I probably peed on a stick 50 times from the age of 38 to 45. Almost every single cycle was long and in the middle of it I'd feel nauseous and be able to smell anything in a 5 mile radius so I'd pee on a stick - again - and it would be negative - again. It was almost just a habit at that point. Until that one time at age 45 when it was positive. She's 4 now and is a complete joy! But even after 50 pregnancy tests it was still a shocker 😂

I have the running commentary of words in my brain too. Sometimes I even type them out on a ticker-tape type thing going across my mind. I can and do visualize things, so I'm not completely non-visual, but words are primary for sure. I remember being surprised by my husband explaining to me that putting his thoughts into words is an actual thing he has to concentrate to do. I always thought that was just an expression. How does one think without words???? What the heck else was running around inside his head???? Turns out it's images and he has to think quite a bit before he puts them into words.

Honestly, I learned so so so much just from going through elementary and middle school aged materials with my kids. It's more than a little embarrassing 😜 By the time we got to high school and I watched Great Courses videos with them and whatnot, I felt like I was getting the education I'd never had. I think if you *want* to go through Well Educated Mind or something similar then go for it! But I also think you can give your high school kids (when you get there! 😉 )a great education and give yourself one right alongside them. It's not a prerequisite; it's more of a corequisite, iykwim.

I just buy the individual courses I want from Great Courses and watch them on the Great Courses app. I'm not sure I'd use it enough for a subscription to Wondrium.

My kid didn't start a business but he showed strong leadership in several different activities. He also went to Boys' State and was able to write his essay on his leadership experience there and I think that's what clinched his scholarship.

1.5 pages I have no idea if anyone in admissions read it or not, but it was a really great exercise for me to crystallize into words who they are and what they're all about and then to let them read the letter after I was done.

Yes. I booked my campsite at Muskegon 6 months ahead and by the time I was done booking there was almost nothing left at the campground.

We're camping at Muskegon State Park MI in late July. We've been there before and it's absolutely beautiful! We call it the poor man's Florida vacation because you get the beach without the prices and the long drive 😉

It's even more hilarious that the town is called "Effing" 🤣🤣🤣

Currently my plan is to keep it all in case I need to educate our hypothetical bunker community's children in the event of the apocalypse 😜

I'd be lying if I said I never engaged in comparison between my hs and our local ps or other hs'ing moms irl or here on this board. However, I do a lot to guard against letting those comparisons dictate what we do or don't do here in our hs. We started off in ps and only began hs'ing when my 4 oldest were in 8th, 6th, 4th, and K. So although I'd done all this research and was excited about implementing a totally different approach to education, my 3 who had been in ps were very definitely comparing our hs to ps lol! As was DH, honestly, not because he was skeptical of hs'ing but because ps was all he'd ever known and he hadn't been doing the research that I had. As we've gained more experience - just finished our 10th year! - we've all let go of that for the most part. We knew we wanted them to be prepared for college if that was where God took them, and we also knew that if college was not in their future plans then we wanted their last years of formal schooling to be good ones. So we looked at what most colleges (not selective) are looking for and made sure those requirments were in place. We had to do this right away since my oldest was already in 8th grade when we started. Most hs'ers don't necessarily have to think about the high school years yet when they begin 😉 We knew we wanted them to have time to explore who they are as a unique individual so we built in lots of free time, esp because in ps they'd had so little of it. We wanted strong academics that would prepare them for the future but definitely did not want academics to become an end in itself. I've seen hs'ers and ps'sers alike fall into that trap and I'm not interested. Mostly what DH and I did was to work backwards. We started with the question, "How will we know that we've succeeded?" and thought about what a successful adult looked like from our perspective. What experiences would be like them to have had, what skills, what opportunities? And then we designed a path that we thought would best get us there.

We usually read aloud at lunchtime. I choose books to read aloud that I want us to "experience" together. Books that are high quality books that are worthwhile and I really want them to read are assigned on a reading list every year for a certain amount of time per day.

We used Art of Argument (informal logic) followed by Argument Builder (informal debate). We never did formal logic. We also do speech and debate club, which I would highly recommend for an enthusiastic arguer lol!

My kids have done very few outsourced classes. For math I watch a video with them and learn alongside them. I've done algebra 1 and 2 five times now and I'm getting pretty good at it if I do say so myself 😉 So maybe that's outsourcing and maybe it's not - but it works. For other subjects we've watched Great Courses lectures and discussed and read inexpensive textbooks and discussed. Again - maybe that's outsourcing and maybe it's not - it's certainly not information coming directly from my brain and being spoken to them in a lecture. But it's not an online class from someone else either. My kids have learned about all kinds of stuff I know nothing about. I may not know anything about journalism or architecture or creative writing or computer programming or comparative government or horticulture, but I know how to google and find a good reliable textbook for a spine. Most of my kids were ready for a weekly checklist by the end of freshman year. I still check in and discuss daily, but I give them their assignments in bulk and they stay on top of it.

Welcome to the boards! 🙂 I would have them read it once for fluency, and then if they struggled with comprehension questions I'd let them read it again to themselves and then try again.

I'm really sad for you all that have had negative family reactions. I come from a small family of two kids, and while my parents may have reservations about a big family, they've never voiced them to me or to my kids. DH comes from a family of 7 and all of his siblings are equally prolific if not more so. We only "announce" to siblings and parents and people at church. All have been thrilled about another baby, even the one I had at age 45 which was a shock to everyone, me included. We don't announce to extended family, they just hear it through the grapevine. If they've said anything negative about it when my mom tells them, I haven't heard about it. I have had aunts/uncles/cousins jokingly ask me if we know what causes that, but none who were nasty about it. I just answer, "Yeah, well, we don't have a TV ..." with a laugh and a wink 😉 The only person who was rude was the lady who asked me, with all my kids right there listening, if they were all mine and when I said yes, she said with a shudder and a grimace, "Glad it's you and not me!" I smiled very sweetly and said very earnestly, "Me too, ma'am, me too!"

I wouldn't necessarily want to go back and live through it all again, but I do sometimes long to visit those days again bringing along what nuggets of wisdom I've acquired since and knowing enough to savor it this time. I do think it's a physical longing because my memories are tied up with the feel of their firm little cheeks up against mine and the feel of the stickiness and softness of their little hands and the smell of them - baby breath and toddler sweat and milk and the wildness of outside air that clings to their hair but somehow doesn't stink like it does when they're older. But if I went back then I'd also miss hanging out with my adult kids and talking with them about God and politics late at night over a glass of wine and hearing my teens singing Disney songs around the piano together and ... and ... and ... and ... My memories with my older kids are maybe not quite so physical or primal as the ones when they're little, but they're still real and some day when they all have their own homes and families I wonder which days I'll miss most and I just don't know 🤷‍♀️

My kids don't go to college just to go to college - they go to get a specific degree for a specific purpose. Some of the classes they take, especially course in their major, are challenging and rewarding and worthwhile and useful in their future career. Some - like freshman comp - are not. They learn to jump through the hoops to get to the goal they want.

I read a book when my first was born and one thing it said really stuck with me. Basically it was that you cannot make your child eat, sleep, or go to the bathroom. You can and should set things up optimally to encourage what you want to happen in those 3 areas, but ultimately you cannot (without becoming abusive) force them to do those 3 things. So don't make them a battleground. It was great advice. I put it into practice wrt food by offering healthy-ish options for meals and if they don't eat it at all or if they only eat a little bit that's fine. No arguing or urging. No clean your plate rules (which DH struggles to implement but I find easy). But then the natural consequence is that they can't have snacky stuff or dessert later unless they ate a good meal of nutritious stuff. Breakfast - after age 5ish kids are in their own - available options are fruit, nonsugary cereal, oatmeal, eggs, toast, waffles, milk, juice Lunch - whoever is my current middle schooler is our lunch lady - fresh fruit and veggies are always part of this meal but the main dish is usually something easy and processed like chicken nuggets or Mac n cheese or frozen pizza - usually a couole grocery store cookies for dessert if they ate a decent amount Snacks in the morning and the afternoon (if they've eaten decent meals) - dried fruit, crackers, granola bars, fruit snacks Supper - homemade by me with veggies, meat, and carbs and some sort of dessert if they ate well We don't have food allergies to deal with and all my kids eat a wide variety of fruit and veggies daily and get lots of fresh air and exercise and no one is overweight except me 😉

I cried when I got the letter that he was taking an admin job instead of patient care and my kids thought someone had died 😥

My 1st baby didn't sleep. I tried all the things the books say to do and ended up crying at the pediatrician's office. He told me that the sleep training methods work for 95 percent of kids, and I got one of the 5 percent so I should just do whatever I had to do to get him to sleep (and therefore get myself some sleep). He said not to worry because "whatever I had to do" would almost certainly not still be a habit in kindergarten 😉 In our case "whatever I had to do" was rock him to sleep every 2-3 hours until he was 2 years old. I've had several other bad sleepers since then and that Dr's advice has been used very very often in our house! My kids almost never slept in a crib until at least 6 months or so. Car seats, swings, my lap, DH's lap, bouncy seats, almost anywhere except the crib ... I'm not saying she shouldn't try other things to see if there's another "whatever" that works, but I do think that 3 months old is awfully little to expect them to sleep in a crib very well. She sounds like a good momma, if she follows her instincts instead of "the rules", I'm sure she'll figure something out.

I had a dog like that too. She was a big 80+# German shepherd/golden retriever mix and she looked intimidating but was very gentle. She was very vigilant anytime anyone came to the house and definitely let them know she had her eyes on them but never did anything except look at them and stand close by me. Once I let her know by my body language that someone was ok, she would let them be. Except for one guy who attended our church whose kids I babysat sometimes. She always growled and put her hackles up and barked at him like she never did to anyone else ever. She did not let him get close to me outside, even though we had invited him into the house on different occasions and tried to tell her to lay off. Later on I was in a Bible study with the wife and she told us how he abused her and eventually she divorced him. That dog knew he was dangerous even though none of us had any idea. My current dog is a little 6 month old German shepherd. So far she's herded the kittens out from under the pool deck, which apparently she deems unsafe for them 🙂

I would not consider Hakim to be white washed. She speaks very frankly about the atrocities committed against Native Americans, blacks, and other minorities. At an elementary/middle school level obviously, but she definitely doesn't ignore them.

I don't actually own LToW 😉 but I heard Andrea Lipinski from Circe give a talk at the latest Ohio Great Homeschool Convention and it outlined the discussion/question/invention process really well. I think you could implement the method in a discussion very easily just from listening to that talk or another similar one, but certainly you could buy the book and teach from that as well. As for Argument Builder, we used it as a discussion jumping off point and didn't do the writing assignments. My kids are in debate club, so they get plenty of experience writing an argument with that activity. But it was good for thinking through what someone else was trying to say with their arguments.

Mine just did Java too