I don't think exactly that my son needs the most rigorous, but he does need something to do after AP Calc now, and I just don't know what I don't know. So I figured this class would be commensurate with any other Linear Algebra Class. If it was a choice between this class and a community college class (which are also online) I figured this one would be more challenging than those at lease. He did decide, however, to take the AOPS Group Theory class this semester. Just kicking the can down the road until next year I suppose. Ideally next year we will find something that is in person!

yep, that's the one!

I think that depends on who you talk to. My husband and most of his closest friends deployed there at one point or another in their career - my husband there for a year - and most of them saw this as expected.

Ah, I see. If it stays merely as high school credit (and needing departmental approval) then it might make more sense to take the cheaper AOPS class in the format that he is already familiar with! I'll have to run it by him. He doesn't seem to care either way about the content -- he's more focused on just getting adjusted to high school (since last year was pretty disjointed with only three months in person with half the amount of kids). Right now for him math is just do the next thing.... only there seems to be too many choices of what the next thing would be. He just knows he wants a break from Calculus before going into the next level, and he usually just depends on me to choose. Sigh.

Ok, these are obviously niche classes and I only know a couple of boardies whose kids have taken these. My ds submitted his App to take the Linear Algebra through Stanford University Online Math and Physics, but as a back up I signed him up for the Group Theory class just in case he can't take the other one. I highly doubt he will be rejected -- it's one online class, he got a 5 in AP Calc BC, but I just like to make sure of everything. Plus of course Aops is a LOT cheaper than the other! Does anyone have an opinion on these classes? I think @quark's ds took Group Theory, and @Arcadia's ds took a class through Stanford? Wondering how the class operated, (we know how AOPS run, but not the ULO classes quite as much) if they enjoyed it, if it was a massive amount of work. I am just out of my league here -- I had planned for him to take an in person Linear Algebra class, but it looks like it's not running, and hasn't since Covid. The community colleges here are still all online, so I figured if it is going to be online, might as well choose the provider. The Stanford course has the benefit of getting college credit if the exams are proctored, but right now I don't know how important that is to ds. I am assuming I will just add the AOPS class to the transcript like we will be doing Clover Chemistry's Organic and Biochem class- as an extra class. He's in brick and mortar school so the majority of the classes will be through them, and we aren't really going through their process to get classes approved for high school credit. They will only give two classes worth of credit anyway. Any thoughts, no matter how random? I'm just second guessing my second guesses, as usual.

My husband will sometimes (very rarely) tell one of my kids something along of the lines of "you don't feel that" or "you aren't really upset". It's infrequent enough that I haven't said anything about it to him yet, and I have put in extra time with them one on one talking about their feelings and emotions to make sure they are not doubting themselves. But that is definitely gaslighting -- how on earth can a teen be expected to self regulate if they doubt themselves and what they are feeling in the first place?

My daughter has been training her 4-5 month old labradoodle to ring a bell when she needs to go potty. The other day she rang the bell so my daughter got up from the table to let her out. Then she ran back and jumped on dd's chair to try to get her food! This dog is going to be a handful!

We bought our house last February. Our house value according to both Zillow and Realtor.com are now 230k and 190k more, respectively. Insane.

I knew I was gifted (tested in Kindergarten and put in gifted pull out then) but it wasn't really discussed. My sister and I were often told we were smart, but there still wasn't a lot of emphasis on learning -- it was more about being good in class and not getting in trouble. Well, my fourth grade teacher told my mom I was headed for a life in prison when I forged my dad's signature on a test, I got placed in all day time out for talking non stop, and by middle school I was just the mediocre one between my sister and I. I felt like an alien at school, zoned out during class, forgot homework constantly, and just gave up until high school. When I started dating my now husband I turned things around. Realized I was actually smart - but was just bored and lacked good executive functioning and a reason to do well in class.

My son took the second administration paper exam and got a 4 in chem and a 5 in Calc BC. He is happy with his results and I am happy he took the paper exams! The digital sounds like it would have been a terrible fit.

I have two anecdotes to add: We bought a house 5 years ago and it came with a french door fridge. The fridge was 4 years old. When it hit five years old the compressor went and the repairs were not worth it so we bought a new one. Fast forward to last year when we moved and bought a house that came with a much more expensive 5 year old french door fridge. (LG, linear compressor, super fancy looking) Within three weeks it broke. When we replaced the first fridge I did a lot of research and it seemed like french door fridges had the most reliability issues. Regular freezer on top had the least and side by sides were in the middle. Because having a water and ice dispenser is so important to us, we replaced both with side by sides. The space is lacking definitely, but we just want it to last longer than five years. In our last house we had a stove that was a double oven, but the top one was small with just one rack. It was awesome. It preheated in like 3 minutes, and I used it so much more than the bottom oven. I loved it!

I think girls take longer to potty train than boys too -- our female labradoodle is super smart (smarter than our boy Bernedoodle) but he just seems to have a stronger bladder. He slept through the night from the first night - 6 or 7 hours, while she had to go potty about every 3 hours!

We have not one, but two puppies in the house! We got Josie, the red Labradoodle, for my daughter's college graduation, and our beloved Golden passed away this year unexpectedly so we got Leo, the black Bernedoodle. They are 4 months and 9 weeks respectively. They are the best of friends. Josie will get to about 30 pounds and Leo to about 45.

Being an ally (depending on how close you are to the person) is also not just accepting everything they say without question. My friends and family challenge me and make me think. Why should this be any different? My oldest daughter (21) recently said "I think I am demisexual". I said no sh*t, Sherlock, you spent your life reading and debating and adore anything academic, of course you feel you need to have someone be intelligent to be attracted to them. She laughed and that was it. I would of course not do that with someone who wasn't in my family.

I have a distinct memory of tracking a girl's outfits in middle school -- she had a schedule for when she wore her clothes. Her favorite outfit was denim jeans, a white top and a denim jean jacket that matched the jeans perfectly. It was her Wednesday outfit. She was very popular and one of the "rich" girls at school, so this was the one thing that made her stand out in a negative light! My daughter, homeschooled until ninth and then virtual schooled until March, refused to listen to my requests to wear different outfits. She would come down in the same pants sometimes three days in a row. Ugh. Her sister brought her shopping and got some "in style" clothes", but they weren't as comfortable as the baggy sweatpants and librarian looking sweater she loved. I figured we would just try more this coming year -- she did have PE last year with no changing allowed, so she had a point in wanting to be comfortable!

An important survey that just came out a couple of months ago addressed recent detransitioners. It was a survey of 237 males and females, around half had started socially transitioning before 18 and 25 percent medically transitioning. The goal was to assess the medical care surrounding their transition and detransition health care. Important to note was the reasons given for detransitioning -- a big component of activists' platform is that people detransition because of transphobia in those around them. According to the survey 70 percent detransitioned when they realized their dysphoria was related to other issues, 62 percent cited health concerns, and on down until only 13 percent said it was lack of support and 10 percent due to discrimination. 45 percent found alternatives to deal with their dysphoria, 34 percent found that it had resolved over time, 30 percent had their co-morbid health issues resolve. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00918369.2021.1919479

There is a series of 7 essays by Angus Fox written on Quillete about specifically Rogd boys that is pretty insightful. A lot of moms he talked to had experiences with rushed affirmation and offers of hormones. https://quillette.com/author/angus-fox/

I tried the same -- three kids, two girls and a boy. I always had every type of toy -- doll houses, Thomas the trains, legos, dinosaurs, airplanes, lots of dolls and stuffed animals. My two daughters, even though they are VERY different (oldest is very strong, independent, aggressively confident at times, while younger daughter is quiet, gentle, and dances ballet) they both acted very motherly towards all their toys. My oldest loved the trains, but they were always made to talk to each other and never actually used the tracks. She loved her doll stroller. There was one funny time when the younger kids were 2 1/2 and they were both playing with the twin baby dolls. My daughter gently rocked the baby until she "woke up" fed it, changed it. My son grabbed the baby doll and started pounding it on the changing table, yelling "wake up baby! Time to wake up!" and then threw it on the floor. And that was the last time he played with it.

Here is the study linked which quotes the 35 percent: https://adc.bmj.com/content/103/7/631.full?ijkey=HsMwyZDRtsKu83z&keytype=ref And here is a paper which quotes up to 48 percent: https://www.icf-consultations.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Taking-the-lid-off-the-box.pdf They use the "Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS): a 65-item quantitative measure of autistic features in 4- to 18-year-olds across a range of severity. It is filled in by parents/carers as part of the psychosocial assessment. It is a validated measure and has been deemed appropriate for use in clinical settings and scores in the severe range are strongly associated with a clinical diagnosis of an ASC (e.g. Constantino et al., 2003). SRS results are provided here for those young people who did not have an ASC diagnosis." This paper says 48 percent scored mild to severe, and the first one was 35 percent as moderate to severe. If you look up Keira Bell Vs Tavistock, this was case where a detransitioner sued the clinic and won for their lack of safeguarding and rushing towards hormonal intervention too quickly. There was an additional claimant: Mrs A, who was the mother of an autistic child who similarly raised concerns and was not heeded. The clinic has had massive turnover prior to this case due to the feeling within the clinic that the affirmative approach was too fast and not catching the other confounding issues that teens were presenting with, the biggest one autism. 35 clinicians resigned over the past couple of years. I think the US will be seeing similar lawsuits coming.

There are multiple studies of varying sizes that show the desistance rates to be between 65 and 90 percent, with I think the majority saying around 80. Here is one: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.632784/full Here is a blog post by James Cantor, who has compiled the rates from different studies: http://www.sexologytoday.org/2016/01/do-trans-kids-stay-trans-when-they-grow_99.html And a fuller amount of info at genderhq.org: https://www.genderhq.org/trans-children-gender-dysphoria-desistance-gay

Personal info removed

Yes, I know she mentions it at the beginning of the podcast episode, though it's not mentioned on her website. She is in Ireland though, and I am pretty sure everything she runs is full right now. The group is for both parents and siblings.

@Mrs Tiggywinkle If you have some time, I would recommend a podcast that I mentioned on the other thread, called Gender: A Wider Lens. Stella O'Malley is a co host and she talks about her experience growing up with severe gender dysphoria. She was convinced she was a boy, played only with the boys, dressed like the boys... and when puberty hit it sent her to a dark place where she confronted the truth that she wasn't. She talks about the struggle. But because transgenderism wasn't as well known, she just went through the crucible and came out accepting her gender. And she is very thankful. But she says it was very deepset from 3-10 and took a long time to really resolve. There are others that it doesn't resolve and transition does happen later on. BUT there are studies that social transition does tend to influence a child's conception of themselves, and it makes it much harder to resolve their idea of their gender. And many kids with gender dysphoria at a young age go on to be merely gay or lesbian. Is this your child with autism? It is interesting, I have a friend who's son as a teenager (diagnosed Asperger's) was convinced he was a rock star. Like, not becoming one, not just liked to play in bands, but literally was a famous rock star. His dad was really befuddled and tried to really talk to him about it, convince him he wasn't. Eventually he gave up and ignored it. And after a few years it just .... went away. Maybe not quite the same thing, but it feels a little similar.

@freesia Yes, this is a big concern. At the Tavistock clinic in England - the gender clinic for the NHS - they estimated at least 35 percent of the referrals had either autism or autistic traits. These kids are already gender non conforming, which is absolutely fine. It's the medicalization of this that is the problem. For us, our kid was telling their therapist that the anxiety was due to gender dyphoria. As time went on they were feeling a LOT happier, but still had anxiety. I tracked when the anxiety would occur and talked about it with the therapist. It was usually when routines were changed, when transitions happened, when there was something NEW that they didn't know what to expect, when they were ALONE (in person school improved everything tremendously) or when there were big academic expectations. But this kid was meeting people, making friends at school and at TKD, and there was no anxiety during those times. It just didn't track in my mind that gender was the root of the anxiety, when all the the things seemed like autistic - centered anxiety. The therapist agreed -- thankfully she is a generalist and is treating the whole person. She is working on expanding the toolbox for dealing with anxiety and teaching how to connect with the body, rather than feel disassociated from it.

PLEASE DON'T QUOTE: I think that I should have prefaced it with the importance of knowing the person and the situation, as all situations are very different. I am so glad that things are turning around for your ds. For us and our personal experience, while I had a doctor and psychologist pushing us to do the same, I felt like other methods would work. But it is a very different child and I am sure a very different presentation. That is why I am against affirmative care. It is a very wide net that is catching too many kids that were never dysphoric until puberty, and that have a lot of co-occuring conditions contributing to their depression. What worked for us was a huge release of expectations in other areas, LOTS of family time, more radical acceptance, more exercise, more sleep, less screen time, and an autism diagnosis. I'm not saying things are 100 percent better. But there was so much more going on (including a huge move away from friends and of course COVID) and so this kid went to the internet and found answers that led to thinking the feeling of uncomfortableness in their body, constant anxiety, and feelings of being different than everyone else must mean they are trans.... I am just saying the net shouldn't have caught this kid, at least not until exploring other issues.