To answer the first question. All my school math teachers were female. But that's only 3 people, Pre A and Algebra (same person), Geometry, and College Algebra (I did DE, and I do not recommend that sequence). All were great. The high school geometry teacher was something of a girly-girl, the others were more "practical" I guess. The youth leader at my church taught high school Physics (in a different district). She went to Cedarville, and apparently was heavily pressured by her profs to go to Grad school and R&D. They thought teaching high school was a waste for her. But she wanted to marry her high school sweetheart and have kids, and do physics, so secondary teaching it was. My mother was an electrical engineer. She had (undiagnosed) LD's in language, so math was her good subject so that's what she did. But, yeah, she got into Gothard stuff, and that squashed any equality-in-education thoughts she had, I think. She never bothered to teach me math. While my brother was encouraged in his desire to pick up computer programming books and math books, my mom didn't bother to see if I was keeping up. But she was also "competing" with me, I think. I have no reading disability, and I think she tried to keep the one thing she was better at than me. So, while gender roles are prevalent in conservative Christian circles, it's not necessarily the case the places like Cedarville are holding back female STEM students. It's crazies like Gothard mixed in with some personal baggage issues mostly, I think. But we were semi-rural, and I picked up a lot of "boy" skills anyways. I know how to mow a lawn and use chippers and shredders and edgers. I also know how to use a good number of tools, and was greatly appreciated on one job I had that I came in knowing what a socket wrench was and how to use it. And then there was the time in college (not Cedarville, but similar) when we were building the set for the Spring play at 3am and everyone, boys and girls, were working the power screwdrivers and power drills frantically. People who keep girls away from these things because they're "girls" are raising girls who are going to be left behind. So, in my own case, I'm raising a white boy who is interested in STEM things. And honestly, I don't think he has ever noticed gendered messages, and it doesn't cross his mind. We were at a robot enrichment class yesterday at the library, and all the volunteers running it were women, and the main teacher was a minority woman. About a 1/3 of the students were girls. I noticed, but I don't think he did. He has also toured a quantam physics lab with a female grad student. And his main Minecraft/Roblox playmate is a girl. So I'm sorta hoping he never thinks about the mentality of "girl can't..." I mean, maybe later I'll talk with him (or DH will talk with him) about these issues, but right now I think it will just put ideas in his head that he's not ready for. The same sorta with race. When he was in K it was the 2012 election, so they had a civics unit and did an activity where the kids "voted." So Crazypants was convinced for a while that he had actually "voted" for Obama. He had his reasons (lol) but the whole issue of Obama having darker skin was not mentioned at all. I don't want him to grow up totally "blind" to issues in the world today. But I also don't want to infringe on his innocence. He can see that there's all sorts of people doing all sorts of jobs, so for right now I think that's enough. Unless, of course, someone is an a** and barges in with negative viewpoints. I am trying to teach him manners and "chivalry" but I think those apply to everyone. Help others, especially those weaker than you. Be willing to step up and do the hard job. So I sent him to help Oma go to the store yesterday (she is undergoing chemo). I think I would also send a daughter to do that. Everyone should know how to do grocery shopping, and everyone ought to help out.

I think Monica is right. That is my #1 exasperation with Mounce for learning Greek. He has (or had, I haven't seen the most recent edition) a "% of Greek NT you can read now" number at the end of each chapter. So after the first chapter, where you learned "and" and "estin" and a few other high frequency words, he told students that they now "knew" something like 15% of the NT. Uh, if you mean you can recognize them on the page, sure. But it doesn't mean that you can read and understand 15% of the NT. I think Mounce thought the number would be encouraging, but I found it to be rather dishonest. So in Dutch I don't get a percentage # in Duolingo. :( Oh, well! But it would be interesting to see where people place on a1/a2/b1/b2/c1/c2 exams after completing a tree in a particular language. Lots of people here are using Duolingo, so maybe we could run our own informal investigation?

Quoting here, though your earlier post in this thread got my wheels spinning. I've heard chatter in some circles that Paleo diet "cures" autism, and I've always chalked this up to the kid probably actually having a B12 deficiency, maybe he can't absorb B12 well and eats a lot of processed food or whatever. Switch to Paleo where Mom is hiding ground up liver to the weekly hamburgers and meatloaf, and boom, yeah the "autism" gets cured. But this whole thread brought to mind the diet de jour of a few years ago - Resistant Starch. What it is. Some more info about it. One interesting thing I got through trawling Paleo/WAPF sites is the insistence on getting nutrients from food. Which is why they go through the insane trouble of soaking things and getting special butter and so on. They're hunting down specific micro-nutrients in their food. So, in the second link, there is a lot of talk about getting RS from food (particular and particularly prepared food) with some allowance made for adding on more RS from a good natural source. Of course, people are apt to take things way too far. So during this time I heard of people going on Potato Diets. Where they literally ate nothing but cooked and cooled potatoes for a week. Ooookkaaayyy..... But this whole question - how is what we eat digested? How does it chemically change? Is something that I don't think the experts are entirely sure about. So prebiotics - intentionally feeding (or starving) gut flora is something that has question marks on it. What I do know, from my brief foray into Paleo, is that hitting even the USDA food pyramid suggestions for servings of fruits and vegetables is not achieved by most people. Going beyond it takes work. Cutting out grains and other "easy" starches made me reorient my whole idea of a well-balanced meal. When I wanted a snack I didn't grab pretzels or "healthy" crackers, I cut up a cucumber and a tomato. Fortunately, I lived in Florida and had access to a Hispanic market that had 15/$1 limes and I could walk out with a cart overflowing with produce for under $40 (including avocados). It was really a shocking amount of vegetables I went through in a week. And I thought I was already eating pretty healthy! So, lots of Paleo types limit fruit because so many adults are coming to it as sugar-addicted hyperglycemics. They'll likely snack on just overripe bananas if they get a chance. Or, they're Paleo to be LC because of mental health (being in ketosis is apparently a treatment for bipolar or schizophrenia, or something). But, there's a general consensus that kids should have unlimited access to all the whole foods of whatever type they want. Feed the raging growth hormones! So kids in Paleo houses are also eating a ton of fruit, I would guess. All this to say, yes it's probably all very complicated, but this prebiotic idea is possibly a part of the picture. And it makes me wonder if some of the "autism" being cured with Paleo wasn't B12 but maybe crazy-bad gut bacteria issues. Who knows. I also wonder about the fact that DH has had long-standing digestive issues that made me wonder if he had IBS, and Crazypants went through issues with constipation (which I think I solved with probiotic kefir I got from Whole Foods). So, again, hmmmm..... But, if anyone is interested in feeding their kids the prebiotic fiber of Resistant Starch instead of inulin using actual food....those links give some ideas. Now is the season for potato salad.

That looks like a really interesting test. Problem solving, yeah, there's issues here with that. I thought the WISC would uncover issues with WM and PS, and while his WM was the lowest score, it was still over 100. So I feel like people just look at that and say "oh, there's no problem there." Well, there is a problem there. Sure, they could fall into other categories of EF or emotional dysregulation. But sometimes those things come together in a particular way. We talked to Crazypants's school, and his teachers were against moving him to the gifted school. One teacher has a gifted child who went there, so I think her opinion carries some weight. Basically, it boiled down to that school having a discovery-based and problem-solving education model, and that's something that would really not fit CP at all. He's smart, but not in that way. I don't know if I could get someone to run the TOPS test on him. I suppose I could theoretically buy it and ply it on him myself (it doesn't look like scoring is really that hard?). But what would I do with the results? Hmmm....

My husband has issues with his saliva glands. He pushes and "sucks" out stones often. One very helpful doctor gave him the tip to suck on something super sour. Like a lemon drop. Or, if you want all natural, you could put a slice of lemon under your tongue. It's a bit of a crazy thing to do, but it does stimulate the glands to clear themselves out of any junk they're hanging on to. You may want to have strong mouth rinse handy, apparently the results taste awful. My husband has discussed getting his main problem gland removed with doctors. But the problem is that even the best surgeon runs the risk of cutting some of facial nerves there.

I am supplementing Magnesium already. I think I have a good super-absorbing type from a good brand. But that's another confusing can of worms - how to trust that what is on the label is in the bottle. Getting top-of-the-line supplements is $$$$. I'm following a protocol for diabetic neuropathy, based around ALA. There's scientific studies to back up that high doses of ALA reverses diabetic neuropathy in a statistically significant way. I talked to my doctor about this, but she can't prescribe ALA from the pharmacy, so me doing this treatment is all out-of-pocket, while the mild mask-the-symptoms pain reliever is prescribed and covered by insurance. This is so annoying. So, yeah, same with this research into ASD. Pharmaceuticals won't fund research into a drug which could be marketed as a "supplement" if it does turn out that there's a naturally-occurring amino acid underlying all this. And if it is a "supplement" then doctors can't prescribe it, treating with it will be out-of-pocket, and the whole idea will be under the shadow of woo. This also annoys me.

My interest was piqued when glutathione was mentioned. I seem to be suffering Lyme-induced neuropathy, so glutathione has recently become important to me. But yeah, this stuff is crazy. We're talking tiny chemical compounds within cells here. I know some biochemists, and they're trying to figure this out. Macros and the mega-vitamins, easy. But these amino acids and how they're made, what they do, and what the body does with them? There's still so many question marks. I don't know. My DH loves brussels sprouts, and Crazypants has always loved broccoli. I believe that on some level the body tries to get us to eat things containing nutrients it needs, so that makes me say hmmmm.... But I've never seen any connection between Crazypants having a fever and his ASD symptoms. But his outward symptoms are really mild. So I'm swallowing handfuls of amino acid and vitamin supplements every day, in the hope that my nerves will stop being so wonky (and hopefully not die off completely) a few months from now. Seeing an effect takes months, yes. Besides the expense, getting a kid to swallow enough pills to mega-dose on these amino acids for a maybe-sorta improvement months down the line? I hesitate there. I'd be interested in seeing more research done. This is really interesting.

Homeschool Buyers Coop is doing free summer trials again for Discovery streaming, NG, and also something called a Maker Studio. The first two are videos (yes, please!) and the Maker Studio is sorta like a 3D printing design intro. I only played with it for a few minutes today. Similar to the Maker Studio is tinkercad.com. I think that's like a contemporary kid version of Autocad. But I think these work best if you can get access to special printing equipment. Sometimes libraries have them for a fee-per-use. Or a print shop. You could agree with him that you'll print one project every other month, or whatever works for you. Or he could just enjoy designing things. Seriously, my dad worked for years just designing things in Autocad (I think he started on the original 1.0 version, lol) and hardly ever saw the finished result. And that was for a company that actually still made their machines in the other half of the building. I usually just browse EdX for mooc's. They're pretty high-quality and easy to use. I've tried to interest Crazypants in a few, but he's not able to do it "on his own time" so to speak, and I haven;t been able to solve the technical and space-time logistics so we can do a course together consistently. I think I'll wait until he's a bit older before I give that idea another serious go. But your kid might latch onto the idea. Who knows?

Have you tried soaking them in dish soap? The good Dawn stuff. When I was washing diaper cream residue out of cloth diapers I just chucked them out of the soak bucket and into the washing machine. It didn't seem to hurt the machine. I think in a HE washer I wouldn't risk running a cycle with dish soap.

Besides golf benefit, is there a Yacht club or similar country club in the area? I knew a small-ish yacht club that did a fundraiser during their annual Regatta. The club and the participants used it as a massive tax write off. But nonetheless, they raised around 80k in one day for a girl who had leukemia. Charitable non-profit with a little girl needing medical care - call every fancy place in the area and ask if you can tag along with one of their events as a tax-deductible fundraiser. All you'll need to provide, probably, is a quality poster board with the girl's picture and a brief bio of her needs. They'll do the rest.

Yes, Building Thinking Skills is CTCo. The first half is non-verbal - which was a total breeze here (yes, sky-high score on the WISC for that, no surprise there!). The second half is verbal, making analogies and classifying and following verbal directions. It's okay. Can I admit I have the book because I grabbed it at a thrift store for $1? I don't know if I would have bought it new. R&R is better, I think, if you're just interested in working on the verbal. I mentioned doing BTS with him to the neuropsych, and while she had never heard of CTCo., when I described it briefly she did encourage me to keep doing it with him. She thought it would be really helpful for him. But we haven't gotten to the point yet of bringing in outside specialists (more waiting lists, yippee!), so I don't know what a specialist who has some personal experience with him would say. I hear what you're saying about structure v. inflexibility. I don't know the answer. I think a repetitive writing task is a good idea. So you can start by having him write three points "1. What I hoped to learn. 2. What I did. 3. What I learned" or whatever, and after he's go that, ask him to write it as an inverse "1. What I did this week. 2. What I learned. 3. Whether I accomplished what I hoped to learn." So you give him a structure, and then ask him to play with the structure. That may prevent him from locking down into an inflexible format?

Does he have problems expressing himself verbally, or in writing, or in both? My kid can fall into the "little professor" type pretty easily, but writing..... uh, that's real iffy. My DH (who is maybe Aspie or Aspie-ish) is much the same. Blab blab blab and it's great (for certain settings!), but writing - it's total word salad. It's obvious he's really trying, the content is great, if you can follow it. So for me, there's some expression, the problem is how to drill down when that verbal expression is inappropriate, and how to translate that expression into good written form. I found Reading & Reasoning to be pretty brilliant for this. Have you used it? I'm trying to remember if we've talked about this before or what, it's all fuzzy. But, it builds language from a logical reasoning point of view. Logical reasoning is something quite preferred by certain members of my family. It connected with Crazypants (I need to buy the next level, but we're trying to finish out the verbal section of Building Thinking Skill first, but it's killing us, ugh). It something like proofs, making syllogisms and the like, but it also presents logical forms for building sentences and paragraphs. I've also toyed with the idea of starting to drill down on outlining. Outlining for comprehension, but also outlining for output. For verbal expression, even outlining a la speech class. Write out five ordered points, then talk about them in order. No bunny trails allowed! (DH blabs a lot, and I've been led down the dead ends of so many bunny trails....). SWB talks about outlining from encyclopedias, and even though it makes me say huh?, I'm thinking I should give it a whirl. I also keep poking at Classical Composition. So much outlining!!! I will open up here a bit and say, while no one has ever suggested to diagnose me with anything, my own verbal expression is extraordinarily weak. My written expression (even just what I dash off here on the forums) is way beyond what you would get if I was talking to you face-to-face. Probably for me it's natural introversion coupled with not being given social communication skills and opportunities at a young age. But my written expression developed because of hours and hours of reading (both fiction and lots of non-fiction like Time magazine) and also good training in composition (free creative writing, followed by good academic essay training). College speech class, where I had to outline a speech and then give it, has made me a competent public speaker, if I'm allowed to prepare. My own approach has no correspondence to Crazypants (read fiction for hours every day? Nope!). But throwing it out there to see if it sparks any ideas for you.

Yes! that's how you spell it! It was the drug that was an anti-depressant before SSRI's or something. At low doses it is used for lots of things because of how it works chemically. Few or mild side effects - unlike the Tramadol I tried, which left me shaking and nearly passed out. That was a very not-fun day. And not addictive - unlike the Valium my doc suggested. Can we exhaust other possibilities first? Maybe because my Lyme is open-and-shut (I seem to fit perfectly in the thing called PTLD, right down to the timeline and symptoms) and I got a referral quickly and everything is covered by insurance, but I'm pretty blaise about it. In a few months I'll probably be pumped full of abx, but until then I just want to be half-functional please. Chemically, if necessary. Unrelenting symptoms really grind a person down. Just want to make sure the OP knows that I don't see any shame in asking her doctor for a bit of help there. There's only so much a person can tough out until they're empty.

BlsdMama, have you gotten any prescription relief? You have nerve symptoms? Nerve pain? I'm waiting for my appt with the Lyme clinic, but my doc did put me on a scrip for nerve pain. I think the brand name in America is Eleve? Amphiti....something. Helps nerve pain, and anxiety, and moods, and sleep, and other stuff. It's great. I can get out of bed and do stuff now. And not feel like yelling at everyone, and then weeping because I hurt, but it's hard to say how it hurts, which is even sadder. Anyways, don't know how far away treatment is for you. But it's worth asking your regular doc for something to ease your mind and your symptoms in the meantime. Before this all happened i had friends who would post FB memes about their struggles with chronic pain and/or chronic illness, and I was totally sympathetic and all, but I was still like "well, yeah, that's tough," No, chronic pain and chronic illness is absolutely horrid. Totally horrible. Beyond horrendous. If your doc can find you a good med that helps you, even temporarily, I think it's worth it.

I saw your first thread, and wanted to answer, but...this weekend I had bad days. Hospital, painkillers, an EKG. Lyme sucks. Anyway, this is the GF you mentioned in the other thread who has to use a walker now? Yes, a sudden and inexplicable downward spiral of "weird" pain and fatigue could be a result of a Lyme infection. But the whole chronic Lyme idea is controversial. I'm lucky in that there was an Indian Summer day last Fall, which caused me to throw on a pair of shorts, and my MIL happened to see the rash on the back of my leg, and that the Doctor saw the bulls-eye rash and my blood test results were positive. This weird, invisible, intermittent pain already makes me feel like I'm a crazy person complaining about "phantom" pain, at least my medical record has proof that there might be an explanation for it, kwim? If it wasn't for that, I think I would be even more miserable and hopeless right now. Which is to say, some doctors are suspicious about people wondering if they have Lyme. When I say "Yes, I had the rash and tested positive" there's a huge change in their demeanor. There's a way to test for non-immediate infections, I think. But I don't think it's commonly done. So, I'm guessing the GF has been tested for the more common diseases, yes? Simple things like b12 or folate, even, those can do a number if your body suddenly decides to stop absorbing any. So you start putting checkmarks in the "no" column, and you get to diagnosis by exclusion. So then you have to start sorting through which symptoms match up, and which ones are simply coincidental (one good thing out of this mess I've been living in is that a doctor figured out I have loose joints in my fingers, and that's why doing too much cleaning work always caused me pain - I also have nerve pain in my fingers, but the temporary stiffness and swelling was its own thing). So then you can start exploring treatment for the most likely candidates, and hopefully the doctors don't mark you down as a crazy hypochondriac. I'm still waiting for my appointment with a Lyme clinic, so I have nothing to say about treatment options. In the short term, while waiting for referrals and appointments, my advice to the GF is to rest as much as possible and try to manage the symptoms. So, my symptoms are mostly neurological, so I'm trying to take supplements that support my nerves and how to move with a minimum of discomfort. If she's having joint pain, she can look into some of the supplements and therapies for people with joint issues. It doesn't cure the underlying disease at all, but it may help mitigate the I-feel-hopelessly-crappy feelings while you figure out the real treatment, and hopefully it will help her return to full health faster when she does get treatment and starts to get better. I'm also interested in what other people recommend as good resources.

:grouphug: I ignore Mother's Day completely. Easier said than done. But I've taken a general "meh" approach to most secular holidays. My feelings are right up there with Blue Moon Tuesday Day. Oh is that today? That's nice. Maybe my apathy is because of my personal issues with Mother's Day? I don't do anything on Mother's Day. I don't feel obligated to do anything. I don't feel obligated to receive anything that day either. But FB is hard sometimes. I should remember that it's this Sunday, so I can remember to stay off FB this weekend.

Just want to say thanks you for your posts. I'm figuring out the ST website and how their stuff goes together. His basic holes, yes. Sometimes he'll say something, and I'm just like "huh? what? you don't know that?" I think it's weird for him (especially weird?) because I suspect he has an inkling that he's missing something, but it's just out his grasp. Which makes it all the more frustrating for him.

Oh, yeah, I'm sure the social story was made for a reason. But it seemed like most of the Age 6-12 selections were like that, and the Age 13-18 were...beyond his hormone level. He's at a really odd place when it comes to finding a good fit, for a lot of things. That link has some really good stuff, thanks! Though one of the videos is narrated by a clown. A clown? That's not going to fly here... :huh: :laugh:

It's like he's just figured out that other kids aren't like him, and he doesn't know what to do with it. It's the age, I guess, 10yo's are beyond the "weee, what a fun slide! Let's go again" peer interaction. And being in school, instead of meeting kids only in well-defined activities like CoderDojo. He has almost no shared interests with the other kids in school. So we can tell him "smile, say hi, ask about their weekend" but he doesn't see the point. He should learn to be polite and make small talk, but he doesn't see any possibility of it paying off, that maybe by doing this he might find a friend he connects with. So it makes him even more "meh" about trying. So he's intentionally disconnecting from the other kids, and then complains that he's lonely. And when he tries to ask a question in class, the teachers know that 10 times out of 10 it will probably be so abstractly advanced that it will be useless to the other students, so they tell him that he can't ask a question, and then he complains that he's being ignored. He's frustrated, and his perspective is not in a good place at all right now. So he feels that when people put something to do in front of him which he finds really easy, or looks like it's for younger kids, it's because they think he's stupid. It's a bad place for him to be in, I know, but it makes me extra careful to not make it worse. A lot of gifted kids probably have to grapple with the "kids my age really take 3 whole months to learn fractions!?" idea at some point. But when you add in ToM deficiencies as well....yeah. Once he feels at least one of his E's get understood, I'll tackle ironing the crinkles here. But right now, he's in a place of enormous confusion and frustration. But he doesn't often make inappropriate/rude outbursts in public or to other kids. He mostly just complains to me. And that's okay. But it also means that I get the full force of his "How did you even think this was a good idea? Do you not know me at all? I'm your own kid!" exasperation if I ask him to do something he finds wildly cognitively inappropriate. Even if it is a skill he needs to step back to work on, if he thinks it's beneath him, he'll mentally shut down on it completely. It's also something that worries me about OT. I started OT for my hands (turns out that I have loose joints in my fingers) and I'm giggling over the fact that I've be prescribed to play with play-doh daily. I know it's medically effective and all, but still, it's a little funny. But if Crazypants was told to play with play-doh, I think he'd be really upset, that it would be a sign that he's really dumb, and can't do anything, and catastrophic, catastrophic, catastrophic.

Looking through all the links.... Yes, we're still in NL. I found out there two organizations here that run intensive parent-training seminars, but neither are ST. In any case, they'd be months away. There's school choice here, so one of things under discussion is whether to move him to a different school entirely. Socially, he's quite disconnected from the other kids in his school (except for two sisters, who themselves have a bit of alphabet soup after their names). We have tried to teach him how to "fake interest" with the other kids all year, but trading football cards is just a bridge too far to practice what we're telling him, I think. The maturity/age-level thing - when I was poking around the internet I found some "social stories" and even at the upper-elementary they seemed to be at the level of "when I poke my friend with my pencil, this makes her feel sad." I think something like this would make him go :001_rolleyes: :rofl: . What he needs to understand is why in social studies class the teacher doesn't want to talk about social differences between hunter-gatherer and agricultural societies (his teachers are great, but they're swamped with 23 other kids, obviously). Dh and I have tried to explain to him why this happens, but I don't think he really understands it. Learning whether communication is proper to the context is a general skill, but I think he'd do better learning from more complex examples. Or maybe the social stories I found were just bad? As for OT - yes, maybe that could get scheduled. Maybe. I feel like in the midst of sorting out his other, more pressing, issues, the motor issues got sifted to the bottom of the pile. So I don't know what services we can get there or what the waiting list would be. If there's a good activity I can start doing with him now, at least that would be some movement on that issue. Have to run.

So, we're finally reaching the end of Crazypant's evaluation. Results - he qualifies for Mensa and is ASD-something. The Psych isn't quite sure where to put him in ASD because of his intelligence masking symptoms. But it will be in the final report somehow. Fine. We have an appointment with his school to talk about possibilities. Different things are on the table. The good thing about getting ASD on the report is that it will provide us money to purchase therapies for him. How this works is actually a bit complicated, but in the end it's quite open-ended. So we can use the budget to hire ABA, or go to parent-training seminars, or whatever. Now we're quite rural, he's 2e, probably easiest to define as Aspie, and he's a foreign language speaker. He doesn't need much help with talking, not stimming, or behavior issues. And it seems like most of the professional resources I'm finding nearby are for those things or other more intense "classic" autism. I mean, I suppose I could call them up and drop the word "twice-exceptional" and see how they respond, but I'm not hopeful, kwim? Within the budget construction, it is possible to parents to "hire" themselves to provide services. So this got me thinking that if the budget allows, I could order therapy materials and go through them with him myself. So it would be in English and tailored to his mental and emotional intelligence. Obviously, we'd also be considering local programs and seeing what the school can provide, but for targeting his issues I'm looking for recommendations for curriculum. Something open-and-go for me (so I don't do it wrong), something visual for him, something that isn't too "babyish," something where he can use his intelligence to grasp the big picture. I think the biggest issues to work on with him is social skills, ToM, and fine motor skills. I'm looking at Model Me Kids. Has anyone used that? I know some people here use SocialThinking.org. Any specific recommendations from their products? Know the Code - another video curriculum. Or Explore Social Skills - any ideas about these? Motor skills - I don't know. He knows how to tie shoes and ride a bike. Using scissors or a pencil is still hard. Do you just have them practice it (a bit every day) even though it makes them super upset? Is there a curriculum for this? That sounds a bit dumb, I know, but it might help if I can do the "blame the curriculum" game (the book says this is day 5, and on day 5 you have to do this activity, so just get it done). Or is it better to just totally outsource these sorts of hard and upsetting things? Because his thinking level is high, I'm looking at middle-school/high-school materials. But for social skills some of the programs I see include topics in sex. He's 10. With a curriculum I do with him, I could just skip those parts. But for a book I hand to him to read....no, he'd just find it very confusing, and disturbing. Anyone have BTDT advice for me? Any other if-I-could-purchase-anything-I-would-buy-this-for-my-2e-kid recommendations? BtW - his lowest scores on the WISC were processing speed and working memory, but they were still slightly above average. So there's technically nothing that needs remediation as far as the WISC is concerned.

I looked that up on Amazon - is there a sample of it anywhere? Can you say more about it? Amazon suggested The Gifted Teen Survival Guide: Smart, Sharp, and Ready for (Almost) Anything. I can look inside it, and it comes on kindle (international customer here). Can anyone say anything about it? Crazypants is now officially "gifted" and not a moment too soon, we're also in full-on existential crisis. Self-help resources are greatly desired right now.

Don't ask parents to fundraise. Really. Fundraising may make perfect sense to you in this situation. But lower class people HATE being "asked" to be involved in fundraisers. HATE it. It's not about you or the activity, they just hate fundraisers. Especially fundraisers that involve selling something. Asking people to do something they hate isn't a good battle to fight. You'll probably lose. [i should point out here that my childhood fundraising debacle with the candy bars was an idea cooked up by the other mom, who was MC. My parents would not have done it if she didn't guilt trip them into thinking it was great idea.] I could detail out all the reasons why lower class people hate fundraisers. But to put it simply, they think they are worthless scams which are designed to make pampered kids think they have actually worked for something which was handed to them. You say that selling popcorn would've erased the fees. I'd bet you dollars to donuts that most of the parents didn't believe you. How can selling bags of popcorn raise that amount of money? The idea is ludicrous. Oh, it really would've raised that much money? From popcorn? Crazy! You must be asking them to fleece people. They work all day selling overpriced t-shirts in a retail store for a pittance and feeling sorry for the suckers who buy it, and now you want them to turn around and overcharge their friends? That's a nope. And no, parents will not pay "additional fees." They'll pay the initial cost, but they expect everything after that to be earned by their kid. Oh, their kid worked hard and earned an awards ceremony? Great! Wait, the parent has to pay for it? What? WTH? Their kid earned it, not them. Are you expecting them to give their kid a handout so they can go get an award they earned? Huh? I'm not saying that their approach is right (though it does have an element of truth in it, doesn't it?). But they're not going to let go of these cultural mores just because you want them to. Don't ask parents to fundraise. Don't ask parents to pay anything more than the initial stated cost. If you've got to raise money so the group can do something special, schedule the next group meeting to be at Joe's Gas Station and tell all the kids to wear clothes they can get wet. Provide pizza. Expect parents to be confused and maybe upset when they pick up their kid. Smile and give them a slice of pizza and talk about what a fun team building activity you had that day. Rinse, repeat.

First, I have no idea why my mother thought it was a good idea for us to go selling door to door. People have mentioned in this thread that they preferred to see people selling outside stores. We really did kick around that idea. But concluded that it was not allowed to do that. We were deeply uncomfortable selling outside the racetrack, as we were pretty certain that wasn't allowed either. Ever seen those "no soliciting" signs posted outside stores? We didn't understand that if you ask the manager nicely they might allow you to set up shop anyways. And maybe they would do it for national cool people, like Girl Scouts. Not little people like us. And yes, the big houses were stingy. It was the big houses where the adults winced and looked at our chocolate bars like they might be poison and grudgingly handed over a buck. It was the smaller houses that said "wow, those chocolate bars are GREAT! Only a dollar? I only have $3 in my wallet. Darn it." They really were nice, big chocolate bars from a local chocolate company that was highly sought after. A dollar was a more than reasonable. Why should you trust that a kid is raising money for what they say they are? If what they're selling is a good deal anyways, what does it matter? Or do you go through life assuming that everyone is lying to you? Yep, another difference. It was usually the big houses where we got the suspicious stare. The smaller houses took us at our word. Whether people buy something or not really is indicative. But more than that is the attitude received. And no, it wasn't every big house that was a scrooge. I am speaking in generalities. It is a generality based on a broad experience of reality. You can be upset and swear up and down that you're not like that. Fine. It doesn't change my own experienced reality. But back to the OP's point - yes I know the attitude of wanting the world for free. There's been a growing trend of churches wanting to have a good, educated, dynamic, excellent full-time pastor for a salary of $0. Yes, ZERO dollars. Because being a pastor is a calling from God, you should be willing to do God's work for no pay, right? I mean, it's so great that they're giving you a place to exercise your ministry, what more can you ask for? I've seen this trend growing more and more, and not in churches with poor people, but in churches with wealthy people. In one case, where the board suddenly decided to reduce the pastor's pay to $0 (effective immediately), they were generous enough to not cut the stipend for the organist. Cause the organist was a professional they hired in, and they liked pretty music. The pastor, well, this was his ministry. And yes, that's truly all there was too it, UMC guys looking at the church budget and realizing they could reduce a big chunk of it if they cut out the salary, and then they wouldn't have to give so much money. They told the bishop straight up that they didn't care if the pastor decided to leave, they had run the numbers and paying a weekly supply pastor in their area was cheaper. Or in other cases, where the clergy is paid so poorly his family get medicaid and food stamps, and when the members find out they are HAPPY. Because that means they don't have to worry about increasing his salary or paying to provide health insurance. 9 times out of 10 this is coming from people who wouldn't be caught dead in the shadow of the jobs and family services building. They are happy because this means that they don't need to think about giving up their family vacation, which, btw, has a total cost of more than the pastor's annual salary. These are REAL cases, from my own lived experience. I don't know where this idea is getting incubated exactly. But it's getting more and more prevalent. Maybe you haven't seen it, maybe you just haven't been in a position to notice it. But I can assure you that it is very, very real.

I don't think our experiences are dramatically different. I'm talking about paying dues and refusing financial assistance, and you're still talking about fundraisers and scholarships. Obviously, whatever you have going on (which I can't know the full details of since I'm not there irl) is not working. Okay. That's very frustrating. But have you tried to figure out why it isn't working? Did you ask why parents don't show up at the meeting to get scholarships? Why they don't seem to understand the commitment they signed up? Why they don't seem to understand the financials? You may think you are communicating clearly, but it seems that something is getting lost. It happens. Perfectly obvious things get misunderstood. People are weird. I've seen too many church board meetings, people are so very incredibly weird. But people are also rather predictable, if you understand where they're coming from. That's what I'm trying to tell you, what may be perfectly obvious and reasonable to you may not be at all anything of the sort to someone from a different background. But I will reiterate that IME the people who are most likely to want to get everything dead cheap is the MC or UMC. I said before that I understand that the MC is being squeezed tight. Do you think you're the only one who feels backed into huge unexpected expenses? I'm sure plenty of your neighbors feel the same. And they probably had a habit of overspending their credit cards and listening to their realtor telling them to overbuy their house to boot. Crunch time, and they can't change their fixed expenses, so they get told to cut everywhere else, right down to their coffee. But they don't want to deny their kids anything (because once you start having to tell your kids "no" you've really crossed over to the terrible status of being poor) so they try to finagle their way out of paying a cent. They may look rich (because of the fixed costs they're under) but in reality they're poor, and in denial. And because they're in denial they don't talk about it, and don't realize that every one else is in a bind too, and their desire to be given a certain lifestyle is at odds with the reality that everyone else is also trying to keep afloat. And then there's some rich people, who honestly try to pinch people off of others so they can afford to take a fancy cruise every year. Seen that too. Ever been privy to church financials? Those are really interesting. Maybe even more interesting than seeing a person's tax return. I've totally been financially taken advantage of by the above two groups. So I understand how ugly it is for people to expect you to serve them and live off air. I'm also saying that most common models of running and funding EC's, any EC, across the board, do not work for certain segments of the population. You can try anyways and get frustrated, just accept that you are going to have to exclude those people, or change so that you can include them. Any of those options are hard. But I think understanding the issue behind your frustration would be more productive than being mad and upset.