Follow your heart. If she wants to do equine management though, don't spend money on a degree! Get experience. When she finds out what she could use a degree for, then she can apply. She'll have a much better application at that time, too. Academia, certain professions, require a degree. Other degrees give you an education that can only be had at a college or university. It sounds to me based on what people in this thread are saying, that a degree is neither necessary nor sufficient for equine management jobs, nor is it an end in itself. So that money could go to a different degree, maybe later. "When you turn your hobby into a job you risk losing what makes it fun in the first place." Oh, I love that. Please tell your father thanks on my behalf. We've been trying to emphasize this to the kids: YES you can be an artist when you grow up. NO that is not really a job for the vast majority of people--at best, your job is selling art. Making the art is the least of your troubles! But your father's wisdom will be very helpful in that discussion. I mean they can be artists if they want--I sure as heck am not paying for a degree in it though.

She doesn't do it. She sits there and hums and draws. Then she finishes 1/3 in two minutes, easily, then hums for another 15 minutes. When there is sufficient motivation--say, she has an activity to go to--she will finish it in 5 minutes. She will do homework I assign during the summer with less dallying. I have tried timers, etc. by the way. It just ups the ante. Timer goes off, then what? Ugh. She performs in class, though, which is why I wish we had this time for tutoring or something else!

SKL, I am not disturbed, just surprised. It's less about the 7-year-old--my five-year-old roams the neighborhood while I'm home--and more about the baby. I don't think babies really should be out of a caregiver's supervision for more than a few seconds. Mine were usually in the same room as me. I'm sure some 7-year-olds have presence of mind. Mine did not! I'm a little jealous. My kids have gotten things like pebbles stuck in pretty much every orifice possible. My personal favorite: "Mom, accidentally, I accidentally got the peanut stuck in my nose, by accident." Well of course. You wouldn't stick a peanut in your nose on purpose! (Said child will still come tearfully, "Mom, accidentally, on accident, I sprayed myself in the eye with your perfume. I'm sorry mommy it was an accident.") Frankly I have no idea if they ever had anything stuck in their vaginas. I guess not because no infections?

Arcadia, that is an excellent point. Yes, we are far north. I will try that! Heigh Ho, thank you for your thoughtful response. We have considered the gifted program. She doesn't want to test again. She is not profoundly gifted and that is the cutoff and it is not negotiable. Subject acceleration, which we do, will not help on the IQ test. She does not have an IQ of 150 (145 in her highest area) so forget it. It is not based on performance. There is a long, long story behind this and a lot of work going into it so I'm really not going to go into it further. I think you replied to my other posts on another thread about this--we might just have a fundamental disagreement as to whether it's worth it to prep for that. It's a great program but I don't know that it teaches the skills that my daughter would benefit from. Those kids just think differently. My daughter thinks quickly. 8th Algebra is what I took. I did terribly for a lot of reasons but usually it takes me a while to get the concept, then I can use it very well. But my daughter isn't like me. She's a procedural thinker. I will speak to the teacher about her homework. The homework is the main thing. I don't mind her participating in class. What I mind is an hour after school of negotiating basic skills that could be used for tailored advancement.

I second this. We just lost the batteries or let it die. "Gee honey, the most addictive and simultaneously irritating toy you've ever had, which has been at the heart of at least 6,578 meltdowns since you got it last week, died! How sad!"

Hm. Now, as a parent, if I saw that behavior in my children, I would talk to them about limits, boundaries, personal hygiene, and most importantly, consent and how babies can't consent. That said: There are a lot of things that I would consider molestation if they were done to me by another adult, someone with body awareness, that I don't consider molestation among seven-year-olds experimenting. To name a few: I'll show you mine if you show me yours. Can I see what it feels like? Stealing a kiss Refusing to stop a hug Masturbating on the family couch (I have seen MANY two to seven year old children do this, totally unaware of the implications of what they were doing--all were sent to their rooms to be told that this is something you do in private, and after wash your hands). Was what she did wrong in the sense that she should not have done it? Yes, because we don't touch other's privates (hygeine, this rule is re-discussed during sex education), we don't touch other's bodies without permission of the person or their parent (bodily integrity). She was old enough to know better, but not old enough to be held accountable to our adult norms. Was it molestation? No, I don't think so. I don't think the intent was to exert power over her sister, but to experiment. I would give seven as the upper limit for that. There's a reason that many traditions don't hold children accountable for their actions until they are 7+, and that is that people under 7 are just not reasonable in general. If she were my child, we'd have had a long talk. If I edited her book, I'd have had her put it in another tone. Jokes about child molestation are NEVER funny. Finally, I guess we're the only family that had significant diaper-free time at home? Diapers were for outings. I think this is not mainstream but it's also not unusual. I'm pretty shocked she was left alone with a one-year-old for any amount of time, frankly. I'm pretty free-range but took my child into the bathroom at the age of one. But anyway, I don't think kids should be taken away from their family for that, not from the rich, not from the poor.

That is not an option. I cannot think around the kids, heh. Maybe when they get older. I appreciate the suggestion, though. I should have made it clear that we're not going to homeschool within the next four years at least, and even then, I doubt she'd want to. School is to see friends for her.

We don't homeschool nor do we ever expect to. She's at school while I work. So that's not a concern. When she gets to high school and honors is based on work and interest and not having an IQ of 150, then she can challenge herself and work hard. As for an hour of downtime, they get that now and homework is still a pain. I wish they'd just go through it. Maybe we will just not do math homework anymore and I will tell the school they're doing Russian math at their ability level. But she gets rewarded for doing her math. She can't participate in activities if it's not done. The writing they do is not graded. :P So that's really helpful. (NOT! Also, the eighties are back.) I am going to start telling her I'm not writing back until it's grammatically correct I think. But it's supposed to be "thoughtful". I do put thought into it but I'm not sure what the teacher is looking for.

It's free daycare. I need to work (I post here while running scripts :) ). I don't say it that way because I don't want it repeated. I tell them, "Your job at school is to follow instructions. My job at work is to follow instructions and think. If you follow enough instructions, eventually, they let you think!" That's why so many kids like art, I think. They let them think! Mainly looking at paper. I mean you can only sit at a desk and follow instructions for so much of the day. It doesn't matter how easy it is. Math isn't her favorite. She's great at it but she isn't energized by it--even when we do enrichment at home. So by the end of the day one more worksheet is the last thing she wants. She can't get an A. She will get mostly "at grade level" (it's below, at, or above, 2, 3, or 4). You have to just knock their socks off, like they have to think, "This is incontrovertibly two grade levels above every single time," to get a 4. And nobody does that. Like I said, even the gifted kids were not getting anywhere near all fours.

When is the last time you had bloodwork to check for anemia? Anemia can cause a lot of those issues and working out and trying to build muscle while depleted can make it far worse.

... to tell my daughter that she can relax at school and doesn't need to think about stuff, so she can concentrate at after-school programs and enrichment where they are working at a higher level? Okay, okay, I know, it would be. But gosh darn I am tired of telling my daughter to work hard at school and she gets the same marks for grade level, above grade level, and stellar. Then she doesn't want to do math enrichment. So she's working her butt off for some ridiculously easy diagram, getting no credit and also learning nothing, but then at home she's tired and doesn't want to talk about math concepts. I'm so irritated right now because she stopped capitalizing. "The teacher doesn't notice so I don't think I have to." ARGH. Sorry, just frustrated.

In high school did Algebra 2 in freshman year, then did Trig/Geometry, then pre-Calc, then Calc. Pre-calc was kind of a repeat but it was nice.

How is Heidan Yodan?

I do Beachbody programs, just go through them one after the other. We live in the suburbs so there is little opportunity to get my heart rate up at all outside of sports! I mean when is the last time you tried to outrun a chicken? Chop a cord of wood before making dinner? How often do you make four loaves of bread at a time with all that lifting, not to mention I never bring anything heavier than a laptop anywhere that doesn't have wheels. Darn inventors. So, that's why I work out. It's not that I wouldn't LOVE to integrate these activities into my daily life, but I am afraid that by the time we get to the point where we have that kind of land available, or when we can afford a place in a walkable city, we will already be made of jelly. So, we work out, and frankly I am loving what it's done for my kayaking, my skiing, my climbing, and hiking.

My response below really doesn't address the OP. I don't know what to do about that--I'd be tempted to take the child in. I got a college education on my own. We were summer babies so we weren't kicked out but in my family at 18 you pay rent or you leave. You can get a college education even if your parents don't pay their EFC. It's called community college, work, and loans.

I did that and it was a HUGE MISTAKE. Huge. I had no character judgment. I'd kissed boys I could count on one hand and nothing else. I was frustrated but didn't even know it (though I knew what frustration was, I didn't realize that was a feeling I, a respectable woman, could have... for some reason I assumed that I was above all that), and he was a charmer. Ugh. Though, these girls have their parents vetting, which, while it may seem creepy, is at least positive in that they don't need a lot of experience themselves, since mom and dad have experience. I'm assuming the parents will have better judgment in this sphere than many of us youngsters did. Not that I agree with that approach, but to each family their own. Any of these kids could run away to make a point but I think they can see that the world is full of pain and learning and hard work, and that maybe the Duggar brand isn't worse than any other.

Slache--We are on P90X3. Just started the third month. It is so hard. I did Insanity but I'm a cardio girl so Insanity was easy compared to this for me--but my partner definitely prefers P90s. I want to get T25, have you tried it?

OT: Rachael--I once met a woman who called her little surprise their "bonus baby". I thought that was so sweet. :) Happy birthday to your bonus.

:grouphug:

I wouldn't worry about them reading for pleasure. Personally, I think that's best! I'm just saying if you want to get an idea of where they would test, theoretically speaking.

Okay, this is really going to derail the thread. Honestly, if you aren't aware that there is serious, entrenched economic and race-based barriers in this country, I'm not sure anything on a message board will convince you. Moreover, and I say this with 100% certainty, federal aid based on the FAFSA is dispensed based on income and first-generation status and not based on race. There is no federal program, other than outreach (which has no funds attached) at the institution where I work that targets people based on the color of their skin. It is 100% based on income and first-generation college status. White students are NOT disadvantaged in that sense. To be perfectly clear, there is no race box on the FAFSA which is the one and only form that determines whether or not you get federal aid, including subsidized loans. End of story. If you think there is such a box, and that it affects awards, please see the FAFSA. Here, I'll let you look at it yourself: https://fafsa.ed.gov/fotw1415/pdf/PdfFafsa14-15.pdf In fact, if you look at federal programs, all of them are aimed at alleviating poverty and I couldn't find a single one that gives money to people because of the color of their skin. Can you find me one? I'd love to see it. I'm not white so maybe I can get some free money I've been missing. (I know a lot of black people who would really like their Black People Money, as they jokingly refer to this racist belief that there is all this free money around for non-white-people. So let me know, okay?) I will say something about Hispanics and health. Hispanic people tend to be poorer and less well-educated than almost any group in the country. But we also live longer and have healthier babies. My hypothesis about Hispanic families is that they (I say "they" because I live near my white mom's family so I don't share this trait) live near extended family--as do many Asians. Fascinatingly, studies have linked child and maternal well-being to the presence of a grandmother. (My mom loves those studies, LOL.) But this is all just to say that there are tradeoffs in life and different groups of people have different advantages. Hispanic people have an advantage that African Americans, at least those descended from slaves, lack, which is a common language that supports a common dialogue. Of course it's not that simple. This doesn't mean that Hispanic and Asian people don't face other barriers. Asians are famously under-represented in politics, and ridiculously under-represented when you look at the data by income. Why is that? The fact is that societies are very complex. There has never been, to my knowledge, a perfectly just society on the face of the Earth. Human history is a long tale of jingoism, sexism, tribalism, sectarianism and violence. So I am not trying to single out the United States or North America or white people as some particularly racist group. For every minority group and majority group in the US, there is some homeland that was deeply divided not so long ago--and which may be in the midst of racial or sectarian violence right now. From my perspective, poverty is a huge driver of inequality, and I was somehow saddened but not shocked to hear a Harvard boy once make a joke about Jews--in the presence of a Jewish man. It's not all about race. It's about inequality and class and all kinds of things. The point is to realize that this is just not a meritocracy and we aren't all coming de novo out of our moms, to equal services, equal perceptions.

Oh no! :( That makes me so sad. I enjoy that show as well. I learned a lot about cars from that show.

I would absolutely not e-mail. I'd demand a sit-down meeting, bring a paper list, and get it in writing then and there. They will take her much more seriously if she's willing to park her behind in the office and wait until she gets a list of courses as they were when she started.

Sebastian's advice is sound. She needs to meet with someone in the department. You're paying, so I say you're the customer. I negotiated my own way through college but I also paid for it all. If your daughter is not sure whom to deal with, and you're paying money and she's wasting months of her life on courses that she neither needs nor which interest her, then you all need to sit down with somebody at the college and hash it out until you have the requirements, as they were when she entered the program, in writing, and a plan for how to get those courses. I have three degrees and I have never, ever had such bad advice as I hear people on here getting. I'm so sorry for all you are going through. FWIW, I never went to advising. I got the list of requirements off the Internet (I started college in 1995 so it was possible, only just :) ), copied into Word with check boxes, printed it out, and checked them off one by one all by myself, re-checking the list and announcements every quarter and confirming with the registrar that I had it right when changes were made (probably twice throughout my college career). I used to think it was a miracle that I graduated without help but I'm beginning to think, based on what I read here and elsewhere, that my avoidance of advisors might have been my saving grace! Things were easier back then BUT sometimes I think advisors are just plain confused.

Knowing that your husband is a student and working a full-time job, I kind of take back my comment. I still think it's a good way to spend time with kids but I've worked, gone to school, and had kids. It is so hard and painful and frustrating, so I can see a comment like his slipping out. Your choice may not have been immature but a little thoughtless, yes. As for the name-calling on here, I've reported the post which calls her husband by the name of a body part. That is really inappropriate. It's one thing to say you hate his behavior, another thing entirely to call names like that.