I would wait, if you can stand it. It might be confusing to use different materials at the beginning and then switch. I really love OhE's suggestion to make the cookie dough and freeze it. I just got a really awesome mental image of you and your daughter having a magical pre-Christmas week together... cookie baking, buying wrapping paper, tape, etc. Maybe it'll become a tradition!

Ethel, I'm thinking of you this morning. My MIL has some kind of paranoid schizophrenia, although nobody in the family except my DH will say that out loud. I've only experienced a few episodes, but the last one was a doozy and she said some really terrible things about me. The episodes have always been brought on by stress - at other times, we get along well. I know that she is ill, and she doesn't actually think those terrible things about me, but it's so hard not to take it personally. I hope your daughter is in a better place this morning. :grouphug:

YES, this is me too! My DH gets really aggravated when I lose things.... but he doesn't realize that I do so much more organizing than him, so my brain has less room for putting stuff in the right place.

I hear you about getting off schedule. In my classroom, I decided that I just HAD to keep to a schedule, or I wouldn't be able to function and neither would the kids. I figured out a schedule that works, and we follow it RELIGIOUSLY. Everything happens at the same time every day. It really helps me to stay organized, because I don't have to be constantly thinking about timing. Even if you think you won't be able to stick to a schedule, I would urge you to try. You may surprise yourself. The kids really like having a schedule. They are used to it now, and they don't ask how long things are going to take, or complain about any particular task, because they know how long everything lasts. Rather than a nebulous amount of math time (could be 10 minutes, could be 45 minutes for all they know), they can count on 10 minutes of a review warm-up, 15 minutes of a guided lesson, and then 20 minutes of a math game. The content and games vary, but the bones of the lesson never do. An alternative to a strict schedule would be to decide how much time you want to spend on each subject each day, and then every morning, map out the day. You could put each subject name on an index card, and then use a thumbtack to put them in a descending list on a bulletin board. Your days would still be flexible, but you would have a visual for your daughter. For me, it's hard to get going on things or STOP doing things if I don't have a general idea of what the day will hold. Just some ideas!

A jalapeno....!! :lol:

Wow, I am incredibly happy for you!!!!

Hi Jet, I replied to your message. All of the ideas above are great! Welcome to Maine!

Agreed, don't go! It sounds like it would be long and awful. How do you handle family get-togethers? Do you just not go, and the rest of the family goes? I'm curious b/c I have a MIL problem too. A problem for another thread soon... blah. Hope you can just stay home for Thanksgiving, it sounds relaxing :)

After going through 7 years of grad school with my DH, the final year being pure hell as he applied to every assistant professor position that he was qualified for (I recall about 80 applications), I hesitate to recommend a PhD to anyone. Your family is already in the academic world, though, so you know the ins and outs. With a degree in English, she probably knows how competitive it is to get a teaching job in English as opposed to computer science, for example. I would also prioritize a fully funded program. If she's not fully funded, then they don't care enough about her and they just want her tuition. Even with a fully funded program, it often feels like universities are using TAs as cheap labor (a yearly salary of $20,000 or so). Big universities have thousands of undergraduates, all needing to take Intro to English courses, and it's a lot cheaper to pay a TA than a PhD to teach these courses. My DH now has what I'm convinced is PTSD from the job application/interview/dissertation year. It was awful. He went from being a happy go lucky, confident person into an anxious wreck! The uncertainty of the PhD is really difficult. Your daughter might like to start reading the Chronicle of Higher Education forums now, before she's in grad school. They talk about everything from the job search (some people are still hunting for a job many years post-PhD), balancing teaching with life, etc. It's a really good forum, like this one, but about academia :) I know I sound negative, but even now that DH has a job, he's teaching 3 or 4 courses per semester, and has no time for research since he can barely keep up with the demands of his teaching, and he's not willing to do sub-par teaching. Perhaps the life of a professor is good, but the life of an assistant professor or lecturer is often the opposite. Edited to add: DH was also a superstar in his grad program. He was the only one of his cohort to get all As (easily!) in the courses, and everyone expected him to easily conquer the job hunt. It didn't exactly turn out that way.

Wow, she is a hard worker! You must be really proud. I love the way she slowly and deliberately sounds out the words. Most (ok, all) of the kids I work with try to speed through reading, throwing mistakes to the wind. I agree with everyone who says you should back the difficulty down for now. Even though she's successfully sounding out words, like others have said, she's reading too slowly to comprehend what she's reading. I generally go with 90-100% accuracy is independent, 80-90% is instructional, and below 80% is frustration level. Some people are even more strict than that, with 95% or higher independent, for example. I would have her read a passage, count up the words, and calculate her accuracy. Then keep doing easier passages until you find where she can read between 80 and 90% for her work with you. Anything she reads for pleasure, if she does, should be easier than what you're teaching her. ReadWorks is a fantastic, FREE, amazing (I could go on...) website with passages at all levels K-12. You can print their passages, and the font ends up being pretty large. The passages are short, and pretty interesting. Just a resource if you need some easy reading things. I would count any time she has to slowly sound out a word as a "mistake," even though she gets it right. She had to sound out p-e-t twice in just a few sentences, so she's not fluent at the CVC level yet. But she will be! I think her letter/sound correspondence is pretty great. Also, when she sounds out words like p-e-t, you should make her re-say the whole word so she gets that p-e-t is pet. She should re-read any sentence that she has to sound out a word in, from the beginning, nice and smooth. Wow, I'm just so impressed with her. If my students would work so diligently and for so long, I would be over the moon!

This reminds me of the time I got a letter from my insurance company that quoted things I said to the doctor, verbatim. The doctor must have taken detailed notes (good!), but I had no idea the doctor's notes went straight to the insurance company. Perhaps doctors have to write detailed information when they request lab tests, or something? I have no idea. My insurance company then raised my premiums because they claimed something I said to the doctor contradicted something I'd said about my good health in the past. The whole ordeal was terrifying and felt very intrusive, and now I have a hard time sharing my full concerns with doctors.

Yikes, that sounds horrible. So far he's doing fine, and it's no worse than this morning, so fingers crossed it won't be too bad.

I thought most pinkeye was bacterial, from poor hygiene in little kids, but the internet says it's mostly viral. I never really gave pinkeye much consideration until today! I hope it only lasts a few days.

I saw this... yay!! Would like to move to Scotland now, please.

My DH has had a bad cold for about a week now. He had everything - sore throat, runny nose, turned into a cough, then coughing fits, and this morning... pinkeye! His left eye was kinda goopy when he woke up, but after he got up and showered it's just been red. It just looks very bloodshot. I never heard of viral pinkeye until this morning after a quick Google search. Has anyone had this? Did it spread to the other eye? And how long did it last? I'm ready for this sickness to END!

We've been able to have a few heart-to-hearts, and a bunch of lighter discussions about this lately. We're investigating ways he can use his academic credentials to do less stressful work, but work that's still satisfying. I know there are a lot of options out there; we just need to seek them out. Thanks, I feel better after discussing with you all!

Agree that memorizing math facts is not essential. It's more important that she can figure out her facts within a reasonable amount of time, either by skip counting, adding, or looking at a chart. I just read some reasarch about retrieval practice. Basically, just the act of trying to remember something builds connections in your brain, whether you remember the right answer or not. There are lots of ways to practice retrieval, like matching addition questions to answers, vocab words to definitions, etc. The most fascinating thing, for me, was that most people do flashcards wrong. When we see a card and we think we know the answer, actually we don't even THINK about it (retrieve it), but just say, oh, yeah, I know that one, and quickly look at the answer. Apparently that's no good... you have to actually think about the answer, SAY IT, and THEN look at the answer. There was also some research about non-graded quizzes being extremely helpful for learning. You could give your daughter a "quiz" every day on a set of math facts, even if you just write it by hand. The research showed that just the act of being quizzed helped with memory. You can read more here: http://www.retrievalpractice.org/

Thank you! I have a student who's a good memorizer - this will be really helpful with him.

Thank you all for your thoughts. I apologize that this has turned into a bit of a self-help thread. Most of the time he is great around my mom. Rather quiet, but perfectly polite and friendly. He definitely makes himself at home at her house. He's known her for over 10 years. In fact, because his own mom is such a challenge, he finds my family relaxing. I'm not sure why sometimes he is extremely reserved in conversation with her, and with others (not everyone though). A year or so ago I asked him why he was not acting as outgoing as before, and he said that he was never super outgoing, but that people talked to HIM so he talked back. I started watching, and sure enough, he didn't begin any social interactions, but carried on a conversation once someone started one with him. Is this really all a guy thing? And I'm blowing everything out of proportion? Arg! I work with a lot of kids with autism as a special ed teacher. Many of them I would not know had autism unless I read their files. After I know, I can start to see slight differences in the way they converse, or act around peers, but many times the autism is not noticeable at all. It's certainly not something I notice right away.

We don't have kids. I haven't seen him around young kids too much. I wouldn't describe him as a willing workaholic, more like a reluctant perfectionistic workaholic. Maybe those are the same thing. In fact, he thought college teaching would be ideal because you get the summers off, and you don't have to deal with your students' parents. Lol. I guess I'm tacky trying to tell him what to do. I just find it rude to go through an entire dinner with my family, or his, or with anyone else, and only say a few words. If he's got social difficulties, fine, I can understand that! - but if you're invited to my colleagues house for dinner and you agree to go, then you gotta put forth at least a little effort. As far as work goes, the reason I try to get him to chill out about things a little is because he involves me in his problems. He talks to me about how things are going, updates me, "Well, I've got about 4 more hours of grading to do! Grrrrreat!" etc. We live in a small house and it's not easy to get away from extreme gloom and doom. If I were to ignore all of his outbursts and pretend he's not there, it would be pretty hurtful to him. I looked at the DSM5 descriptions. I could see him fitting in with Level 1. Perhaps his issues are not enough to cause "significant" interference with functioning... but golly, it seems significant to me sometimes! Often, I am his supports when it comes to day-to-day things, planning, etc. I do a lot of the "little stuff" so his brain only has to focus on his own work. Making lunches, for example, and paying the bills. I guess I'm providing accommodations. He has not kept up with his friends from college. I do, because they're my friends as well, but he never initiates contact with any of them. I keep him informed, and every so often we see them in person, but long periods (a year or more, sometimes actual years) go by without seeing them or talking on the phone. Maybe he's gifted with executive functioning deficits. I guess that's more accurate. I never realized how significant executive functioning skills are until recent years.

This makes sense to me. I think his ability to function was really good until the demands became too great, and now he's just exceeded his ability. I always loved the 'absentminded professor' aspect of him, until it became absent-minded + extreme stress. I wish I had known him as a kid... I wonder if his mom just did everything for him so all he had to concentrate on was schoolwork. (His mom is a whole different story... for a different post! But she's a doozy). Thank you for the encouragement. It's strange to see this person, that I've always seen as calm under pressure - MUCH calmer than me - start to unravel! I guess I haven't seen him under high pressure for an extended period very often.

Monica, I may be married to you... in which case, I love you a lot! :hurray: I do let him off the hook now. I still think a person should engage in polite conversation for a few minutes before going off to read (not simply saying hi and then two seconds later leaving the room). But, I just let it go now. If I make a federal case out of it, it just ends in an argument anyway.

Now that I've been in the special education world for quite a long time now, I tend to diagnose people around me. The parents of the kids I work with, for example... well, let's just say that often, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. My mom now thinks she's had ADHD since she was a kid, and I'm pretty sure her dad was on the spectrum. I've posted about my DH on this forum a few times before. He is a college professor, obviously very smart. When we met in our early 20's, I was drawn to him because he seemed so outgoing and social, something I really wasn't. In our early years together, I was always the "wet blanket," not wanting to go to parties and get-togethers. He had a very strong core group of friends that always did everything together. They still do, but we moved far away years ago, and we haven't ever re-created such a group. Now that we're in our mid-30's, things have changed. He is not coping very well with his intense workload. In my opinion, he doesn't prioritize well, and he insists on completing things to perfection. His perfectionism used to be just a nice bonus (organized house and clean car!), but it's mostly directed to work these days. He doesn't know how to set boundaries with his students as far as time - he refuses to tell them that he has to actually stop helping them and get his own work done. He never knows how long anything is going to take, and his estimates are usually off by 2-3 hours. DH was very social in college and in the years after that when we lived in the same city as close friends. Making small talk, on the other hand... it's like pulling teeth to get him to chit-chat, even with people he knows quite well (for example, my mother and even his own family members). He doesn't think it's odd to go read a book in the living room when he's at my mom's house, while we're in the kitchen chatting. Last year we had a huge fight because I told him he HAD TO TALK to my mother when we had dinner together, even if he had nothing important to say. I insisted that he say SOMETHING, anything... ask about her work, her garden, the weather, whatever. He was extremely angry with me, and said something to the effect of, why should I have to act like that, just because society thinks talking all the time is the "right" way to act? I've seen him with coworkers during college events, and while he participates in conversation, most of the time he just stands there looking awkward and nodding his head. He is most uncomfortable when we run into people we know, and have to talk for a minute or two out of politeness. He either doesn't talk at all, or ends a conversation abruptly. He loves to read fiction, has a great sense of humor, and really enjoys certain social activities. I just wonder sometimes. Maybe he has Aspergers. I always thought he was super social, but perhaps it was just because he was with people he knew really well. He told me last night that he only went to parties in college because they were in his own apartment, arranged by his roommates. Until recently I thought he was just being obstinate about many things, but now I'm wondering if he actually is on the spectrum and I've been unreasonably hard on him.

Hope this passes quickly :grouphug:

Yes, this. Perfectionism is probably the right description. In many ways, his perfectionism is amazing - he always knows where everything is (except for the rare things he doesn't... like last night... and then it's a crap-fest), he is well respected for being considerate to his students and always helping them, and he doesn't usually have a foot-in-mouth situation like I do, because he's quite careful with what he says and writes. On the other hand, it causes immense stress when something, anything, is the slightest bit out of whack. Over the years, I think I've developed my own odd way of thinking, because to compensate for his over-reactions, I now under-react to many things. Most things just don't phase me any more, even things that normal people would be bugged about, like a car repair or something. I can't tell if that's a good quality or not at this point. I wonder if a detox period between leaving academia and getting an "industry" job would be good. I could support us for a while if we lived frugally in a low-cost area.