I think this is actually somewhat true. I buy a lot from Lands End, I find their clothes to be a good mix of good quality and affordability and they have had plus sized clothes for a lot longer than other people. They also let you pick things like inseam or bra size for swimsuits. I mostly buy basic clothes anyway and I buy a lot of their Tshirts, swimsuits, a particular knit/sports pant (not really leggings but sort of), flannel pajamas and cashmere sweaters. I buy their sweaters when they go on sale (and they have really good sales) and they last forever. A few years ago, maybe about 7 or 8 they made a big swing towards having more fashionable and higher end clothes, they had a president who was a luxury brand person. The website had a very different feel and it was harder to find the more basic stuff. That only lasted a few years and then they fired her and hired a guy who made a very deliberate move to return to "their base". The clothes offered went back to looking very basic and the website also looked more like a catalog. But I don’t like any of those prints. 🙂

As background, my son worked through the AOPS Calculus book and we had a tutor meet with him weekly. We didn’t use her as a grader, I never really worried about a grade. He worked through it, mastered the material and got an A. We used her instead as someone to ask questions to and also just to talk about Math with. They worked through AOPS Calculus and Intermediate C&P together. I don’t think she had used the AOPS books, but was a Math major and didn’t really need to be familiar with the exact material. We paid her $30 an hour and they met once a week for a hour. She was a homeschool graduate who had majored in Math. You could try homeschool co-ops in your area, or since they could meet remotely and even send in materials remotely, it could be someone not in your area.

I agree with the people who said it would be somewhat situation dependent as far as how I’d feel about it. I don’t think the age gap automatically means a "power" imbalance if they are both in high school. The fact that they are both in high school makes it less potentially problematic to me than say a 19 year old who is in college who wants to date a high school student or a 23 year old graduate who is interested in a 20 year old college student. Those could also be ok, but raise more red flags to me than two people who are in the same basic life stage. I know that an 18 year old senior will go to college and things will change but I think it’s easy for adults to look at a situation and think "well next year, he’ll be in college and in a very different stage of life". To kids (either the senior or the 15 year old) a year seems really far away and I think it’s hard for them to imagine how much of a different place they will be in. I think regardless, if I was one of the parents, I’d probably talk to my kid about potential issues but I wouldn’t forbid it. I’m firmly of the belief that since you can’t forbid feelings (or as many people point out...you can’t forbid them seeing each other at school or even other places unless you are keeping your teen in a bubble) I’d rather the teens be open about it and feel like they can come to me if there is an issue.

For Math my oldest used AOPS and pretty much studied it independently. He never did the classes as the times didn't work for us. The solution guides were so extensive and good that he was able to understand and teach himself. For Calculus I felt like he needed a tutor. He probably didn't, but I worried. I asked a local homeschool grad who had majored in Math to tutor him. They met weekly via Zoom and talked about Math. In hindsight, he probably didn't need her help with Calculus but he did really enjoy having someone to talk Math with. He was also working through the Intermediate Counting and Probability book at the same time and that was something he found more challenging and enjoyed talking to her. I would not have used the same approach with either of my other kids but it worked for him with Math as it was his thing and he was a motivated, independent learner. He did very well on tests like the SAT and AP Calculus exam self-studying and will major in Math (he's a freshman in college). We did use outside classes for some of the sciences and for some other things (Latin). It doesn't have to be all one way or the other. You could maybe choose one or two outside classes for things that you don't feel qualified to teach and that your kid isn't able to self-teach while not having outside classes for other things. Tutors can be helpful and more flexible than a live class. It's hard to know more about what to suggest without knowing more about your particular kids or what their interests are.

You could ask your pediatrician/family doctor if she could shadow. I’m a pediatrician and we always have people shadow us every summer. I just saw a family of a guy who had shadowed years ago and is now in his first year of med school. We had stopped in Covid but are now taking people if they are vaccinated. I’m not sure the shadowing experience is that great/necessary but I do know a lot of people who have done it have said it’s kind of expected on resumes for med school so I was happy to help them out.

I haven't totally read all the articles and this is a bit of an aside but one thought I've had during this whole discussion is how messed up the medical education system is in this country....and really how it starts by "weeding out" in these kinds of classes. I was a Chem/Bio major. I LOVED organic chemistry, it was one of my favorite classes and I did very well in it. I am also a pediatrician and I will tell you 100% that Organic Chemistry in no way made me a better doctor...other than just the idea that education in general makes you a better person. I didn't even really need Organic Chemistry for Med School. There were some things that were more clear but you could easily have an intro Med School class that is something like Chemistry for Med School that covers the Chem/Organic Chem/Biochem that you actually need to know. Again....I liked Organic Chem and am super glad I took it. But I don't think it makes me a better doctor or even somehow measures my intelligence more than if someone majored in something like Philosophy/Ethics and then went on to take some kind of basic Chem class. I think part of the problem with med school is that we set it up that there are all these hoops you have to jump through to get there...one being Organic Chemistry. So then you have a class like Organic that is very tough and full of people who really have no interest in it other than it being a hoop. Or there are people who are interested in medicine but don't even go that way because it's an obstacle that they don't think they can get past (if I had a nickel for everyone who says t me that they thought about medicine but didn't "because of all the science" than I'd have paid off my med school loans much sooner. :))

As background, we have always given our kids the option to homeschool or not. Pretty much every year we talk about what they want to do the next year. So the ones who have homeschooled had it be their choice, at least in part. My oldest graduated two years ago and started college this year after a gap year. I think he was always happy to homeschool. He’s kind of an ideal homeschooler. He’s very self-directed as far as learning. He learns well from reading. He is very much an introvert and was happy with a small number of friends from his activities but didn’t need to see kids every day. He is now really enjoying college (and kind of surprisingly social). He is finding school easy this semester for the most part so that’s also helping with the enjoyment. His brother started public school this year and everytime they talk the oldest’s response is that he’s really glad he homeschooled. His brother is in 10th grade and homeschooled up until this year. He probably should have gone to school earlier. He was really really resistant to the idea when he was younger and although I thought it would be better for him I knew he would have seen it somehow as a punishment or as me rejecting him since his siblings would have been at home. So we didn’t push it. I wish I had pushed harder for him to go to high school but we didn’t. He really struggled last year with mental health issues, I think in large part because of being lonely. The silver lining was that he was able to travel a lot with his older brother on his gap year. They had some experiences that I think really solidified their relationship and made lifelong memories. He has ADHD and I think he had always worried about whether or not he could handle school. (To be clear, not my worry and I had tried hard to make it clear that I thought he would do great.) I think he also knows he gets bored easily and wasn’t sure he’d want to be in a school setting all day. But this year at the beginning of August I thought about the summer and how he had just thrived socially with his friends all summer. So I asked again if he wanted to try school and he did and it has been great. A funny-ish consequence is he now feels better about his homeschooling years because apparently he had always felt bad about himself for the amount of work he did. He’d hear people his age talk about all their homework and he knew they were in school all day so he felt like everyone else was doing so much work and he just did "nothing" all day. Now that he’s in school he realizes this is not at all true. And he’s doing really well academically so he can see he can do it and he has friends. My youngest is an 8th grader and trying to decide what she will do for high school. She likes homeschooling and is happy that she has done it.

This so much. I don’t really care what teens who choose their own clothes are wearing. But my daughter is a dancer and some of the costumes/routines are appalling. The worst I saw was a group of girls who were dressed in black and red costumes that were essentially lingerie. Not that I’m saying it was as bad as lingerie...that you wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference in the costumes and a catalog for fairly racy lingerie. They had a red velvet couch on the stage that they danced around/on and the song was Voulez Vous Coucher Avec Moi. The dance was super sexualized. If they had been 17-18 I would have thought, "well, that’s a choice" and let it go. But they were roughly 10-12. There is no way any of those kids chose that song or that dance or those costumes and I found it just disturbing that this is what adults were choosing for them. The somewhat funny thing after was that my daughter happened to be in the next dance. Their costume was this long black skirt with a kind of mock-turtleneck long sleeved orangey brown lace top and the dance was a more balletic style. My friends sitting next to me whispered "well, that’s a different vibe". (And not to say that a particular dance style or revealing costumes are bad...our studio has ones that are much skimpier and does all kinds of dance. It was just a jarring contrast. And I do think that super revealing sexualized dance/costume for pre-teens is bad). Same. We dropped our 10th grader off at one restaurant and went to another location. We were sitting outside and there were tons of HoCo gropus around. The shortness of the dresses didn’t really bother me in terms of modesty but I did keep thinking they looked uncomfortable. The girls would talk a few steps, stop, pull down their skirt. Walk a few more, repeat. But I also wearing doing stuff that looking back I would find silly or uncomfortable and at the time I loved. My son commented that all the girls were basically wearing the same dress, just in slightly different colors. He really likes fashion so he found that odd. But I also think it takes a certain kind of bravery or a person who is popular/stylish/very attractive to go against the grain in high school. I was no that person so I don’t blame the girls who also are more trying to fit in than stand out.

One bike lane thing that I did not know until I hit a bicyclist is that if you are turning right and there is a bike lane you are supposed to treat it like another lane of traffic and signal, merge into it and then turn. I had always been under the assumption that you weren’t supposed to get into the bike lane as a car. The incident I had was thankfully minor. I was turning right and had come to a stop before turning. I had a green light and signaled and turned across a bike lane. A cyclist was coming up next to me but I didn’t see her. She didn’t see me turning and basically ran into me/I hit her as I turned. She was fine...didn’t even fall off the bike. The windows were down and I tried to stop and see if she needed help or anything but she waved me on and kept riding. It was pretty traumatic for me, I felt terrible. Hopefully less traumatic for her, but I can imagine it shook her up also. I was sure I was in the right because it seemed to me like I had the right of way. So I looked it up when I got home, mostly because it was an intersection near my house and I knew I’d have to turn there again. Nope, I was wrong. You are supposed to basically act like it’s another lane of traffic. Which makes total sense, I just had never learned it. So now I tell anyone when it comes up.

Makeup- I have no rules. My daughter just turned 13 and she’s experimented with makeup on and off for the past few years. I really do’t think she’s trying to make herself look older as much as it’s just fun to experiment with things like clothes and makeup and hair. Cell-phone- For us it was tied to need also. I will say with three kids that each kid tended to get things earlier. Part of that was personality/need and part of it was family culture. For example, my oldest went to college this year. I had resisted a lot of social media for my daughter and still don’t love it but she convinced me that her brother would Snap her on Snapchat as a way to communicate. And that has been true, I think they have some contact daily through Snapchat. So if you are really wedded to the idea of waiting until high school....I would be careful opening it up to your older daughter earlier. Your second daughter is just going to want whatever that much earlier. It’s easy to say it’s "maturity based" but that can be hard for a kid to understand and may just seem like favoritism to them. Babysitting- I would have been ok with my daughter babysitting this past summer , and she has just started to be asked. (Well, she did get asked last summer and then when I told them she was 11 they reconsidered. :)) I think that depends on your local laws and also on the situation and the kid and how responsible they are. Dating- We don’t have hard and fast rules about this either but have just discussed it a lot and when it’s come up some have talked about it. My middle son has had a few "girlfriends". One was when he was 12-13. All that it meant was that they talked on the phone more than he did to other people. This summer (age 15) he had a girlfriend and they hung out at the pool together a few times and once went to the mall. He hung out at her house once with her parents there and she came to a family party we had here. They have since broken up, but are friends (I can’t really tell the difference.) Our experience has been if they can’t drive, it’s pretty easy to be very involved as a parent anyway because they can’t really go anywhere without you. I don’t love the idea of dating at a young age, I think it’s kind of a distraction and I’ve told my kids that. But at the same time, I’ve realized I can’t stop feelings. If they like someone, they will like them. I’d rather they tell us about who they are interested in and if they are "dating" and know what they are doing than have them keep it a secret. I’m not naive enough to think that if I outlaw dating that will stop the feelings. We know several families who do not allow dating under the age of 18 and in every scenario I know that their kids have dated someone behind their parents back.

DC would be easy without a car if you stay in the city. It’s not the most beautiful time of year here but it’s less crowded which is nice. There are the usual indoor things...all the free museums. You can ice-skate by the Sculpture Garden on the mall while dh sits and drinks hot chocolate and looks at the sculptures. There are shows...Wicked I know is coming to the Kennedy Center around Christmas and there are plenty of other options that I have been eyeing. The Zoo has a fun Zoolights event in December. There is also a fun model train exhibit at the Botanical Gardens in December. It’s not just model trains but there are buildings made out of plant material...it’s hard to explain but if you look up Seasons Greenings at Botanical Gardens you can see examples. We have gone many years and it’s really pretty cool. If you are talking January or February, it’s probably the best time for museums which are at their emptiest then. Most homeschoolers go to the Smithsonian in January for that reason. There are a ton of food options....we like to use the Washingtonian Cheap Eats recommendations to look for things that are not as expensive. You can easily spend a ton of money but there are also a lot of cheaper options for food. Another advantage here is that most of the museums are free and so you save money that way.

We once dressed as each other which was easy and cheap. But only really works as something funny if the other people know you well. We wore things that were unique to each other's personalities/professions so it was more than just switching clothes.

I think if you have a 12 year old who has some issues with anxiety then it’s not controlling to be pretty involved. I have a kid with anxiety and ADHD and I’m much more involved with him because I look at it as providing scaffolding and helping him figure out life skills. I feel like if I made him suffer the consequences for every small thing he might forget if not reminded, it would be just a staggering amount of "failure" which would be really problematic for his mental health. He’s way harder on himself than he needs to be over small mistakes/failures. Years ago someone posted here about something different and made the statement that parents need to remember that your freshman in high school is not a senior and does not need to have the skills of a senior. And the senior in high school isn’t a senior in college. I can’t remember who it was so can’t give them credit (maybe Nan for those who have been here awhile?). But I remember it very clearly and it has been very helpful to me. I tend to think that if I jump in with my 15 year old, than I might still need to jump in with my 18 year old. But sometimes jumping in is more a way of showing them what to do at 15 so that they can then do it on their own at 18.

That’s such a big question and is somewhat situational as people previously said. I’m also very much a person who wants to be in control. So if you’re asking more how to work on your own issues rather than how to handle individual situations, I’m definitely also on that journey. My oldest went on a gap year last year and traveled around the country to every state except Alaska and Hawaii. The majority of it was alone with just his 15 year old brother. I had a lot of people tell me they couldn’t imagine letting their kids do that or how brave I was. It was actually terrifying and really hard but the thing that helped the most was really realizing that even the idea of control was more of an illusion than reality. I realized I felt safer with them nearby but really I could no more prevent a car accident if they were driving around here than if they were in South Dakota. We helped a lot with prep for the trip and gave them support but then had to let them go on their own. My oldest did Scouts and one of the things I took from that was the idea of letting kids plan and fail when the consequence was discomfort but not life threatening or serious. So for example, if a kid forgot to bring something essential for cooking, the adults wouldn’t lend it to them (adults cooked separately fro themselves). Consequence was being a little hungry and maybe having your fellow Scouts annoyed with you. Usually they figured out a solution that was less than ideal but worked ok. But the adults wouldn’t let them forget water on a backpacking trip even though the kids were technically responsible for that. So I try and ask myself the question of what the consequence really is of letting a kid make the wrong choice. Two other thoughts…one is that there have been times where my kids made the “wrong” choice (different than mine) and it ended up being a good thing. So I also remind myself of that when they want to do something I think is a bad decision. And then finally, I’ve realized that my need for control is often really anxiety. I tend to catastrophize things. You know…”if you fail this test, you’ll fail the class and then you might not get into any college and then you’ll end up homeless and on the streets.” (Which is clearly ridiculous on many levels). So I try and be aware of when my concern about a potential failure and my need to jump in and take control to avoid the failure is really just me catastrophizing a situation. I’ll be honest and say that is something I am still working on.

We let them choose. We have one now who is not attending.

For others who might be reading...on the telehealth thing, it’s variable by state and somewhat by insurance. We do telehealth but our state limits us from doing it across state lines. During the pandemic everything opened up but now it’s shut down again. So I can (and frequently do) televisits for kids at colleges in state but can’t do them if they go out of state. It might be covered, just depends on insurance and my experience has been they’ve really tightened up on "routine" labs. Like it’s really hard to get Vitamin D as a test covered anymore unless you have a past documented low Vitamin D (you can see the Catch 22 there). The AAP recommends doing a cholesterol at 11 and again at 17-18 so those are sometimes covered but not always. We have a machine in our office so it’s less of a fee for parents if it isn’t covered. I personally have mixed feelings about doing cholesterols on healthy kids/teens because generally the recommendations if it’s high are "eat healthier and get more exercise" but we recommend that anyway and there isn’t great evidence that knowing that your cholesterol is slightly high changes behavior in that age group. It’s different if there is a big risk factor as far as family history or a kid who is obese, but I’m a bit skeptical of the routine checks.

We don’t typically do blood work on healthy kids, except for a cholesterol screening at 11 and again at 18. I often have parents asking for "baseline bloodwork" and while I’m happy to order it if they want it done, it often won’t be covered by insurance for that age group unless there is a specific diagnosis. Depends on your doc, but at our practice we see patients up until 21. I think that’s true of most docs in this area (I’m also in NOVA). Insurances used to not cover patient seeing us after that point but many will now cover them seeing us up until 23. I usually feel like they are better served transitioning to an adult doc before that point and most are ready and want to leave. My answer to people about transitioning care is usually that it’s up to the teens...some would rather just stick with the known quantity and some really want to not be in an office with babies. I find a lot of people see us before going to college and then if they are home on break and they have an issue it’s easier to see us than someone else. And then at some point during their time in college, they find a new doctor.

Is there a reason you don’t want to accept the check? I understand that she’s been terrible to you but it sounds like you are kind of in a middle ground, you all aren’t completely cutting off contact and are still going to be helping her out so you will have some ongoing relationship. I think if it was me given that, I’d just accept the check and look at is as payment for services rendered. I’d open the card and see what is there. She might not have sent a check. In all honesty if it was me I’d probably then just not deposit it but not say anything to her if I didn’t want to accept it. That would require the least amount of confrontation and therefore the least amount of stress. In the future if she brings up that she gave you money and so you somehow owe her...dh can always respond that you didn’t deposit it as you didn’t feel comfortable given tension in the relationship. You could also have dh respond to her now either with "Thank you for the card for Kassia, we appreciate the check " or "We received the card for Kassia, thank you but we cannot accept the check." But you stay out of it.

I'm a pediatrician and when I ask people if their kids have food or drug allergies the answer is often "no, not yet" which I find a really weirdly pessimistic response. I have to admit to being guilty of this...I don’t like doing it and I wouldn’t like it myself. I don’t do it often but the other thing to realize is that some people get really offended if you call them by the wrong name. I don’t always know if the person in the room has the same last name as the child, if I don’t know them well. The way our EMR system works it would take me three or four clicks away from the progress note to find the page with the parent info to see if the Mom’s name is listed as the same as the child’s. And I personally try to not take the computer in the room because I feel like it makes me look less at the patient when talking. I generally just have a pad of paper to jot down notes and then I chart later. So I don’t have the chart with the name. You could argue I could just ask....I’ve done that and had people get mad at the assumption that their name isn’t the same. And some people get mad at being called Mrs. ______, they want to go by the first name. Where others get offended if we use their first name as it seems to imply less respect. Or I could use a generic term of address like Ma'am...but you see where that would go by this thread. Add all that to all the issues surrounding the kids name for pediatricians....what is the nickname, do they go by a different name (and parents will get really mad if you get that wrong even if you saw the kid once five years ago), correct gender (and not just for transgender kids)...parents get really mad if you use the wrong gender for a baby even if they name it something very traditionally the other gender (like Bob for a boy). So most of the time I just avoid using a parent’s name unless I know for sure what they want to be called. It would be rare to resort to saying Mom as a form of address but I know I have done it and I admit I cringe a little when I do. I probably could be better about asking someone what they want to be called, but when it’s a quick interaction I just often don’t. I would say all that is true for anyone in any kind of public service kind of employment. For everyone who hates Ma'am, someone else thinks it’s wonderful (my Mom). I try to remember that when I go somewhere and the gas station person calls me sweetie. Unless it’s said with a leer, I try and assume good intentions. See I like Hon when I’m in Baltimore because it is so regional. As someone with red hair, I applaud this. I used to get asked all the time as a kid "Oh I love your red hair, where did it come from?" because both my parents have dark hair. It was so annoying. I had a lot of snarky answers, my favorite just being "Sears" and then walking away. Not really my most polite moments but man did that question get old. I also try and avoid commenting on anything that people can’t control related to their appearance.

My oldest mainly did extra Mathy things as electives...Computer Science (two years), Economics, Statistics, Number Theory My second son is an artist...he is doing a lot of art...Animation (two years), Painting, Drawing. I’ll probably end up also giving him a credit for art across four years as he spends most of his free time teaching himself digital art skills or working on drawing techniques. But he’s only a rising junior so I haven’t formalized that. He’s also done Psychology and Philosophy as electives and wants to do Computer Science and possible Graphic Design this year.

I think this is the best way to handle it. My kids have been on swim team for a long time and my son is now one of our summer team coaches. It depends a lot on your particular swim team culture but our head coach much prefers kids to talk to him than for parents to talk to him. If your son is too nervous to talk to the coach (I could see that at 9), I’d probably just leave it. There have been many times over the years that the coach made decisions that didn’t seem to make sense but I could see that overall he was a great coach (from a mentor/leader perspective and not just at winning) so I just let them go. If I had thought he was overall unfair or toxic...that would have been different. Our coach makes meet decisions for all kinds of different reasons. For example, sometimes relay spots go to slower swimmers if the faster swimmer hasn’t been working hard. Or sometimes he knows the other teams times and know we are unlikely to win a race so he goes with the slightly slower team in order to widen the experience. If you do decide to talk to the coach yourself, I would also approach it like above...what can your son do to improve to get on the relay...rather than statistics about why it would be better to put him on it.

I think this is a really important to realize: a lot of it depends on the kid and sometimes you can come up with the perfect system for you but it doesn’t work for the kid. I have three kids, one graduated last year and just finished a gap year, one is a rising junior and one a rising 8th grader. For the first one it was very similar to what Farrar described above, in 9th grade I was fairly hand on and gave him a list of weekly tasks and what to do and checked in a lot even on his online classes to see if things were on track. By 12th grade I still checked behind the scenes but he managed a very intense schedule of 5 AP online classes plus other stuff on his own. I rarely if every had to remind him of anything. During his gap year he took it on himself to get a certification to teach swimming and did that as a job when he was home in between traveling around the country. He is working all summer as a pool manager and coach and recently I was blown away because he meal prepped on a Sunday so that he could have healthy food at the pool all week. My second kid is struggling through high school, not in small part because he has ADHD and we just haven’t found a system that works for him. He needs structure but hates it. I have tried all kinds of ways to scaffold him and try to help him and some work and I am very willing to be very involved....but he really chafes at being told what to do and thinks he should be able to figure it out himself. And I can only do so much with that.

We didn't have the same priorities but the way we looked it we had three things we were looking at as far as fit. For us that was swim, academics and financial. Swim was in some ways the least important but it also helped narrow things down so we started with that and only looked at schools with D3 swim teams. We knew we needed merit aid and we also knew ds wanted a smaller school, likely a LAC so we looked at ones where his scores were roughly above the top 25% thinking towards aid. He knew he was interested in Math so talking to the Math professors/department was part of the process to make sure it was a good fit for him. We were very open about cost and told him pretty much exactly what we felt like was a good financial fit. He applied to places that we guessed would not be a good fit financially and he knew that going in but we figured as long as he had that expectation it was fine to try.

I agree with the teacher is probably more important than the subject. The electives I’ve appreciated the most as a parent are the ones that are hard to do at home alone. We had an excellent Drama program for awhile at the co-op we went to. My son is doing drawing and painting this year with a teacher he really likes. My daughter did several years of sewing with a great teacher. She (my daughter) actually just designed (no pattern) and made herself a dress today based on the skills from that class. I taught a class in medical ethics/bioethics. I’m a doctor and it’s an issue that really interests me. I felt like it was a good class because I brought in a perspective they wouldn’t necessarily hear otherwise. Our old co-op had a cooking program that was really good, also due to teacher. And a life skills class which could be really lame but the teacher was excellent and brought in outside people to do things like teach kids how to change a tire.

What year is she? The way I looked at it was that if we had some AP scores or DE it would show that the student was capable and that the home/outside grades were valid. I didn’t feel like we need scores to back up every subject. So if she has other scores or could do them next year you might not need to worry about it for those particular classes.