You know how your parents said things to you which you, as an annoyed child, mentally swore you would never, ever say to your children? And then you have children and realize with horror that you have been possessed by your parents and use those same awful phrases? "Can't never could." Only my dad's from Georgia, so he said, "Cain't never could." And I say it exactly the same way, except I cringe while I say it. It's the pithier, Southern version of "You'll never succeed if you don't try," and it's such a handy response to "I can't..."

I sympathize with the Isabella upthread who garnered pity for being mistaken for a 6-year-old. Although I am not an Isabella, I do have a first name which was relatively unusual when my mother chose it but which rocketed to unbelievable popularity as I reached adulthood. Now I know lots of people who share my name, but they're all in a much younger demographic... The experience taught me that there's no telling what will happen with the fabulous, unusual, special names we choose for our kids. My son's is a family name which is considered classic, and I'm hoping its having a history will compensate for its frequent use by others. I tell my daughter, whose name is common but not yet a stereotype of her birth year, that we just picked the name we thought was the prettiest and we hope she likes it. She said, "Then why didn't you name me Sparkle?" (She's four.)

My kids are loving Beverly Cleary's Mouse & the Motorcycle trilogy.

I'm sorry you are going through this. I wish I had words that could help. You're in my prayers.

When I read LHOTP to my son, he was 4 or 5. Our issue at the time was limited to the language used about the Native Americans. When we reached passages like the one someone helpfully quoted upthread in which Ma says she just doesn't like Indians, I would stop and add commentary as needed. Mostly, I was focused on drawing his attention to racial bias and helping him to realize it was wrong. I expect to do the same thing with the why-did-they-take-their-land aspect the next time we read the books.

Another ENTJ here. I have to admit, I was a little dismayed at how unfavorably we Evil Overlords are portrayed...I need to make a plan to control this situation, and I will have assignments for each of you. What, you don't all care about changing the world's bias against ENTJs? Well, you're wrong. This makes me want to force encourage my husband to take this test. I'd like to find out how we're still married.

After going carefully over the "don't do this; it's a short-circuit" thing with my ds, I've let him do his thing with the Snap Circuits. It's always been fine, until the other day when he was trying to show us the circuit he'd made that would flash lights to music. Smoke started coming off the circuit! We made him turn it off right then, but I'm not sure what the problem was. I don't know how old your son is, but mine is 6, and I wonder if he checked the circuit carefully enough. So I would have said it was fine to let your son play with his circuits unsupervised until this happened. Now I'm kind of worried about it myself.

Here, FWIW, is what I think: You have now done everything reasonable in your power to change this situation. You've told your husband all your reasons for wanting him to choose the tournament over the concert and you've offered alternatives to your original plans. I am inferring from your posts that he is still likely to insist on the concert and you are still going to be escorting your daughter and younger son to the tournament. So now, the only remaining option you have to alleviate this conflict is to let it go. From this point, you will either (naturally, I think) harbor resentment about this, or you will make yourself move past it. You can't change him; you can only change yourself. Because you earlier defended your husband's character, I am taking his unwillingness to suffer through softball as a character flaw in an otherwise decent guy. I think you're going to have to struggle within yourself to accept the outcome of this scenario and not hold it against him. I hope I don't sound unsympathetic -- I do find his choice to be a poor one, and I'm very sorry for the disappointment (and inconvenience) to you and your children. I know that part of being loved is having someone who can get past my weak moments and bad choices, so I hope you'll be able to find it in yourself to extend this grace to your husband. Also, my parents hardly ever came to any of my events (though I noticed they attended a few more of my brother's -- he was a lot more talented than I!). I always wanted them to be there, but for various reasons, they weren't. I still love them, and we have a good relationship. I've told them that I wished they had attended more of my events, and I make a point of being there for my own children's activities, but that's about the extent of its effect on my life. I know others will have had different experiences, but I thought you might like to hear from someone who was not permanently traumatized by her parents' lack of involvement! Best of luck to you!

Myfunnybunch said (sorry, the quote got messed up in transit): "Of course, I learned all of those things by facing the obstacles that taught them to me. Knowing them when I was 30 would have been helpful, but in a "Isn't that a nice sentiment?" kind of way. They wouldn't have been as meaningful to me then as they are now, because now I know them from having meaningful (and sometimes painful) experiences." I wish I could teach my 30yo self to cultivate more compassion for others, but I absolutely agree with the above quote that it's the living through experiences which taught me its importance. Of course my 30yo self would agree that compassion is an important quality! But she wouldn't have understood it the way that I mean it.

Bic #2 mechanical pencils. I started my Ker on them last year because I liked them myself. They even have some different-colored parts so the children can tell their own apart (and fight over them). I hate wooden pencils because I want a sharp point all the time.

DS6 and DD4. And that's it, ever. I know what you mean about feeling like the odd one. We're the only hs family we know who owns regular 5-seater automobiles!

Agreeing with everybody who thinks it would be easier to switch from trumpet to horn than from trombone to horn. All my arguments are already here: stay in treble clef, similar fingering... the only thing I want to add is that horn mouthpieces are tiny, the smallest in the brass family, I think. In my opinion, you'd want to start your child with a mouthpiece of the closest size to a horn's in order to ease the transition.

We have a regularly-scheduled outside activity one day a week, and the only way we get school done on those afternoons is because I purposely scheduled a lighter load for that day. We leave off one subject and usually only have a fact sheet in math, and that cuts our school time in about half or more. If we had to have a regular day of school after our morning outing, I'm afraid I'd procrastinate until it didn't get done at all. My DS is never too enthusiastic about coming home and having school, but I think it helps him to know it's our "easy day".

Walmart breaks out the Christmas stuff. Just kidding, sort of.

This is me, exactly. I keep hoping to stumble upon the magic solution to teaching this book. But I think I'm going to give up and buy some Draw Write Now books and let the kids read Drawing With Children for themselves, later.