Thanks all. I let him take a break from it for the last week and hope to try it again today with me scribing! :)

I love the Spalding, and you can *usually* buy an older version of the book (the 4th is often recommended) online for < $5. It is systematic and will help with reading and writing.

It was actually for the other child. I should've been more clear: She's 6 now, and reading a little, but definitely nothing brilliant, was all that I meant when I said she's not the "reading-at-3" type of bright. I just wondered how much (if at all) that would affect her results. In particular, I expect she'll catch up and then excel very quickly - but that makes more sense in light of your "giving late bloomers time to catch up" comment, and maybe she'd be better off waiting until closer to 8 then. As far as my own kid, I don't think I'm hoping to get any info. I think I was thinking that if he wanted (blank) scores for (blank) program at a future time, we should do the testing at the "right" time. But as I've thought about it more, I find it doubtful that they would want really old scores anyway, so just doing the testing as/if needed in the future if he does run across a program that requires it is probably the best road for us. In our area, they are very strict about ages regardless of ability anyway (summer camp was a bit dicey as a result, but we survived and had fun anyway).

Ha ha. Good to know regarding the search function. I was really trying hard because I knew that I had posted *something* about testing myself - and then I couldn't find it! :P I'm curious why you feel you should've tested closer to 7 than 8, if you don't mind sharing?

Ah, I think this is what I was trying to remember. Thanks! (I assume "hothousing" is where parents push their kids at really young ages?) I'm curious about this: would you recommend a nonverbal one to a child who is very verbal, but just a late reader?

Hmmm. Well that is certainly one of the ones I was looking for (I don't know why it didn't appear in my search results when I searched "testing"!), but it doesn't answer these questions, I don't think. I feel like I've seen threads on age being important when considering testing, at least, though I don't know that I recall ever seeing a thread on bright kids who are average or even later readers (maybe such kids really don't exist, and so all the kids who read later are only moderately bright? That seems unlikely to me, but I have nothing to go off of! :) )

I am not chomping at the bit to have my kiddos tested. If they want into something that requires certain scores when they're older, I'm happy to cross that bridge when we get there. Right now, my oldest is content to play outside for most of the day and play legos the rest of the day, and I'm cool with that (he makes some really cool things - last month he created a gun that actually shot when you pulled a real trigger!). BUT I've also read that after age 8, it becomes increasingly difficult to identify anything beyond moderate giftedness, so I'm a bit concerned about missing the boat if I don't have my 8 year old tested. Will I miss a "prime" window for testing, or can you always get accurate scores down the road? On another note, I'm curious (for a friend, so different child than mine mentioned above) about testing a child who's not the typical reading-at-age-3 kid (she's more into math and music), and so I wonder if her lack of fluency reading will have a disproportionate effect on any testing she does. Any thoughts on this? Edited for clarity. :)

I think this is spot on and something I hadn't considered yet. It seemed like she understood what I was saying, but she was angry as all get out that I wouldn't actually say HER word back. Thanks for bringing this up, because I don't know that I would've made this connection otherwise.

Thanks for all the ideas! I'm ok with her learning it in time - I was mostly concerned about causing her to hate it or something weird. She's still catching up on her English, because she was so incredibly far behind before we realized she had problems hearing, so I just didn't know how hard I should push, or if it's just a "roll with it" sort of situation like running a marathon. I have hope that we'll get there eventually, even though it's always pushing uphill! :)

Ok. So just keep going. For some reason, I was concerned that I'm going to permanently damage to our linguistic endeavors or something. I don't know - it's probably dumb, but she's SO insistent about wanting me to say the English word that I think I panicked a bit. lol. Sorry! And thanks for the reassurance! We started off OPOL, honestly, but it didn't work for our family dynamic. Dh already is gone alot for his work, and instead of picking up the German he was hearing, he ended up just tuning us out and thus wasn't engaging with the family when he was home. I knew the German part itself would be harder by giving up OPOL, but I decided it was worth it in our situation. So I now I just have to live with that! :)

This is probably silly, but I'm just not sure how to respond to my 2 yo. Background: She had massive amounts of fluid built up in her ears and had surgery this past March to clear it out because she wasn't talking, wasn't responsive to speech, etc. Right after her surgery, it happened that my husband was off of work for four months (injury, surgery, & recovery), and so for her first four months of real hearing after her surgery, she heard almost exclusively English (we speak English as a family whenever dh is around instead of doing OPOL). Now, six months later, hubby is back at work, and I speak lots of German again during the day and my 2 yo is angry about it. This morning (just as an example), she felt my hair after my shower, and I asked her if my wet hair felt cold and wet (in German) and she said "wet". So I agreed with "Yes, it's really wet!" in German and she got really upset. One more round of me saying it in German, and she screamed at me the English word "WET!!" and then ran off and threw a massive tantrum on the couch and wanted nothing to do with me for at least ten minutes. Fine, I don't really mind her throwing a little tantrum, but I'm not sure how to best handle this sort of situation in the future, when it's clear that it's the language itself that is the source of conflict. I didn't even start speaking German to my oldest until he was 2, and he adjusted to it right away and was speaking it back with me within six months, so I had expected a smoother transition with the little one (but she does have three older siblings who speak a lot of English at this point, so I'm not sure how much that plays into things). Should I not have repeated it 2-3 times? Should I have agreed with her that it was "wet" (in English)? Other alternatives?

Thanks all, for the input! Hmmm. I'll think about this. I don't find the issue a lack of space. Because he insists on doing it in his head still, bc he insists that doing it in his head is just less work than having to write it all out. So most of his page is still blank at the end, and he'd rather re-do ones he missed from scratch than show his work by actually writing stuff out. lol.

DS enjoys math, but recently has been complaining about his BA, saying it's too hard. When I checked where he was, he's on the multi-digit multiplication, where they want you to actually write out all the cross terms and then add them together. So he's been choosing to continue through Singapore 5 instead of doing BA 4. He has a hard time with fine motor skills, and I suspect that's most of the real issue, because when I sit with him and scribe for him, he still flies through it pretty quickly and cheerfully. Is there any harm to me just scribing for him through this chapter, and having him do it independently again after? Or are most of the chapters from here on out heavier on writing? I don't want to set up him up to only do it with me, bc I have lots of other kiddos that need me too, but I guess I'm thinking that my method for dealing with this may depend on what will be coming along later in BA. If it's lots more writing, I may have to re-think how we're going to do it. If this is just a brief phase, I'll just power through by scribing for him and hope things return to "normal" thereafter. FWIW: we had the same issue when he covered long division in SM. So instead of having him do actual long division, I let him do a "cheater version" where he just wrote down the remainders at each step, instead of the product and then subtracting (see attached picture that I wrote as we were talking about long division).

Hmm. I'll have to look at them. I've only ever seen their "letters" one, not their letter sounds. But our library has a bunch of their stuff, so that would be cool. Thanks for this! :) I'm not so eager to make them learn fast. It's more to keep a 2 and 4 yo occupied with a movie for half an hour a day while I do stuff with my older kids, and I'd just as soon they learn early on that things have more than one sound, you know?

My youngest two think leapfrog letter factory is fun when they see it at the library, but part of me just doesn't want to get it because my oldest had a really hard time when he had to make his peace with letters having more than one sound. It was just a really difficult transition and we ended up having to start over from scratch with him. So I'm wondering if there's anything more compatible with stuff like LoE, Spalding, AAS, etc.

Oh I know! But I think it's primarily used by folks who like it for academic reasons. So it's useful in connecting with people who have the same interest, but not so useful in the sense that most anyone who speaks Esperanto also speaks something that is more common. :) I knew a bunch of mathematicians who learned it because they were interested in a "perfect" language! lol.

This makes me laugh a bit, just because I'm coming at it from the other side in the sense of having embraced preschool with all my kids, even though I intended to homeschool! With the first, it was just easier to do preschool when he needed more activity and fun and I had two littler ones underfoot (including a newborn). With #2, it was easier, because I *still* had two littler ones underfoot (including a newborn) *and* by then I was trying to homeschool an older. I've been really looking forward to preschool with #3 for all the same reasons, and that's part of why I'm a little uncertain as to how to respond to her reluctance to go. :)

Ha ha. I also know folks who studied Esperanto. Whatever floats their boat! :)

I'm just curious about pros and cons, here. Do you prefer you to do a lot of subjects each day, but for short bursts, or fewer subjects for longer? How much does it depend on the kids age or personality (need to do the same thing each day)? I feel like it takes us a long time to transition some days. I feel like both ideas *seem* logical - and yet, they're on opposite sides of the spectrum. Fwiw, I'm not talking stuff like science, art, or history-I'm talking stuff like reading, math, read alouds, and writing and a second language. Even chores, possibly. Music seems like it needs to be daily, and probably a second language. But I'm just thinking out loud here.

I'll chime in and say that I think "useful" is different than "necessary." Rarely have I been in a situation where knowing Spanish was necessary (like the goat situation described). Many times have I been in situations where knowing some Spanish was useful. Even my S. American friends who speak English well speak Spanish at home, and the truth is that sometimes, it's "useful" to for me to be able to understand conversations that take place in Spanish while we're in their home. If I'm at my friends' house and I hear her tell one of her children that supper is about ready, I will take that as my cue to encourage my children to start cleaning up and getting ready for supper. If my friends' mom (who doesn't speak English) asks my friend if I'd be open to letting her hold my baby, I can just give her my baby to hold, without waiting for my friend to translate back and forth. There are polite responses I can make to other people's conversation (note that I'm not talking about eavesdropping) that I can't make if I don't understand them. Granted, I can't possibly learn the native languages of ALL my friends who don't speak English natively, but I think that's a sad reason to not try for any of them. Also, certainly, some people will scorn your attempts at communicating if you can't do it "right." But that doesn't change the fact that there are also many gracious people in our communities who be encouraged and appreciative of someone else trying to reach out to them in this special way. From personal experience, I grew up in a situation where I *did* look down on people who spoke the common language poorly because it was a second language. I carried that baggage with me into adulthood, and was scared to start trying to speak the language again after a 20 year hiatus as a result (I really didn't want others to scorn me or look down on me!). Thankfully, I found some friends who were kind and gracious and thought it was super great that I was trying to raise my children bilingually, *even though* my language skills had deteriorated once I switched to primarily speaking English as a teen. They encourage me, supply the right words for me when I have a brain-fart, and don't mind an occasional foray into English when I just can't figure something out. Furthermore, because they grew up in bilingual areas, they also have brain-farts and understand that even THEY sometimes forget words in their own native language! We laugh about this together and keep moving forward. Yes, sometimes, people can be jerks about you not doing things "right" (as the situation with the European Spanish vs Mexican Spanish sounds). But far more often, my experience is that people choose to be encouraging, instead.

We do this with German. One perk is that when you're listening to a particularly tricky book (my 7 yo started listening to the translated Warrior cats books in German, and it was just a bit above his level, even though he can read them just fine in English), you can just slow it down (there are options for .75, 1, 1.25, etc. speed, so we just used .75 speed)

PS. How did you or your parents identify the issue? She has been way crazy off the charts and I wouldn't be surprised if there is something more going on. I can look back now and see how out of control she's been the last 3-4 months, but the honest truth is that it built on itself rather slowly, so it'd gotten very extreme before I actually registered that something was majorly off.

This is a good thought, since we'll be saving money from preschool if we pull her. One afternoon a week with a babysitter (for all of them!) might be enough to help keep my sanity. Hmm.... We'll wait until we talk with her doc next week, and then probably make a decision at the end of the month (she'll have gone for 6 weeks by then). I confess to feeling completely taken off guard by this one. Out of all my kids, she's the one I expected would most thrive in preschool. She's social and outgoing and eager to get out there and explore and get her hands dirty. This is my kid who climbs the chain link fence at softball fields when I turn around a moment and then happily shouts down "Hi Mom! Look at me!" from 10 ft in the air. This is the kid that jumps on a bike and pedals off way far ahead of me for a 5 mile bike ride and only occasionally looks back to make sure I'm still there. This is the kid who jumped into the deep end at the pool (and actually learned to swim) and climbed 15 ft rock walls at 3 years old. But there's a tiny voice in the back of my head reminding me that this is also the kid who screamed bloody murder when I left her in the childwatch at the Y between 6-15 months because she couldn't handle being away from me, so I ended up only working out for 15 minutes at a time during that phase of life, because there was only so much crying those poor workers could handle! I'd completely forgotten how she used to panic when she was away from me, because it hasn't been an issue in so long.

My husband and I were spending some time talking about it together, and we wondered both of these things: not enough attention and possible food issues. She has a check-up next week for her bday, and I'm going to talk with the doc about it. She doesn't have any obvious signs of food allergies (no hives, etc.), but she's been so volatile lately that I just don't know what's going on (one minute very happy, sweet, cuddly, etc. and the next she's screaming and clawing someone savagely bc they accidentally brushed against her). My bigger concern is the time thing, and it's awful to think she might feel like she's just getting dumped there to be out of the way (even if I feel it sometimes... :( ) So thank you for this, because these two things have been on my mind, even though I was having a hard time realizing or admitting it. I agree that she's given it a fair try. She was so looking forward to going! Her excitement *before* going was off the charts! And the first week she went but seemed a bit subdued, and then starting the second week she just started saying how she didn't want to go. It wasn't in a tantrum, but clear and matter-of-fact sort of thing in the morning when I comment about finding her show-and-tell or something. Part of me feels like preschool is so much better for her than watching a movie, but I agree that I don't really want her to have to adjust when she clearly would just rather be home. Thanks for these thoughts. Until this week, it never even occurred to me that I could consider withdrawing her (odd, I know, but true). So we've been very matter-of-fact with regards to "This is what the plan is and you have a lot of fun, etc." What's perhaps most convincing to me as I think about withdrawing her is that she's not howling or screaming. She's not even complaining or saying how awful preschool is. She's honest about the fact that it's a lot of fun, but she's also honest that it's not worth being away from me. I'm just not sure what my own needs are right now.

I don't know where to ask this question, because I feel like my non-homeschooling friends would just shrug it off as a "kids have to learn to be away from you" issue, but it's not really a homeschooling question because it involves sending my child to school... So please be kind to me here! Dc3 is 4 yo and started preschool at our church last month. My older two kids both attended there, we know the preschool intimately since we're a small church and dh is the associate pastor at our church, so we know for a fact that the school is excellent, a TON of fun, and that her teacher is great. According to her teacher, she gets along well with other kids, pays attention, and has a great time. She comes home with fun crafts and talking about her friends and everything they did. But she hates going. Not the actual parting from me at the door issue, but she tells me all the time how she doesn't want to go because she hates being away from me. How it's the worst thing ever to have to be apart from me and how she just hates it, despite how fun preschool is. She's resisted going for the last three straight weeks (she goes 3 hrs a day, 3X / week). Any thoughts? Would you just insist she keep going? I really would like that time as "down time" and to work with my older kids, but my heart breaks for her every time she says that being away from me is the worst thing ever. :( FWIW, up until this situation, I would've said she was outgoing, adventurous, feisty, and fearless. I'm not sure what's going on with her at this point though. She's been acting out a ton at home the last few months, but that was even before preschool started.