No-one thinks I have just highlights anymore. Sometimes I do think I'd look better if I dyed it, less washed out...but the main reason I don't is that I'm lazy and don't think I would keep up with the maintenance and I think poorly maintained dyed hair looks worse than grey. Plus, at this point, I'm just used to it and like the way it looks. I do have natural red hair so my grey are really mostly white and they blend fairly well with the red. I might feel differently if I had different hair.
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I'm wondering if maybe the friend has a weird relationship with their own mother or father.
My Mom insisted on being called Mommy into my adulthood. She would openly state that she found it sad when people stopped using the term Mommy and she would get very upset if I didn't call her Mommy. It was very clearly a desire on her part for me to still be young and to still have a specific relationship with her. I will admit that for a long time that warped my thinking so that whenever I heard teens/adults call their parents Mommy or Daddy it just felt like nails on a chalkboard to me and I would think that it showed an unhealthy relationship. I'm not saying I was right, just a different perspective.
Now, my oldest who is almost 20 still calls me Mommy and my husband Daddy. Always has. I've noticed my other teens have mostly stopped using both. They do have familial nicknames for us they developed which I think they like using better, so it's not Mommy and it's not Mom. They do usually say Mom or Dad when they are referring to us to other people. "My Mom will be here..." etc.
Interestingly, the one who has always used Mommy is probably our most independent kid and also the least sentimental. Like @Pawz4me said above, it may be partially the reason why he hasn't changed. He's also the only one who homeschooled all through high school by choice and he also is probably the least bothered by what other people think of him, has the least social anxiety. (Also probably the least social intelligence but that's a whole different story.)
So, I've come to think it's fine for kids to call you whatever they want.
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I live and in DC and am a Christian. My husband and kids went soon after it opened and I think my husband enjoyed it. He would not go now because he is cheap and there are too many free options here. I have friends and family members who have gone and enjoyed it, but I think when it was free.
I didn't go when they went. At the time I was more of a conservative Christian but I did not agree with the concept of the museum. I didn't think that much money should be spent on a museum for religoin/Bible/scriptures. It didn't seem to me like what we should be doing with resources. I'm aware that there are inconsistencies in my thoughts-- I go to other art museums and think it's good to spend resources on art and beauty and not just specific social needs. In retrospect I think without knowing much about it at the time I had kind of an icky feeling about it. Since then with the revelations about the stolen artifacts and black market and my own views on Christian culture changing, I definitely would not go. I'm still a Christian as far as faith but this museum just feels like it represents all the things about Christian culture that bother me.
I have paid to go to other DC museums (Spy Museum, Phillips Collection, Newseum).
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Homework is graded for completion, not accuracy for my kids.
They are somehow given the answers...I think in practice they often go over some of the problems in class or the teacher posts the answers online and they can ask if they got them wrong and don't understand why. But they aren't checked individually or graded.
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My son did a gap year. We had always planned for it, he was young for his grade so he still left for college at 18 with the gap year. We didn't say he had to do it but we'd talked about it a lot as a possibility and he'd saved money towards it.
We had him apply everywhere during his senior year and defer. We preferred that so that he didn't have to spend the gap year worried about applications. We asked everywhere if they allowed deferments. Our experience was that everywhere said yes. There was a process and it technically wasn't guaranteed but the impression we got was that they almost always allow it. From the college's perspectives there isn't a huge downside. We also asked up front about financial aid. Everywhere said that scholarships would defer, but you have to redo FAFSA so any grants/loans aren't guaranteed. You have to redo FAFSA every year for college anyway, so that wasn't a surprise. We made sure to have it in writing from the college he ended up choosing that his scholarship deferred. And we found that as our financial situation didn't change, the rest of the package also didn't change. And yes, they all told us he couldn't take any classes for credit.
He is also a college athlete, for Division III and all the coaches also said they were fine with deferment. He is a swimmer so there one suggestion was that he shouldn't take a year off of swimming but should continue to train. That might be different for people who are team sport athletes.
We had thought he would do more travel internationally and perhaps some service trips. However, his gap year was 2021-2022 and things were still so unknown with Covid that there weren't the official programs available and we didn't want to spend money on non-refundable trips. So he ended up traveling domestically. He traveled to every state (except Hawaii and Alaska) and swam in each state, just to say he had done it. He did the trips in sections of about 2-3 weeks each. His brother went on three of the trips with him. We did one as a family. And he went on one with his aunt/uncle. We were not okay with him traveling alone as it was a lot of driving. In between, when he was home, he worked to make money for the trip. The trips ended up being all between September-February so that he could return and train for swimming more consistently in the spring.
It was a great experience for him. The trips with his brother were especially bonding and I think they will never forget them. The main unexpected thing for us was that it's virtually impossible to stay in a hotel under the age of 18 and difficult under the age of 21. On the first trip he was 17 so that became an issue, but we were able to have him stay with people we knew and some friends of friends and do some camping to make it work. The other trips was a combo of hotels and friends.
One other positive thing from the gap year was that he said he was felt he was more fresh for college than most of his friends. He said most people were a bit burnt-out both academically and as swimmers but he was really ready to get back to both.
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My son is vegan and has typical teenage skin issues. He likes the Simple products, you can get them at CVS or Target.
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19 hours ago, sassenach said:
Alice, can you speak to this, because my understanding was that in men under 40, the risk was actually higher in the vaccine.
"The detailed analysis of nearly 43 million people was published Monday in the American Heart Association journal Circulation: Among men under 40, there were an estimated four extra cases of myocarditis associated with the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine and 14 extra cases with the first dose of the Moderna vaccine for every 1 million men vaccinated. That risk rose with the second dose for all three vaccines studied and was highest for Moderna's, which had an additional 97 myocarditis cases per 1 million. For unvaccinated men under 40 with COVID-19, there were 16 additional myocarditis cases per million."
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.122.059970
I fairly quickly scanned the article so I definitely may have missed something.
I'm not sure where the quote you gave that mentions "unvaccinated men" is from. As I understand it from reading the study, there weren't any truly unvaccinated people. It's a little hard to parse out but I think what they did as look at people who had received the vaccine who got admitted to the hospital with myocarditis and then compared those who had recently had the vaccine and tested negative to those who had the vaccine and had a positive test either before or after the vaccine. From their description of study population: We included all people ages 13 years or older who had received at least 1 dose of ChAdOx1 (AstraZeneca), BNT162b2 (Pfizer), and mRNA-1273 (Moderna) vaccine and were admitted to hospital or died from myocarditis between December 1, 2020, and December 15, 2021.
And later: Among people receiving at least 1 vaccine dose, 5 934 153 (13.9%) tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, including 2 958 026 (49.8%) before their first vaccination.
So they had 42 million people they looked at who had gotten the vaccine and of those about 6 million also tested positive for Covid, 3 million was before their first vaccine.
Not discounting that there is a risk of myocarditis with the vaccine, just that it's not really comparing the risk of myocarditis in those unvaccinated to those vaccinated. They didn't include the larger risk of myocarditis in everyone who had Covid, as far as I can tell. What it seems they did is consider a positive Covid test as a separate exposure from the vaccination.
Looking at the AHA site, I couldn't specifically see anything else addressing this study but they do report more of the statistics I reported earlier, which is where I got some of mine...that there is a risk but it's higher with the infection than vaccine. And I think you could argue that this study showed that there was increased risk in people who had the vaccination AND got Covid over those who just got the vaccine. The difference could be that this study looked at data early on (vaccines given betwenn 2020 and 2021) and there is now more data (this study looked at 42 million people but there are now 12.7 billion doses given so a lot more potential data).
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My daughter's favorite girly movies at that age:
High School Musical (and all the sequels)
Princess Bride (not really girly but one of her favorites)
Enchanted
The Parent Trap (she liked the newer version better)
kind of a girl "power movie"- the Enola Holmes movies on Netflix are really good
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It is a risk but it is rare and less of a risk than myocarditis from Covid.
It's about 35 cases per million doses after Moderna and about 12 cases per million doses after Pfizer. Highest risk is after second (or later) vaccines and in young men 18-29. That is from the American College of Cardiology.
Some sites give a higher risk usually because it changes when you look at specific risk groups, the highest I've seen is when you combine all cases in that high risk (males in the high risk age group) after any dose is up to 77 cases per million doses given of any vaccine. The risk of myocarditis after Covid itself in that same age group is about 450 cases per million cases of Covid.
In general when you look at all age groups the risk of myocarditis from Covid is between 2-7x greater than myocarditis from the vaccine.
In general, the myocarditis after the vaccine tends to be milder and more self-resolved than the myocarditis we've seen after Covid infection itself.
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We used Outlier https://www.outlier.org/collections/course-catalog?type=courses. It's a college level course. I can't remember the details now but we chose to audit it which was cheaper and also meant we didn't have to worry about the grade and having to report it. I still graded it myself and he still got feedback from the instructors, we just didn't want to have to worry about keeping up exactly with the syllabus, which was challenging for a high schooler (he also was doing it as a 9th grader so I wanted it to be less intense).
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I wear Lands End yoga pants. I like the cropped ones because I am short so they end up not that cropped. The only thing I don't like about them is they don't have pockets but otherwise I love them.
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Kind of an odd religion question/request
in The Chat Board
Posted
That would definitely have been my husband's answer.