This is one if the most beautiful things I've ever read. You truly did change the world ❤

We do IEW SWI B, then SICC B, then Elegant Essay before WttW, but EE definitely has you as the teacher (as does WttW). I believe IEW has a high school essay intensive course?

K12's Our Human Story is a good text if you want to go the textbook route. We have also used Great Courses - History of the Ancient World: A Global Perspective and Foundations of Western Civ 1 and 2. No teacher helps though, we just discuss and they write a couple essays.

We do both also, although we don't read the full versions of the lit choices in FS, just learn the terms. WttW is primarily a writing curriculum that teaches step by step how to write a literary analysis essay. Very different focus!

Jealous!

Prayer. I believe it changes things in ways we can't possibly understand. Not in a transactional vending machine I-pray-God-gives kind of way, but mostly in the way it changes our perspectives to be more like God's as we do it. Cheerful purposeful giving til it hurts our budgets a bit and seems like "too much" to charities we've vetted that use 95%+ of donations to actually go towards the group(s) they claim to help. No matter what our income level is. Be kind and loving to all the people we come into contact with throughout the day, especially the ones who don't act kind and loving to us. This includes crappy customer service reps at the store and rude idiotic people with different political opinions on Facebook and legalistic brothers and sisters at church and frustrating demanding children in my own house. I actually think moms and dads investing time and energy into their own marriages to keep them strong and then using that strength to nurture their children will change the world more than any of these other things, but you asked for things other than that 🙂

I've successfully used it for 4th grade and am planning to use it next year for 3rd grade. 2nd grade might be a little bit too young, but not by much.

If it makes you feel better, we took our high school Sunday school class to a trampoline park yesterday, and one of the 10th graders didn't know his own address. He is ps'ed and his mom is a teacher. 😂

I was telling my 2 teens that it would be a good idea to pray for their younger sister because she's 11 and she's starting adolescence, and don't you remember how it felt to be 12 and 13? DS's eyes got really wide and he said, "Oooooooh. I forgot all about 13." LOL Yeah.

I didn't have to sneak out because I was too good at lying to my parents and telling them stories they wanted to hear instead of what I was actually planning on doing. I never got caught, but I wish I had sometimes because I have a lot of regrets from those escapades ... I worried for years that my kids would grow up to be teenagers like me, but oddly enough they aren't. Thank goodness!

This. Kids (and adults 😉 ) like to complain about something else other than what is really bothering them. Chances are, they are still adjusting to their new way of life and not really able to communicate why exactly they feel kind of out of place and so they latch onto the comforting rituals they used to have and say they miss those. They probably do miss them, but it's not the real problem. Most likely they just need time - and of course, plenty of physical exercise 🙂

My 2nd DS did Boys State this summer and it was an awesome experience for him! It was my impression that they separate the boys from the girls because it cuts down on the whole oh-no-new-members-of-the-opposite-sex-are-around-so-now-we-have-to-preen-and-get-attention stuff.

I don't have a formal document to give to anyone, but I do have a spreadsheet with a bajillion pages of notes and ideas where I dump my brain and it does have a page of non-negotiables in it.

This is very similar to our experience. I'm 45, almost 46, with a 10 month old. Pregnancy and delivery was normal from my doctor's perspective. I remember my old doctor (he died or he would have been this one's doctor too) said it was only first time moms who he's worried about getting pregnant after 35 because nobody knows how their body will react to pregnancy and labor/delivery. But my blood pressure was borderline high while normally it's low, and I felt every bit of my age throughout the pregnancy. When it came time to push I just didn't feel like I had it in me to do this again, but somehow I did. After delivery my blood pressure took a few weeks to go back down to its normal low. Now that she's here I'm tired pretty much constantly and the many balls I have to keep in the air as the mom to a college student, 2 high schoolers, a middle school student, an elementary student, and a nursing baby are a bad juggling act most days. BUT ... She is such a miracle. ❤ I had a miscarriage at 41 and thought that meant the end of my snuggling newborn days. I never thought I'd get to nurse again, or see toothless grins again, or squeeze little chubby baby arms again. I take the time to rock her and hold her and play with her because I know just how fast the time goes. And watching my older kids take delight in her is more satisfying than I can possibly tell you ❤ I try not to think about potty training or the fact that I'll be 63 when she graduates high school LOL

I like what @MerryAtHope said - you make of it what you want and you possibly trade one set of experiences for another. I had a typical college experience, although not out of state. (Is that really typical? Maybe the out of state part is a myth?) And it was great - I met lifelong friends and found DH and learned a lot about who I really am vs who I tried to be in high school, blah blah blah. But the thing is, I truly believe that no matter what other path I'd taken instead, I would have had other valuable experiences that would have helped me mature and figure out who I am. It's not like you can somehow "skip" all that growing up and maturing. It will still happen, whether you go to college near home, or far away, or not at all.