We loved Desitin. If you use the creamy, it's easier to go on. My son used to get rashes that would flair up suddenly and go away just as suddenly, but his whole bottom would be on fire, and it was a nasty raised rash. The Desitin helped a lot. We used to get a numbing spray that we would put on, and then put on the cream because it hurt him so bad to have someone touch him. The Desitin has zinc oxide and aloe, and it does sting for just a minute (it's the aloe) before soothing REALLY well.

I think the last two books of Miquon have some things you might benefit from. I bought the whole set to use with my K'er, and I see several things that would benefit my older son who is starting Singapore 4. Did you know that Miquon uses both letters and numbers for their topics so that you can follow one sequence, say addition, through all six books? If you find a concept you think will benefit your older child, you can look in the back of each book to see how many pages in each book follow that topic. Then, find where he is in the sequence so that you can follow it through the remaining books. So, if H43 is a topic that is just right for him for fractions, you can look in the back of the book to see what other fraction topics are in that book and in the remainder of the series (H44, H45, etc.). If you want to use Miquon for specific topics only, that's the shortcut to finding the right pages.

Funny...guess what I found later today? I have several old podcasts downloaded to my iPad, and today, this one about NLD played. http://www.blogtalkradio.com/thecoffeeklatch/2011/05/19/sera-rivers--non-verbal-learning-disabilities I hope this is useful to you. I highly recommend the radio programs that are part of the Coffee Klatch network.

I vote for blogging. I bet your writing skills will improve greatly over time through blogging, whether they are truly poor or truly fantastic right now.

I think getting him retested is a good idea. Motor issues are common with both spectrum disorders and non-verbal learning disorder. The checklists for both have some overlap with language and motor issues. I have an 9 y.o. Aspie (fairly new diagnosis), and while some things sound similar, some things sound significantly different to me, but a full evaluation might make things more clear, particularly if you go to a different person for the evaluation and look more broadly than spectrum problems. At the very least, an OT can help with both sensory stuff and handwriting stuff. Montessori has children do a lot of tasks where you hold an object between your thumb and first finger to help with writing skills later. Sometimes it's using a really huge pushpin to prick around a shape to outline it, sometimes it's using tongs to transfer pom-poms or marbles between dishes, etc. My son has mixed issues with handwriting, but for him, a lot of it is remembering how to form letters--it's still not automatic. Best wishes.

So sorry. I did 6 years of allergy shots, and that is about what I paid (and I had two shots each just for me--allergic to everything). Now I save money on meds, if that helps at all. I had weekly shots only until I reached a certain dosage, and then it tapered to 2 weeks, and so on until I was going 1x per month.

My 9 y.o. 2e Aspie worked on all his work independently today (and has been increasingly independent all week). A total 180 from last year. We are using a timer some of the time, he is less stressed, and we've been working on a reward system to encourage this. We don't have it all hammered out yet, but just the idea of a reward has him minding his p's and q's. Great stories!

I just passed off my Island level books to my brother to use this way with his kiddos. But I'm with Bill, the grammar exercises are really good. You could use the books to explain concepts while using it with another program, but the sentences are really good, interesting, and fun. Sentence Island is great, and I would think that if your kids really understand grammar from another program, it could stand alone. My son loved the vocab in the Island level, and he just started Caesar's English. I expect it to be a hit. We sort of ran out of time for poetry last year, but my son loved what parts of the book that we fit in.

We live in a MRSA hotspot. My husband sees it multiple times per day, and I had it as an outer ear infection. It is definitely treatable, but people with lower immune systems have a harder time. If you can do anything to boost his immune system, that always is a good idea. Would he be a good candidate for probiotics (they can be mixed with stuff if eating is an issue)? Environmentally, you can do a lot. He should be receiving bleach water baths, or there is a type of cleanser you can use on skin called Hibiclens. You can find it at Walgreens around here. They use it as a surgical scrub (highly recommended that you use it before going in for surgery), and it's safe for skin but not the wound. It's particularly effective because the germ-killing feature is "persistant" for a number of hours after you use it, meaning it continues to kill germs for a while on the skin. I think they make wipes for cleaning that contain the same active ingredients (chlorhexadine)--my neighbor had to clean with wipes that contained this when she had a family member receiving chemo. There is a lot they can do in the environment to help with it, and many healthcare providers fail to educate on that (my hubby works in healthcare, and sees many repeat patients who haven't been given good instructions for cleaning, prevention, etc.). In an institutional setting, you may need to advocate/ask about cleaning, bathing, etc. It's extremely important not to reuse clothing, sheets, towels, etc. until they have been thoroughly washed. So, if he washes his face, that washcloth needs to go right into the laundry, not used again for face washing later. Basic handwashing needs to be consistent. MRSA can live on both hard and soft surfaces for a long time if not properly cleaned. http://www.michigan.gov/documents/MRSA_brochure_FINAL_167898_7.pdf This brochure has some very basic information about prevention.

If the Lyme is a dead end...my friend has a daughter whose vitamin D levels are compromised because of kidney issues and how she metabolizes phosphorous. Apparently it ends up affecting her levels of D also (they found it when they realized she was manifesting some problems with rickets).

Another option is a chiropractor, esp if you think it's not broken or that maybe things are just out of line from being hurt. I injured my foot on the top, and it was just some kind of strained muscle (though I didn't know what it was when I saw the ortho). It continued to get worse rather than better. The ortho was less than kind to me since it was not broken (I seem to bring out the worst in healthcare practitioners). I went to the chiro, and by the time I left his office, the swelling had already started to subside noticeably. I wore what they used to call a wooden shoe until it was back to normal--it's a stiff bottomed shoe that wraps onto your foot.

I hadn't heard about fair use/10%. That may solve our problem. If we end up using more of it than that, I have no problem buying an extra book--I just thought it was odd the copyright isn't explicit when the program talks about using the sheets for more than one lesson. I'll probably just have my older DS use the more advanced book(s) now and order more for my younger DS when the time comes. Thanks!

I appreciate hearing this discussion in a civil forum, and I am pretty surprised at the video. I grew up in a very rural area with very few non-white people (literally one or two African American families lived in the largest town in the whole county--though that is changing). What is often described as white privilege has been a little mysterious to me because of this. This discussion helps, though I do think people often imply that I should do something about it, somehow give it up, etc. Even in this discussion, that point seems to be debated and unclear. I sort of understand how seeing white people "do something about it" implies non-whites need to be rescued, but if I were a white woman in the situation described in the video, I would think that standing by and not saying something would be really wrong. This is where a lot of it gets fuzzy for me. Up until recently, I've only heard the term used in very bitter, nasty discussions. I still am naïve about it, although I believe such discrimination is both real and often transparent. To the posters who talked about using city folk language to justify racial discrimination, I am sorry to hear that happens. Although I would like to point out that in the area where I grew up, it is often very easy to pick out city folks whose skin tone matches that of the local population. City folks walk, talk, drive, and do many things very differently! I undoubtedly look like a hay-seed everywhere I go as well.

I have a prize box and punch cards for my younger son, but my older son likes other types of rewards better. These are great ideas! Any pitfalls to avoid with a reward system? When my older son was in school, his first grade teacher had an incentive program for reading--she bribed them openly and shamelessly to read (her words). She was used to maybe 4-5 kids per year completing her program at most (and many kids completing it for only a month or two), so the standards were very high as well as the rewards. It was called the 1000 minutes club, and each month that a student read 1000 minutes (both assigned and pleasure reading counted), that student received a dollar in the form of either a gold dollar or a silver dollar. If it was their 2nd or 3rd month, they received $2 or $3 as applicable. They also received a prize, and each prize got incrementally better. The first month was a nice bank (choice of piggy or a counting bank). Other prizes were timer bookmarks, basic function scientific calculators, a graphic novel, etc. The year my son was in 1st grade, I think she had more than a dozen kids each month reading 1000 minutes. It's good she taught for the pleasure, not the income because she was astounded (but pleased) with her payout that year. My older son is now an avid reader. Anyway, I hope to do something like that with my K'er, but with fewer minutes.

I have a fairly silly question...I am planning to use Miquon with my K'er, and I bought the whole set at once. My older son, 4th grade, would probably like and find some topics valuable in areas where he needs some extra work. The teacher-ish books talk about using the sheets over again for more than one lesson or concept. If this is how they are intended to be used, is it okay to copy them so that I can use them for more than one task? Is it okay to copy them and use for more than one child? The copyright is a simple copyright statement, it doesn't say anything about "original purchase" or "one child" like other curriculums state. Thanks!

Hugs!!! From what you've written, this may sound crazy, but maybe you could work with them 1:1 for some things and set aside designated chat time that they earn by getting down to business (doing a page of math silently earns them some talk time or a special privilege). I would set timers and train them gradually. 1:1 requires more TIME, but it may not require more ENERGY in the long run if you are being pecked to death with their constant need to be "on" at the same time. Have you heard about the game The Art of Conversation? We haven't tried it out yet, but we bought it (kid edition) specifically so that my extravert gets to have some talk time he can count on, and my Aspie can work on social skills. Also, if they get along with each other okay without supervision, maybe you can let them loose (away from you) with a video camera or some other thing that allows interaction with each other instead of you but focuses their activity (they can do an instructional video, put on a play, be silly for the camera, etc.). Maybe they can Skype/video chat with grandparents, do phone or video interviews as school assignments with people who will indulge their interests. I can't wait for my mom to retire in a few weeks so that the kiddos can video chat with the grandparents during the day. Also, DH and I tend to divide and conquer as often as we relieve each other. Sometimes we separate the kids. This gives them alone time with a parent, which is often more satisfying to them. My older son likes physical work (it's soothing), so we take advantage of that. Working together is companionable (I choose tasks that work well for this), and I get something done so that I can use my alone time another way. I am an introvert with an introverted DH. DH works shift work (shifts change all the time, lots of evening hours) in a job that requires lots of talking, lots of people time, lots of adrenaline, lots of attention-shifting, and lots of mental exertion. Those shifts are 10-12 hours long, and they occur on weekends and holidays too. Guess what he's like on his days off? He's pretty well fried, overstimulated, and maxed out. He is as willing to help as the day is long, but I'm not exactly getting him at his best. :-) The nearest family members live 3.5 hours away, and they are the ones I am least likely to ask to come help as they foster chaos and require as much supervision/explanation/direction as my own children. Believe it or not, HSing is actually less hassle for us than taking them to school (I know, it stretches credibility), but it does wear me out. My older DS is 9, and he was recently diagnosed with Asperger's. His most prominent stims are VOCAL. He is an introvert, but he talks a lot in addition to his stims. Younger DS (5.5) is a bit traumatized from all the craziness. He is our token extravert. Poor kid. He can disappear and self-care in a crisis, but then he has his own crisis later (he's extremely sensitive and caring). What else are we doing? (YMMV) Hiring a college-age helper as often as we can work it out. We had a hard time finding help, but we now have a person willing to work for us from time to time. She will watch the kids while I do something I can't stand to do with the kids. Easing into our schedules one or two subjects at a time. Flagging all of the work that my older DS finds enjoyable or that he can do independently so that I can pull it out on bad days or pair it up with more difficult work. Assigning some independent work for both kids, realizing that the older DS's work may not be a quality I appreciate. Making back up plans in case my two cannot do their work at the same time. We do science together, but with 3.5 years difference in their ages, we can't do this for all subjects. Dealing with them 1:1 takes more time but is less draining. Assigning certain chores to the kids that I pretty much never do anymore. I almost never empty the dishwasher no matter how often it runs. I often ask them to fill it if things have backed up. They put away groceries. They clean sinks and toilets. They fold towels. (None of that started overnight, and they have other additional chores as they come up.) We quit one evening commitment. We are making contingency plans for the other one. Notice that we only had two evening activities to begin with. Because of my DH's schedule, if both boys cannot do the same activity, we don't do it. I can only be in one place at a time. They have one drop-off gym class each week (nearly two hours in the afternoon). I do whatever I darn well please during that time, and it varies each week. Best wishes.

I think this article brings up some interesting points about development, learning, motivation, etc., but it's all a school-oriented discussion: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/25/opinion/sunday/dont-delay-your-kindergartners-start.html?_r=0 . I have a cousin who barely missed the fall cutoff for his school district, and he is exceptionally large for his age to boot (100%-ile on the growth chart). He is not particularly challenged, and he is rather unmotivated, which wasn't true of him in earlier grades. It makes me sad. I know another boy that excelled at first being redshirted for maturity reasons, and now he is also totally unchallenged. My older son started out in a Christian school prior to HSing, and he was the second youngest in his class for the last two years (the other student is a week younger). He has a late May birthday. I would guess that about 70% of the kids in his class had birthdays before Christmas, and many had summer birthdays, making them about a year older. He did fine--actually he did much better than fine, and so did the other boy who had a close birthday. The areas in which he struggled had nothing to do with maturity per se and everything to do with his own unique quirks, which are not changing with age. If I had been able to send him to a Montessori K at four that didn't cost enormous amounts of money, I would have sent him at four. That said, he was EXHAUSTED by a half day of K, and he stopped napping at 18 months, so we know it's the schooling that tires him out. We now know that he has some exceptionalities that contribute to his quirky profile. He still can't use scissors; he still has trouble remembering how to form letters (he's 9!); he's still exhausted by 3-4 hours of school, but his academics are great. Holding him back a year would have made him totally bored, and being bored would have made him totally bombastic. My second one has a December birthday, and schools here have a September cutoff. He's currently five. I sent him to preschool last year so that I could have some one-on-one time with the older one my first year of homeschooling. He came home partway through the year because he already knew everything--even though he was my child that PROTESTED every formal learning opportunity (he's compliant but very social and imaginative, not school-ish). He suddenly became ready to learn between 4 and 5 (getting glasses helped it all come together), and we just adjusted our methods to what he could tolerate and catered to his interests (like buying him a cursive writing book). I guess this is all to say that each child has different needs, and those needs do not always correlate/change with maturity or mean that the child is not ready to learn. If your child learns to read and spell but can't write, yes, that will be problem if you need to put him in a school-based first grade later, but holding a child back has risks that should be considered as well. Consider having his eyes checked by someone who works with kids a lot (if you can find a good developmental optometrist, that is even better!). Hearing screenings are a good idea too. Kids don't always know when they can't see or hear. The baseline screenings at the pediatrician's office are not necessarily going to catch everything. Best wishes!

I am planning to use Miquon with Singapore's CWP for first grade with my son who is 5.5. I don't necessarily think they will coordinate, but I wanted him to see some traditional math. We used (and extended) Math U See Primer before this. My little guy has flipped through the books, and he seems very drawn to both the SM and the Miquon. Thanks for the idea about using more than one Miquon book at a time.

I agree that you should not downplay a possible deficit, but I would look to see what kinds of assignments you could give her that would show whether or not a deficit is actually there, or if she hates expressing herself, assigned topics, etc. I think you could figure out how to do that with some offbeat assignments. I am slowly becoming more familiar with classical approaches to writing, and they strike me as very linear and process oriented (please don't take that as gospel since I am not completely up to speed yet). Truthfully, people who write for a living don't necessarily write that way. I was taught that writing is an iterative process--you may use a step-by-step approach, but it's often in a two steps forward, one step back sort of way. If your daughter is a global thinker, she may be missing the big picture among the details of the writing process. That's not the same thing as not being able to do it. If the target is fuzzy, and the steps don't seem to relate to the end goal, she may be balking at the steps. Maybe too, the information she is going to write about needs to sit and marinate before she can do something with it. I used to get really stoked about getting a pile of engineering notes and code for a project. It was like buried treasure. I had to figure out the parts and pieces and make them make sense. I had to wrestle with understanding it, draft my understanding, and then discuss where I went wrong with the engineers, wash, rinse, repeat. It was so much easier to write after all that wrestling through information than if I had to write about a topic that seemed obvious to me. Explaining the obvious is actually kind of hard. I think that is why organizing a paragraph around the needs of the audience/reader is so much easier than just listing off information and plugging it in to some kind of outline/hierarchy. I remember thinking in school, okay, why is it okay for something to have three sub-points in an outline, but if it had one sub-point, I have to chuck it or say something stupid so that I could have two sub-points? Grr. Other than maybe research papers, some kinds of academic writing are...subjective, and many of the techniques seem forced. Being able to compare the characteristics of apples and oranges as a writing exercise is totally different from comparing and contrasting how your body processes apples and oranges, what they do to your blood sugar, which one you should buy given the cost, the pesticide load, whether they crossed an ocean or were grown next door, etc. If you just ask me to compare apples and oranges in a paragraph, I would be irritated. If you told me that you were a consumer concerned about the environment, your pocketbook, and the local economy, now I have something to write about. Asking me to explain a Robert Frost poem to someone who is from Africa gives me a much better sense of where I should go with my thoughts than telling me analyze a Robert Frost poem as if that analysis is a fixed target with no audience or purpose. And if you are asking for my own insights, I would just roll me eyes and ask for a long walk off a short pier.

The Kitchen Stewardship blog has bento box lunch ideas (not for pretty, but for healthy), and many are grain free or easily adapted. http://www.kitchenstewardship.com/

I love Shaklee supplements--we use vitalizer strips, kid vitamins, and fish oil daily, and C, zinc, etc. as needed during colds and allergy. My kids swallow small and medium size tablets and don't like chewable stuff. I do better with Shaklee fish oil than any others, but the fish oil in the Vitalizer strips has something other goodies in it, can't remember what it's called, so that may be the difference. Nordic Naturals fish oil is very good quality too. I use Ultimate Flora from Renew Life for probiotics, and my kids use the chewable 3 billion cultures version (the kid's one is a great price). Ultimate Flora has a high bifido count, which is why it works so well for me. I get the impression that probiotics have differing results person to person. We are trying to start making our own fermented veggies for probiotics (Perfect Pickler). I can tell if I stop taking my supplements for a while or get lazy (achy and allergic asthma acts up), but that was not the case as much when I used "regular" drugstore brands.

Ditto all of the above...I have this video, and I like it. It doesn't require tremendous rhythm or coordination, and the instructor cares more about health than fitness (though she is clearly in great shape). She also gives you options for more or less intense versions of many of the exercises so that you can challenge yourself or go easy until you are okay with it. I need to get it out again and get back into some kind of routine. http://www.amazon.com/FitBALL-Round-Workout-Lisa-Westlake/dp/097459363X/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1376532691&sr=8-6&keywords=lisa+Westlake

My son was recently diagnosed as being on the spectrum (he fits the old criteria for Asperger's). He is nine. We really didn't see it coming until recently. I would like to say we would have been open to the diagnosis earlier, but I am not certain. We certainly recognized some of his side issues, but the "problem" is that he didn't seem like other Asperger's kids we've been around. (Hence the meme, "if you've seen one kid with ASD, you've seen one kid with ASD.") After all, he is extremely caring, so he can't lack empathy (but, "oh yeah...if he runs someone over by accident, he doesn't need to apologize because the other person can read his mind and know it's an accident, right?"). "Oh yeah, he doesn't seem to be able to tell that someone is angry with him." His symptoms are subtle. They can look like ordinary behavior except for when you compare it to others his age, etc. He can hold things together by sheer will until all of the sudden, he can't do it anymore, and everything hits the fan. At three, all of it was in the range of normal, but he was difficult--meltdowns, etc. He had some signs, but it just depended on how a person framed the behavior. His stims are all things neurotypical kids do too, but he does them a lot more often, a lot louder, persists in them longer, and often does them without realizing it (they are mostly vocal, and other kids have long outgrown this stuff). Those are just some examples of how much he is like other children when you are seeing things in isolation. We really saw these symptoms as minor quirks until we took him out of his former school environment and started attending a new church shortly thereafter. Suddenly, he was in a new situation, and those quirks became more pronounced. In addition, other kids outgrew some of their similar behaviors, and he did not. The older he gets, we realize that he has no idea how to ask appropriate questions or even realize he needs to ask a question, his thoughts about a situation are drastically different than ours (especially social niceties), etc. That kind of stuff was not really apparent at three. Your child may outgrow all of this stuff, or he may grow into it more fully as our son did. Our psych said that we intuitively remediated some of his more severe symptoms by just working with him on day-to-day stuff (flexibility, etc.), but that work certainly took its toll on us over time. I agree that getting a second opinion with someone who will look broader than autism spectrum disorders could be really helpful. We actually did something similar (avoided a second ADHD specialist). If you aren't comfortable with a diagnosis at this point, you might find that a book such as The Mislabeled Child by the Eides is a good place to get information that will help you in the meantime with practical issues. I can't remember the name of the book, but there is another book that offers helpful suggestions for problems that apply to a variety of issues--sensory, attention, meltdowns, etc. It's meant to help people whose kids are diagnosed or undiagnosed with day-to-day coping strategies. I will post it later if I can figure out what it's called. My biggest suggestion is to take detailed notes (with dates) and to keep an open mind for later down the road. You could start a file, or you could jot thoughts on your calendar and be sure to keep it long-term (this makes dating your thoughts easier). Be specific about situations, responses, circumstances, etc. You might even ask people who work with him for a description of his strengths and deficits so that you can look at them down the road to see if a pattern emerges. Take some videos and save samples of crafts, etc. that he does. You don't have to document every little thing, but do be sure to document offhand comments that may seem odd. We used to think my son's Montessori teachers were nuts when they said he had problems with fine motor skills and gross motor skills because he could string beads at 18 months, knit at 3.5, met all his milestones early, etc. Well, he does have motor issues--his scissors skills haven't changed much since he was three (talk about meltdowns!), he has trouble catching a ball, etc. When he swims, one side of his body doesn't move as well as the other. It's just that what he does well, he does really well, and what he does poorly, he does really poorly (and all of it goes down the tubes under minor stress). He also has vision problems (evaluation coming up next week), so some of it may be related to that, but apparently even that goes along with ASD.

The only thing about erector sets is that they require really good fine motor skills. My son likes the types of things in this thread, but he struggles a bit with the erector sets at 9. He has both really good and pitifully bad fine motor skills all at the same time--it just depends on what he's doing and what skill is required. I ditto all of the above (except the Dangerous book--I don't have any experience with it). My son is enjoying this book this summer with the neighbor boy who is also a handyman type. It requires some supervision, and it could get $$, but it's a lot of fun. http://www.amazon.com/Housebuilding-Children-2nd-Step---Step/dp/1585679062/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1376521463&sr=1-1&keywords=housebuilding+for+children K-nex might be another good option.

Is your daughter a problem-solver type? Not to downplay the legitimate concerns expressed here, but fwiw, I hated to write (still hate to write) unless I was giving factual information about a topic that I found personally interesting (like arthritis meds when I had a parent with arthritis). I do mean HATED. I did mediocre writing no matter how hard I tried, but if the writing had some kind of practical application (explaining, etc.), then I wrote really well. Startle my teacher well--he had seen the mediocre stuff. I eventually became a tech writer (a good one). I still don't write unless it's useful somehow. If she likes explaining the answer to a question to someone, I would run with it for now until you can't get anymore mileage out of it. Then, maybe you can take that to other subjects..."explain what a direct object is to someone who doesn't know," etc. You'll have to ask good questions, but maybe that would work. Maybe you could have her write procedures, such as how to attach a file to an e-mail message. Also, some writing disciplines focus more on the audience than the structure of the writing--who they are, what they know, what they don't know, which information is the most important to them, etc. This is important for many kinds of writing. It really helps narrow down content and delineates a clear problem to solve--this makes organizing the content much easier. I did a lot of audience analysis in my early tech writing classes. It's tremendously helpful.