This past summer I had three kids, and, as now, our Wednesday afternoons were project time. The youngest got most of my direct help. The olders mostly got verbal guidance, including a lot of, "This is what I would do if I were more free right now to help you. Can you go do that?" It was expensive and exhausting and at times dizzying, but also satisfying and I think my boys all gained a sturdier sense of who they are and how to be in the world. It was good for my relationship with them too. It gave them a model for, "Mama won't do it for me, but she's on my side, cheering for me," and that somehow both tied them to me on a heart-level while freeing them from me on a hands-level. I love what they choose to do as projects (one, making herbal medicines, two, programming Flash games, three, building small mechatronics) but the real reason I can't give up project-based learning is that I love how we relate to each other as a family when we are doing it.

You could schedule different slots for each kid and the length of them can vary. The important bit is that it's time for a subject, not for a particular book. On my dining room wall are three sheets of paper. The largest one, in the middle, has the schedule. 8am - get up 9am - 13yo math, 10yo writing 10:00 - 10yo math, 13yo Spanish 10:30 - do biology together 11:30 - go outside 12:00 - lunch 12:30 - music theory 12:45 - math drill 1pm - 13yo writing, 10yo Spanish 1:30 - miscellaneous workbooks 2pm - humanities salon Spanish can be done independently with the computer programs we always use, so I set each kid up to do that opposite something that the other one needs handholding for. Then, in the little papers to the left and right, I have listed what I think we'll use to do that. One is for the 10yo, one for the 13yo. For example, the 10yo's says: Math - Life of Fred, Aha Math, Timez Attack Spanish - Fluencia, preposition picture book project ELA - Language Mechanic, Cover Story, Cursive Success Biology - Manga Guides, RSO Bio 2, Aha Science, Home Biology Knowing I need Spanish to be doable independently, I would only list things to teach it that can be solo work. These two types of plans are the ingredients from which I whip up our school days. Just yesterday, RSO Bio 2 defeated us, and I ended up giving the kids some interesting websites from Aha Science and Home Biology to look at instead. It was still on topic so we didn't get off track. And it was stuff they were interested in. And we stopped when the clock hit the magic number, even though our initial issues had caused us to not do much. It's okay to just say "stop now" before you get through a lesson. It keeps attention fresh to do so, I often find. Keeps you from getting tired and frustrated and scared. Just put the bookmark in and go do something else. It's okay to move on before you're done.

If homeschooling was a video game, you'd level up when you defeated this boss. I fought against it for five years, hard, wanting to follow the lovely shiny guidance of the program, but when I finally let myself teach the kid the subject instead of teaching the program, everything got better.

Everyone's opinions will have different levels of applicability to your sitch, of course, but I say no, don't stick to the schedule if they are interested in tangents, not until high school. They'll retain more if they study what they're interested in, and those interest-led units will work just as well -- better -- as "pegs" for them to hang a more cohesive study on when they need to do test prep and comprehensive overviews as teens. Plus it teaches them to learn, to study. During the elementary and middle school years, when no outside entities care, I take the stance that we can't be "behind" if they have filled up eight hours a day with learning. My oldest is thirteen now and has jumped around a lot, not finishing any four-year cycle, and I've decided that I am going to go slowly but surely in chronological order from here on out, one unit at a time. I call it "humanities salon" because I integrate logic, discussion, writing, as well as biography, history, primary sources, and the literature, art and music of the period. I promised myself I wouldn't try to get to any particular date by any particular time. We just go in order, spending as much time as we need in each period. This year we finished prehistory and the ancient middle east and now are in the ancient far east. He's still interested in other things (Japan, WW2, dystopias, mysteries) more than what we're doing for humanities salon (the Chinese epic "Monkey", evaluating primary sources like Chinese oracle bones) but now I am taking a new position. My stance now is this: he has free time and I support him using it to pursue his own interests, but on my time with him we are going on an orderly journey through the ages in our humanities salon. I have no guilt. Since I did help him follow his tangents when he was younger, he is very good at, and in the habit of, pursuing knowledge he wants to pursue, and lord knows I don't mind buying him books!

It actually sounds like you had an amazing first day! Congratulations! There's never ever a day that offers no important alternative activities, like fixing frozen pipes. If you can school despite it you win. Looking at what you describe, I see nothing lacking. Some basics, some extras. That's perfect. Locking up the electronics is what I did for years, literally. When we moved recently, I decided that the TV, Wii, iPad and iMac would live in my bedroom. I can lock my bedroom door from the inside or the outside and I do, every day. I'd say just make sure the stuff is securely locked away and then let him hunt. He'll grow bored of it eventually and at least he's actively using his brain to work the problem.

It had high points and low points. I had to do a pep talk for the usually efficient & productive boy over today's writing assignment, which unexpectedly involved poetry, but when I remembered the Bravewriter notion that it's totally appropriate to co-write with your kids, and let go, he started smiling and enthusiastically participating again. I got my older son to engage with his new writing book by telling him it was the program I used when I was a homeschooled high schooler. I guess he thinks of me as a good writer because that got him going, and he did produce an amazing first assignment. But we utterly failed at biology again. Couldn't get the textbook PDF onto the new Kindle, couldn't get Adobe to quit crashing on the laptop, had to run to the corner store for paper to print the worksheets because something spilled on the new stash, it was too rainy to do one lab, and the first step in the other lab was, "soak the cork overnight before beginning this experiment." That was the last straw. My thirteen-year-old read that aloud and said, "Biology DOOOOOOOOOM!" and we all then had the giggles the rest of the day. Actually, we often all laugh a lot all day long. My response to them grumping is to get their mood to shift. I kind of take it as a personal goal to make them crack up whenever they are trying to be cranky, and that has resulted in a general school atmosphere of humor. Today was a good reminder that we have a great dynamic and are good at this homeschooling thing, even when we are bad at it, if you know what I mean. *knocks on wood* And to the moms who had a day they regret, I want to say that I have had many of those too, and offer you a hug. It gets better. You find ways and learn the tricks and after a while you realize you're right where you want to be and you start to be able to breathe. Take heart and kiss your sleeping cherub-faced ones and in the morning hide a baby picture of them in your IG so you can remember that is who is sitting next to you.

For most people, "home education" would be perceived as synonymous with "home school." You could try to differentiate and explain but it would probably just annoy and overwhelm most people. When I'm talking to other people who don't utilize traditional schools to educate their children, I'll usually say "homeschool" rather than "unschool" to indicate that I dictate a good chunk of my child's learning. As you can see in my sig, I use the words "relaxed" and "classical" to specify more about how I do that. "Classical" because I focus on the trivium and quadrivium and Greek & Roman methods of teaching those, "relaxed" because as much as possible I use Mary Hood's method of manipulating kids into thinking any particular bit of learning was their idea.

In years past, I have scheduled read-alouds to coincide with snack breaks. The kids would get popcorn or seedless grapes and sit relatively still while I read through the titles in our WinterPromise program. This year, we are talking about our reading a lot as we go. The boys are almost teens and they have a lot of funny, sarcastic commentary to make. Our schedule for the fall semester went like follows. 7:00 - get up, get dressed, take care of animals and eat 8:00-8:20 - yoga 8:20-8:50 - math 8:50-9:35 - grammar, vocab, writing & logic workbooks 9:35-10:00 - music practice 10:00-10:30 - Spanish program 10:30-11:00 - lunch 11:00-12:00 - schooly read-alouds (covering religion, historical fiction, mythology, biographies and great books) 12:00-1:00 - Mondays & Tuesdays, history; Thursdays & Fridays, science 1:00:-whenever they feel like stopping - Mondays & Tuesdays, drafting (13yo) or studio art (10yo); Thursdays & Fridays, programming (10yo), electronics (13yo) 5:00 help straighten up the house, help make dinner 6:00 dinner 7:00 fun read-alouds (Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman so far this year) 8:00 little kids are sung to sleep, big kids read independently in bed for an hour Wednesday afternoons, after schooly read-alouds, the boys worked towards goals in projects of their own choosing. Often the boys would keep on doing art, programming or electronics until their younger brother and stepsisters came home from school at 3:00 because those are subjects they loved. I put them last so they could do that if they wished. Read-alouds were right after lunch because that is generally a moment in the day when the boys are dragging and reluctant. It's not hard to sit and poke holes in a book, though, so I found it easiest to re-engage them via that. We start Monday with a new schedule for spring, because we wanted to switch up some of the books we're using, but I haven't sorted it out just yet. Guess I'd better get on that.

I read George Washington to my 8 yr old son today, because he spotted it on the shelf and asked for it. My son liked it and remained engaged the whole time. I will say it was a pleasant read, except for the part where Washington's slaves beamed to see him return home. Yes, the pictures are pretty. But I don't understand why homeschoolers think these books are so fabulous. What is the magic? What makes these less twaddle and more spectacular than the gazillion other picture-book bios of American legends?

An autism diagnosis can prevent your son from getting medical care under the policy of several health insurers. It will follow your son around forever. I would never ever agree to have a kid falsely diagnosed.

Yup. My advice to this mom would have been: First, have a much shorter homeschool day. 8:30 - 4:30 is WAY too long for ages seven and nine. Extended academic hours can prevent a kid from having time for pretend play, outdoor exploration, gross motor exercise and creativity, which in turn can kill a child's ability to focus, which may then be contributing to their difficulties working independently. Many homeschoolers use the rule of one hour for each grade up til grade six. Secondly, schedule a daily quiet time when you can get some peace. Make it a rule that from 1 to 3 no kid may ask you for anything unless necessary to prevent danger or great expense. Use half of that for work and half for just refreshing your spirit, so you can be more willfully fully present to help your kids learn whenever opportunities present themselves. He's right that moms get to have some boundaries too, to take care of themselves, but he's all wrong about how to go about it.

If my 13yo or 11yo are really dragging, to where their concentration is off, I will offer them a timed break (15 minutes usually, and I make them set the timer when they start the break) or a food break that may begin after the next hardest thing is completed. So if my kid is doing math super slowly, with not much alertness, and holding back the whine, then I'll say, "Get math done and then one workbook page in [subject You Hate] and you can have a 15 minute break." With my little guy, who is eight, I just give him a break after every two subjects. He can not concentrate for more than 30 minutes.

Breakfast: - smoothies made of orange juice, silken tofu, frozen peaches, frozen blackberries, frozen kale - savory waffles* - oatmeal or Farina, fresh fruit - gluten-free muesli in plain yogurt with bananas - rice cakes with thinly sliced apples and peanut butter - eggs scrambled with salsa - roesti - fried spiced tofu Dinner: - chicken soup with rice - chili, corn fritters - fresh spinach tossed with glazed walnuts, avocado, and bleu cheese in a raspberry vinaigrette - pot roast with root vegetables - spinach pancakes, baked potatoes with green onions & bacon - raw zuccini shredded and tossed with a cashew sauce - fried cubed tofu, broccoli and rice noodles tossed with a peanut butter, soy sauce & ginger mixture - lentils monastery style We rotate through these dinners and another six or seven that are less healthy but more kid-pleasing. On nights when we're not doing food I can eat, I have leftovers, or just one portion of the meal. For lunches and snacks we always eat either leftovers or raw fruits & veggies. * To make my savory waffles, I use a standard waffle recipe but sub in 1/2 part Bob's GF flour, 1/2 part almond flour, either soy or goat milk depending on what we have, plus I add real yeast, spoonfuls of ground clove, and McCormick's chai seasoning blend. The flavor of the real yeast, the generous portion of ground cloves, and the protein-heaviness of the almond flour, makes a single waffle a hearty and satisfying breakfast all by itself. But sometimes for a treat we skim the cream off the top of a can of cold coconut milk and whip it and add that to the waffles. Coconut milk whips just like regular cream.

My three-year-old stepdaughter got a plastic toy set in which each figure is a different stage in the life cycle of a frog. We knew she'd like it, since she's all about the animal baby-parent pair right now, but we did not expect her to choose to play with it rather than the trampoline, zip line, and kid-sized hamster ball we gave as group presents to the whole family. Very small children are funny, particular creatures, aren't they?

If it is working, and feels easy, I would keep going with Saxon. Slow and steady truly does win the race. Though she may be moving slowly now, as she gets more confident (and she will if it continues to feel easy), she will be able to do more work in a day. You can continue schooling, just math, through summers, too. Homeschooling is more efficient; she'll likely catch up. But even if she doesn't, she's more likely to enjoy a STEM career if she has to take calculus in college for the first time but feels like she can because math is easy. If she was stressed through a rush job math program so she could get calculus on that high school transcript, she'll run from math once it's up to her what to do. Don't be afraid to go slowly and be patient. The value of a math curriculum that feels easy can not be overstated.

Have you considered seeking out a Core Knowledge school?

If it turns out that there are major negative consequences beyond those caused by the husband's secret-keeping, then it might be appropriate to apologize to your friend for not protecting her when you had the chance. But what are the consequences of hiding from her that you knew? None. None except preventing one more layer of hurt. I went the total raw tell-everything honesty route once, after I'd done something hurtful. After I'd told the main thing, there were some extra details left to tell. I did tell those details, but I was telling just to tell, just to get out of the secrecy place. And all those were perceived as unnecessarily hurtful; they were received not as a total coming-clean but as spiteful extras thrown in just to jab. Yes, being open, honest and direct is an important thing, and yes, I hold to that whole be-an-open-book principle dearly, but it is important when dealing with hurt people to discern what revelations are necessary and which are rubbing their noses in it.

Thanks, everyone. Based on the info y'all have shared here, I believe we will focus on SAT IIs. The colleges he's interested in mostly do not give credit for APs (and yes, he's too young to know what college he'll target, but he "narrowed it down" to 30 schools and when that many mostly don't care about APs I have to think it's a trend or something). Also, I'd rather he do high school level work in high school and not try to master college-level stuff before he gets there.

I'm sorry your family is going through this. Nana, What's Cancer? covers all the facts in text-heavy picture book format. It doesn't talk down to kids or have a heavily homemade feel like some of the other books on the subject.