No, the main reason for him being in the class is not social. The main reason is that he wants to learn the content. It just happens that the content is A type of math (hands on equations) and he excels at math and grasps the concept easily and quickly. He very much wants to take the class, and is looking forward to learning the content as well as getting to know the other boys better ( they’re all boys we already know from our weekly learning community .) He is in a social skills group, and has been for the last several months. We are also doing the Superflex social thinking curriculum at home, and his speech and language therapist is doing a social skills curriculum with him, with an emphasis on appropriate Social language and communication. So, in some sense, I am hoping he will be well prepared for this first foray into group learning, especially in a class of only four students, Since I think social issues might be easier to figure out in a small group. I’m just nervous too… Thanks for the tip about watching a movie clip. I always mean to do something like that, but i usually forget. Now I’m off to think about what sort of movie clip to find! :-)

My 2, 3, and 6 yo all love LeapFrog. They can sing the songs to me when they see a word that is described by a song (something about silent e's and two vowels go walking... lol). My 8 yo already knows how to read, but he still watches the videos with them occasionally. That + electronic learning really have helped us a LOT when I feel stressed but need to feel like they're learning something in order to not feel even more stressed...

My ds8 with ASD will be taking a summer course with 2-3 other NT boys his age. It's his first time doing something like this that's academic (otherwise, the only classes he's done are swimming and martial arts). I expect the content will be interesting for him, but very easy. I feel like I need to prep him for appropriate behavior in this sort of setting though. The course itself is low-key, intended to be engaging, very hands-on, and without any sort of exam or evaluation. Can you folks help me come up with a list of expected behaviors for this situation? Outside of normal etiquette (which we're still working on.... lol), I'm thinking of talking with him about things like: *Do not make any sort of comments about how easy the content is. (Reason: Others may be struggling, and it makes them feel bad to hear it's supposed to be "easy.") *Do not answer more than 1-2 questions in a row, even if you know the answer, and instead let other students respond to the teacher. (Reason: Other kids may want a turn but think slower. Teacher wants to know how everyone is doing. Nobody likes a know-it-all.) *Really listen to the other students in your class. (Reason: They might have another way of thinking about something that is cool and different from how you do it. They might have a question you can help answer, but you won't really understand their question if you don't listen carefully and think before talking.) He's a kid who does much better when he knows the expectations, and we've had a lot of social flubs lately, so I *really* want him to make friends and not come off as a know-it-all. Class doesn't start for a while, so we have plenty of time to practice. :) So what other things should we make it a point to talk about?

Well, I don’t think the calculations include more than one error calculation for a beat, because it says something like you can only tap once per beat when she taps multiple times. And I also don’t think it counts As completely wrong if you just skip it and don’t try to tap at all. I think if those things were taken into consideration her scores would’ve been considerably further away from zero... lol

Yes, I’ve missed this group. But the fiasco with the private groups in this migration reminds me of when we were first starting this group, and a lot of people opted out for privacy concerns... Because nothing’s really private online…

We've really liked it. She started off much closer to 0.15 seconds off the mark. And she wasn't motivated. But candy rewards go along way over here... lol. :)

I posted it in one of these IM threads, but can't remember where now. We use this one: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/measuring-metronome/id676748179?mt=8 It works really well for us. I set the game on "tap" setting (so she has to actually *tap* 480 times right now, and can't just wait it out for 8-10 minutes). The only glitch I've noticed is that the words "fast" and "slow" are reversed, so it says "too fast" when it actually means you need to go a little faster.

What is considered "good" when doing IM? When she applies herself, my dd can consistently get within less than 0.10 seconds from the beat when we do the simple IM tapping app, and we've worked up her stamina to 8 minutes straight (not great, I know, but at least she *does* it.... We had to start her at 30 seconds of tapping, because she flat out refused to do it anymore. Then I got her doing it, and we've worked up to where we are by offering candy anytime she is < 0.10 away from the beat. But I'm wondering what I should actually be aiming for (given that this is not a formal IM at an OT or something). :)

Yes, I mentioned (very briefly :) ) that we had found that site, but it's a bit hard to sort through what are short picture books and what are longer books and/or series. I didn't really find a good search/sort feature on the website! :) I think he feels like they shouldn't just see women fighting the good fight on their own behalf and that more men need to step up and step in to help here. He wants our girls to know that he fully supports them in whatever they endeavor to do (even if they won't fully understand that at these ages). Plus, he spends one night each week reading to each of our kids individually, whereas I usually read to them in groups, so he can customize their reading experience a bit better. I do read some of these sorts of books with them, but he wants to be more intentional about doing it when he has time to read alone with them.

These are actually DH's favorite youth series, so he has read the first one to dd6 and the first three to ds8. :)

Thank you for all the suggestions, so far! I'm curious about the Anne of green gables series. I guess I'll have to look it up, since I've not read it, but it doesn't strike me as a "strong girl" sort of story. She did enjoy Little princess and secret garden, but I think my hubby is hoping for something a bit more adventurous. I'll give him all these ideas! :)

DH reads with each of our kiddos individually once a week, and is looking for recommendations on books that will empower our girls and/or give them stories of strong women. I re-read some Nancy Drew recently and decided it was not really what he was looking for. I also have the Dealings with Dragons series by Patricia Wrede that he's going to start reading to them. To give an idea of where they are: DD4 loved the Princess in Black books that he just read to her, but we're out of those. And DD6 is really hit-or-miss with books in that she can listen to some relatively advanced ones (e.g., Secret Garden, LIttle Princess, Narnia,) if they interest her, but complains loud and long if she finds it "boring" (e.g., LIttle House, Magic Tree House). DD3 listens to anything. They all like "girly" books (princesses, fairies, etc.), which makes it hard to get them into stuff like Cam Jansen. Just looking for suggestions! We did find some book recommendations on the mighty girl and brightly websites, but it is a little overwhelming for DH to have to sort through lots of individual picture books in order to fill 45 minutes of reading time up, so we would prefer series Or decent length chapter books with some pictures still.

We have a place within driving distance called FixLexia that specializes in dyslexia issues, and they have on staff several speech & language pathologists, psychologists, as well as a neuropsychologist (more for consultations / on the side than staff, technically). Have you looked around for something like this? We found that, outside of this place, the psychs and neuropsychs didn't want to do it because they said insurance wouldn't cover it (nevermind that we asked for cash prices to cover it ourselves...) and schools didn't want to do it because they said it should be covered by insurance... So we got a really big run around for months. :P

Not here, either. The hardest parts of long division for my kiddo were the handwriting and organizational parts of the algorithm.

I'm glad you found a good, viable solution, and I wanted to say that I really appreciate this thread. This is something we really struggle with because we have a young ballet dancer here at home, but she's only 1 of 4 kids. We've tried rec stuff (we're cool with it and prefer it to the "dance mom" culture we've encountered at some of the dance schools she's attended), but this child also seems to have some challenging "issues" that seem to only improve when she has something to focus on intensely that also challenges her physically. We've tried to get her into a variety of other things that will satisfy that, but ballet is currently the only thing that meets that need. It is prohibitively expensive, but grandparents help out. I sometimes joke with my husband that we'd be spending the same amount of money and time in therapy if we weren't putting it into ballet, because she's so much more challenging when she's not in a demanding ballet class (to be clear: she doesn't act out as a way to get into ballet - it's that we parents have been able to see a correlation in her behavior and how rigorous her ballet classes are). So we're left in this place of wanting to let things go, wanting to reclaim family time, wanting to not let her dance schedule dominate (we don't do competition teams or anything like that - it is strictly formal ballet at this point, though she's considered starting jazz), and yet feeling like we have to keep this kid in ballet for her own mental health (not to mention mine and DH's and everybody else who has to spend her days with her...) It's a really difficult road to be on, especially when I consider younger sisters who are also interested in and very talented in dance and gymnastics, But we flat out can’t support all of their desired activities, financially or timewise. And it's not the same sort of mental health issue for them as it is for the other daughter. And it screams "unfair" to them, and it screams "unfair" to ME, even!! But we also don’t have any better ideas or alternatives at this point.

Yeah, that does sound like a difficult dynamic!! I figured it had to be something, since our house rules seem so simple. But my kids don’t really have a tribe that they spend all their time with, and their best friends have parents Who feel similar to us with regards to screens, So we are lucky in that sense. It is a lot easier to have rules like ours when the playtime with friends is more occasional and a special treat. I love the idea of a tribe of kids at a campground making up all sorts of adventurous fun for themselves, it does seem disappointing to have them choose video games when they have so many other opportunities and options! Best wishes in sorting through that issue!

I'm curious to understand this dynamic a bit more. Our rule of thumb is that if it's off-limits at home, then it's also off-limits at other people's homes. This would be particularly enforced if the main reason they were going to someone else's home is so that they can break our personal house rules. While I won't police them unduly and thus does rely somewhat on the honor system, the consequence of such an action is simply that they can't play at said friends' house for a period (they have to play outside or at our house instead).

I love everything about this response, but I particularly love your sons’ insight into his own inner workings.

I won't speak to weather or not it's "possible" to be pointy in more than one area. I will say that motivation is paramount, and in *many* things (though not all, certainly), motivation can cover a pretty vast deficit. Case in point: I decided in 9th grade that I liked singing. It was my first year in choir, and my parents had never been able to afford voice lessons previously. But I really, really liked singing. So three years later, I found myself applying for college and auditioning for voice scholarships (which I got). About 9 months after that, I decided that I didn't like the "cut-throat" nature of performance music, though, and called up my college to say I wasn't so excited by a performance major anymore. Needless to say, they said they weren't so excited about giving me that scholarship anymore, which left me scrambling to apply to a different (less expensive...) school about three weeks before classes started. I needed a major, and chose math since I'd always been good at it. But I'd not taken much of it (I had certainly NOT had things like trig or pre-calc in high school). The next year, I did my first math competition. (I got a stellar score of big-fat-0. But I had fun anyway.) The year after that, I tied for second place in the state. I ended up with numerous awards and a PhD in math about 7 years after that. Who knows what would've been different for me if I'd been able to study music or taken a fancy to math earlier. Perhaps I could've gone much further or made far more amazing contributions to either field. But I think it's more important that I learned that I can actually change my mind -- and still accomplish my (new) goals. My life path was far less "set" than it might have seemed to me before, and it was really good for me to learn that. I tutor a lot of college kids who feel like they have to stay on the path they're currently on, despite their interests and passions changing. They feel they have too much invested now to turn away, and that they'll never be able to "catch up" in the new field that they're thinking sounds pretty cool now. Or worse, what if they try something new, it doesn't work out, and by then they've given up their current opportunities?? I'm so thankful that I never felt pressure to be "all" that I could be, and I had the opportunity to experience starting completely over, from a place that was way "behind" where I "should" have been, and learn that I could *still* accomplish the things I set my mind to. Disclaimer: I'm not saying you're pressuring your kid at all. I'm just saying the things that come to my mind and my feelings as I reflect on my many course changes in life.

I agree with this! I did find much more interesting content once I was actually teaching it. And who knows? DS really loved learning about fractions and *why* you do stuff with them (common denominators for addition/subtraction, but not when multiplying, for example, or why dividing by a fraction is really multiplying by its inverse), so maybe we're already doing a better job at making that stuff interesting than I remember it being! lol. :) I guess I really love teaching all sorts of math, and I love trying to make even the "boring" stuff interesting, but I'm uncertain as to which texts will do that for kiddos, since mosts of the texts where I was actually paying attention to the quality of the text was at a higher level than my kids will be seeing in the near future - I just wasn't attentive enough or invested enough to be able to judge a "good" text before grad school, unfortunately. I wonder if anyone local would have some of these resources that have been mentioned so I could take a good long look at them (The AoPS, but also the jousting armadillos, and such).... Hmmm...

I agree to an extent, and would like it if ALL their math were fun and interesting. At the same time, I think it's ok that some people like different things more, just like people have different tastes in music and food. In grad school, I knew folks who loved the analytical side of things, even if Fourier series were enough to make me run in the opposite direction. And I knew folks who dreaded graph theory and would have hated every minute of looking at the group structures of graph isomorphisms, which I absolutely loved! I'd like to give my kids ample exposure to all sorts of topics so that they can go whichever direction they like in math, but I also think it's ok to acknowledge that not every topic in math is riveting to everyone (even if they *like* math) and it's not always because you just don't have a good book or good presentation.

Hmmm. I appreciate the voices of dissent, since it gives me things to think about that I hadn't considered. Perhaps we'd just be better of using AoPS for algebra, since folks say it's better than I was expecting, and using one of my college texts for Number theory and other stuff, since I have a few that I thought were excellent. I'll have to keep thinking about this. Thank you all so much!

Ha ha. Yes! Thank you!

Ha ha. He's been dying to do minecraft. I just know nothing about it, except that it's some sort of building game, and all his friends are super into it, so he feels like the odd man out. If I could justify letting him do minecraft in that he's learning to code, I might consider it.... lol.

Ha ha. Maybe this is really my issue - my experience with pre-algebra, then algebra, then trig, precalc, calc I, II, and III was just so boring... It's hard for me to imagine algebra that's not, I guess! Maybe I just need to get my hands on it and actually read through it carefully. Thanks for these thoughts.