Just to clarify, thanks for the responses re: more serious issues like hearing loss or epilepsy/absence seizures. I can see how it might have sounded like those could have been possible, too. He's all checked out and doesn't have those particular challenges. In fact, you would probably think I was nuts if you were to meet him because for most people, most of the time, he's a polite and engaged kid. It's just that as his mom and homeschool headmistress there are a few things he struggles with that I see more than others. Patterns of behavior and such that I know I need to be on top of, and I want to be sure I'm helping him improve. Otherwise we're going to drive each other nuts and worse yet he will miss out on things in life. Thanks for all the responses & thoughts.

Some of the sensory stuff makes a lot of sense, I do need to read up on that more. When he was smaller it was easy for him to be overwhelmed. He even had a brief period around age 2 where he would bite us to let us know it was all too much for him (only specific situations and it didn't last long!). We left a dance/music class where he was just supposed to run around the room playing with scarves and things because he just stood in the middle with tears welling up in his eyes. Swimming lessons were tough at first but we do them 3 times a week and there's only one other kid in the class, so he's gotten used to it and can now focus despite being in the water. Gymnastics would probably have been okay, but there's another kid in there who for some reason has taken to going nutso and bringing my boy along with him. So, YES, it sounds like your two middle may share some traits with this boy!

We're seeing a lot of what you describe in terms of asking him rather than berating him when he hasn't done the jobs he should quickly enough. Protein helps, too. I'm wondering about the executive function development book, and am definitely curious about what it has to say. I've read some studies (Nurture Shock, etc) that seem to show you can definitely help them develop this skill even though it's also dependent on frontal cortex growth. Does everybody notice themselves doing things that don't work, like lecturing or yelling? It drives me nuts that I still fall back into that stuff from time to time. Happily I seem to do a little less each time around, but I'm definitely glad to have some good reading suggestions to get myself re-inspired. Thanks!

Mo Willems' books totally crack up my boys. Veritas press has a cool set of early simple progressive readers.

We don't own a game box and probably won't until our boys (6 & 4) are much older. They do get to play iPad ed apps, though. I worry that if we had a system and limited it, it would be like it is sometimes with sweets or TV and would make them even more focused on them. I'll admit my parenting decisions on things like these are heavily influenced by how much strife and friction I'm willing to allow into our little kingdom. It's just not worth it to me, and I know it would make me cranky. Full disclosure: neither my husband nor I ever really got into video games ourselves.

Our guys are in a similar boat. We let them put ONE lego thing on their lists, and then made them branch out. Seriously, I never thought we'd fill up all our lego drawers and boxes with those tiny suckers. We put this on our list, it's a nerf-style bow and arrow: http://www.visionforum.com/browse/product/greased-lightning-super-bow-arrows/?cid=1159 He's totally excited about this light-up ant farm: http://www.amazon.com/Fascinations-ANTW2-AntWorks-Illuminated-Blue/dp/B000F6F8CY/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=275TCNH1SSDUX&coliid=I3TFYHP2UWKMPW There's also finger puppets, lego ice cube trays (which we might use to make re-melted crayons), marbles, a butterfly garden thingie (similar to the ant farm idea) and we found angry birds blankets with hoods a while back at Costco. Funny how they gravitate to that when they've played it mayyybe three times in their entire lives. Merry merry!

Thanks! We had allowed some earning back of privileges, and it did quickly become a slippery slope. Increased the whine factor, too. I will check out the books you mention (Powells, amen!) for sure. Keeping my own intensity in check with my 6 yob is my current challenge/obsession. The (admittedly fairly mild) behavior issues could easily rule our relationship and I really don't want that to happen. Thanks again, and hey, who doesn't love brownies!

You might mess around with larger motion knowledge of letters. My 6 yob was not thrilled about trying to write anything other than what HE wanted to do. Still is that way to some extent. Last year we did lots of huge letters. Letters in chalk on the driveway (I draw it with dots, he traces the dots to make the letter), letters in water on paper with his fingertip, letters in rice in a box (or salt). I tried to keep it casual since he was still pretty little. In my experience as a violin teacher, many boys that age are just not wired up yet for interest in small motor control. Let him trace and do things BIG. Or let it drop until he's older. It's not just a maturity thing, it's also physical development. (Reminding myself of this even as I'm typing!)

I think my opinion is similar to MyCrazyHouse above. Most of the expectations I encounter have to do with people unfamiliar with homeschooling. They often assume we're going to be weird, which we certainly are, but not because we HS. It makes me laugh at myself because I totally remember that shifty-eyed look I would give homeschoolers three short years ago. God's hilarious. My family tends to just be impressed with our first two years' results, though sometimes when our 6 yob acts up I imagine they might be thinking things at me. I think it's mostly imagination, though. We don't have many friends our age outside the HS community to be honest, so I don't get a lot of flack. My MIL was a school teacher, so occasionally we get "advice" but it's good spirited and works out (and they live 600 miles away). Our piano teacher is dubious about the 6 yob's letter knowledge (we started with cursive and she was asking him to write upper case print letters), but that's more about judgment than expectation.

This might be useful: http://teachyourkidstoswim.com/ Our two boys have been in community center swim lessons for 2 years (they're 4 and 6 years old) and they really love it. They both improved a lot when we let them try some floaty arms on a vacation and then put them back in the pool without assitance. They also really love going for the diving rings (that would be after some skill acquisition). Have fun!

My 4 year old (going on 7) loves the Kumon cutting, pasting & stickering books. He also really likes their set of dry-erase number cards that have starting dots and specific tracing lines showing them how to draw them correctly. He likes to draw them and then erase them with the little eraser on the tip of the cap, so he actually gets twice the practice. You could even make those yourself if you have a laminator. They have a letters set too, but we're doing cursive so I've been meaning to make my own. We have lacing and beading projects, he has his own little zipper pouch with scissors, colored pencils and a glue stick. I often print out paper toys he can cut and paste himself from the internet. Sometimes he needs help with the final steps on those. Both my boys love Bingo for anything though that takes time with me (letter/number recognition is our usual topic), and color-by-numbers. We just bought a big tub of plastic math shapes (knock off Tangrams) and I printed a bunch of shape pages off and put them in page protectors so he can do them a thousand times himself. He also loves puzzles. When we started with my older (now 6) boy we did a lot of drawing letters with sidewalk chalk on the driveway and then walking around the shapes. Pretty soon he wanted to do them himself. Both kids are really enjoying the Singapore math books and they like playing all sorts of math Apps on my iPad, though that's not really counted as school in our minds. It's more of a diversion. Our older worked through the BOB books, including packs of printable things we found online. We do Classical Conversations, which both kids think is about the most fun thing ever. In conjunction with that we tried lapbooks this year and they both really enjoy that. It's our wind-down activity at the end of our studies, and we often listen to music while cutting & pasting & coloring our projects. I see in your signature thingie (I'm new, so hopefully I've got the lingo right) that you're already doing lots of science play/nature walks and you have the language stuff covered. That's awesome, and is one of the things our kids love about being homeschoolers. I don't have all the abbreviations down so I'm probably telling you lots of stuff you already know. One last thing that you probably already do to keep it fun: short sweet sessions. An added plus for our boys has been learning to tell time or having a timer set so they can be somewhat "in charge", and also so they remember that it is finite when they hit struggles.

Hey there. This is my inaugural post, though I've been lurking for a while now. I just had my appendix out a few weeks ago and finally took the time to actually read WTM. It was one of those awesome "HEY, the ideas, people and curriculae I've been hoping existed really DO" moments. Glad you're all here! So I have two awesome boys (6 & 4) and this is our second year of CC. We just added a bunch of the basics listed in WTM and we're all enjoying them. Our six year old is a dreamer. There are lots of really excellent things about him, but let me cut to the chase. He spends roughly 93% of his time off in his own world. Some days this means he only really "obeys" 7% of the time. That 6% is even lower in a stimulating environment and with other teachers. He's a sweet kid, not a particularly rough & tumble boy, but he ends up getting lots of "time outs" at church, at gymnastics, etc. His 4 year old brother is a socially motivated people-pleaser who can be a bit of a pest, rubbing in how well HE is behaving while big brother gets in trouble. Anybody have advice or books I can read to help him with this and more important to help me parent him well? I really love practical advice and clear plans of action. I need to re-read Love & Logic for Teachers and probably, like, the Bible. What else?