No, I was actually speaking to the rest of your comment where you said people having the "typical ups and downs" can't relate…

I'm just saying that there is no such thing as "typical." Some couples make it through very difficult things (for example the suicide of their teen, infidelity, or one spouse sending the family into bankruptcy) and some don't. There's no judgement in that. It's just a difference.

To be fair, there's really no such thing as "typical" ups and downs. There's just differences in how couples deal with their challenges..

I'm so sorry you're struggling through this. Yes, after 20 years, there have been a couple of times I've felt it just wasn't worth it. It felt like we were going through the motions, roommates who happened to have a couple of kids. I didn't track it on a calendar, but the hardest was probably about a year, plus or minus. Fortunately, we managed to work through it. And it's interesting looking back, how much of what was going wrong was really nothing more than my perception of what I thought it was. My husband didn't have the same perspective so was pretty clueless. On the other side, better than ever, I can say marriage seems to be like the rest of life--made up of seasons and that was simply a season. To the immediacy of your current place, I would recommend something quick and easy with specific steps, like the 30-day Husband Encouragement Challenge. It IS Christian, but I think even non-believers would get a lot of benefit from the Action Steps. Three primary things are going on with a challenge like this: 1. it makes you realize you can not change other people, only your reactions to, and perception of, them. 2. It refocuses you, for just a month, to thinking about how you relate to him, rather than our basic human nature of focusing on the reverse. 3. It gives you a purpose and direction, instead of that feeling of just groping about in the dark, lost and alone. (As mentioned by a previous poster, love is a verb. Take action) So, while you're finding a counselor, ordering books and whatever else you think might help, start on day 1 right now. All you have to lose is a few minutes out of each day for a single month.

And diagramming was the only thing that really made it all click for my dyslexic! lol Very much a spacial-relation type of kid, grammar and sentence structure didn't make any sense until we started diagramming...

My text came apart too but I just finished the job and spiral bound it. It works better spiral bound anyway! :)

Check into a wooden scale model type (they dont need to be expensive!) It might not be the space-limitation itself so much as all that colored plastic...

You know, the biggest change is probably the prevalence of online communities. Those who met for play dates once a week/month can now log on to their Facebook homeschool group, or here, or some similar type of page that provides a virtual community whenever you need it...

Funny, I was just talking to Bean's teachers today at PTCs. Everyone commented on how easy she is to work with, how organized she is, how on-top-of-things...and I could hear the puzzlement. An extremely small school, there's only one teacher per subject at each level. So they each had had her brother in 7th, also, before we pulled him to homeschool. "Yeah, Buck is MY kid and Bean is her father's." lol OK, so I dug out my copy of SBS: Teens that I haven't read in a couple of years. (I love how you guys think people can just pick up any ol' book at the library!) I'll be checking in tomorrow after I've had a chance to re-read through chapter 1 and see if my edituon is close enough to the original. :)

20 years ago, I had a single college class that graded on the curve. And, because I'd never had experience with such a thing, I had to ask the prof. what it meant. lol

Our homeschool group is still nothing more than a meet-in-the-park type.

This was our experience as well. I love to write and as time passes, it becomes increasingly obvious that Buck likes to write as well, despite the dyslexia. And as much as I wanted to like IEW, it was just too formulaic for us. I was actually hoping the formula would be exactly what he needed, as he tends to still be kind of spastic in his writing. ...Chaotic and all over the place, much like a 5 year old when he's telling you some wild story. But instead it tended to be stifling.

State of being verbs pretty much have to be memorized, but the above is what I have always done for other verbs, also. Can you ______? Did you _________? Nouns are the same way. Can I reach out and touch __________ ? Obviously, it's a little more difficult to do this for abstract nouns ("idea"), but usually by the time they get to the point of having abstract nouns, they have a pretty good grasp of concrete ones.

Not Rainbow, but Buck is doing their high school level Spectrum Chemistry. I was able to order online, but there was a 3(?) week delay this fall for the lab kit. Good thing I ordered it 2 weeks before I actually needed it! Other than that, though, I've had no complaints. I think it's an excellent program, and I wish we'd done Rainbow first!

It's not the reading and writing that are the issue for us. In fact, if anything, the reading/writing part is probably what makes the most sense for him. Buck is completely thrown by the language, not the input/output. Latin seems to be the best for us as it's most closely tied to English. There are enough Latin roots in English words that he can make the connections and it's logical. But if there weren't those pegs to hang the new info on? (We've tried Spanish, for example. No dice) It just blows his mind and he can't retain anything. If Mandarin is something several people are speaking in his real-world, you might have luck. But if it's learned in a vacuum? I think it's probably going to be an exercise in frustration.

Haircuts! OK, so it's not something I make, but men's cuts, in particular, are super-easy and will save $20+/- each time.

:001_huh: I was just adding on to the factoid you posted...

Dollhouse! I played with mine well into college. I never had people or anything, it was for designing and redesigning living spaces. :)

-No sharing issues and Buck was just under 2 when Bean was born so he certainly wasnt old enough to really reason through it or anything. He would even hold her hand if they were nursing simultaneously. It was the *sweetest* thing. - I went into preterm labor at 28 weeks. While my midwife thought it was far more likely connected to dehydration from a flu I'd had, I still had to wean Buck. He never quit asking, though. So at 37 (?) weeks, when I wad released from bedrest and allowed to resume normalcy, he picked up like nothing had happened. -After delivery, my milk came back in fully in about a day, unlike the almost week! with my first. -Im so glad I got to tandem nurse them for a couple years. Sometimes when those bickering adolescents are getting to me, it's a nice memory to bring out and cherish :)

VERY well said.

To be fair, over 30 hrs is nearly full time. I think common sense probably dictates that full time school AND full time job are probably going to cause issues... I doubt most people recommending a job are suggesting a full time one.

My mother has had the Desederata hanging above her kitchen sink for as long as I can remember... :)

We've been stressing the importance of grades and good ACTs (as it's much easier to get a ride through school that way). We contribute to a small 529 for each that we set up a number of years ago, but really, we'll be happy if that covers four years of BOOKS, never mind the tuition. We'll be encouraging college classes in high school and at 14, Buck has a $10hr job from which he has to save 75% for school. I'm hoping Bean can find something similar in a year or two...

High schooler here, and while we both enjoyed the first 9 weeks of TOG, there was just too much going on in different directions for my kid with executive function issues. We needed to go back to a more straight-forward history text. We're now using SWB's History of the Ancient World, along with the accompanying Study Guide. It's working well. For lit. we're reading ancient classics using Progeny Press guides.

If this is the case, then they will NEVER have peers outside of some highly-specialized field. It's better to start now, teaching them how important it is to relate to those around them.