I dropped out of law school (which my parents still haven't gotten over) and completed a Master's degree.

When I was in university (in Canada), we never called anyone "Professor Lastname" or anything similar. Anyone with a PhD was "Dr. Lastname", and anyone without a PhD was "Mr./Ms. Lastname". I'll have to ask my kids tomorrow what norm is here in Texas.

Your lunch choices do seem a quite odd to me. One of my kids might pull something like this together, and I would probably tease him about it. I'm completely ignorant about various diets and food restrictions, so I wouldn't immediately jump to that conclusion. Still, I wouldn't comment on your choices. Unless, of course, you asked me to.

The idea that Daria or her student did anything wrong in this situation is absolutely ridiculous. I worked the information desk at my university's library, and students asked me for directions to the restrooms (sometimes phrased as "Is there a restroom here?") every. single. day. Come on, people. Daria, I don't think there is a perfect phrase or easy solution for dealing with these situations when you're across the room. I tend to be a jerk (feigning confusion: "Oh, were you speaking to me? I didn't ask where the restroom is? Sarah, did you ask? Why did you tell me and not Sarah?"), which I don't recommend. Unfortunately, I think you're going to have to check in with your student, make sure she's okay, assure her (in front of the librarian) that she did nothing wrong, and then educate the librarian about how to communicate with individuals with disabilities. If this student is confident and capable enough, it might also be worth arming her with a few phrases for when this type of thing comes up again. "I asked you the question, you can answer me directly" would get the point across nicely.

Our dog, Chloe, weighs 11 pounds and is very safe/calm around all types of people and animals. We never "trained" her or had her certified, but she could easily be a therapy dog. Chloe gets out 2-3x every day. - 30-minute walk around the neighborhood every day - any of our kids' sporting events/practices that take place outside - any outdoor family outings - MIL's retirement home 2-3 times/week (the residents love Chloe and complain if we visit without her) - several neighbors/friends ask that we bring Chloe along to play with their dogs when we visit - she comes in the car with me if I'm picking one of the kids up (exciting) but not if I'm dropping them off (sad doggy) We don't take her anywhere we would have to leave her in the car or tie her up outside, for fear of someone calling the police or just taking her. She's that cute. We like to say that Chloe is "unschooled" and that she should be learning to read any day now. :p

I think my 14yo is a prodigy. Today, he explained that by forcing him to complete a fairly standard, academic high school program (roughly 5 hours/day, 180 days/year), I am preventing him from pursuing his passions and dooming him to life in a cubicle. This conversation started around 1:30pm, as he was eating breakfast. :001_rolleyes:

I started coloring my hair at 23 or 24 because I was starting to get some grays, but I would say I had a significant amount of gray hair by my late 20s. My sisters all started to go gray in their 20s as well, and my brothers were all fully white-haired by 40.

Our kids got their first phones at 16, 13, 12, 9, and 10. Youngest doesn't have one yet, and probably won't until he's 10 or 11. We made each decision based on the individual kid and what they had going on, and it's always worked out fine. No regrets.

One of my kids told me about the first pilot, but I didn't know you could watch it online. I'll have to check it out!

I always find these threads interesting, because I never have a blanket answer about what I do with my boys - I've always just decided in the moment based on the situation, the particular child, and my instincts. I've taken a 10-year-old, 5'2" boy into the ladies' room at a crowded sporting arena, where the restrooms have multiple entrances and fistfights have been known to erupt in the men's rooms. I've also sent a 4-year-old to use the men's room alone in a restaurant rather than gather up my two toddlers (in the middle of eating) and take them all into the ladies' room. I got comments from other women in both situations (which is why I remember them), but I wouldn't do anything differently.

We're only waiting on one score this year - Ds18 took AP English Lit - and whatever score he gets will be a surprise to me. He self-studied, didn't calculate the overall scores of any of his practice tests, and didn't want to share any predictions about his score. Scores aren't released to our state until Saturday, but I'm sure Ds will use a proxy to get them earlier.

Most US states, including ours, have a September 1st cut-off. In Canada (where our oldest started kindergarten), most provinces have a December 31st cut-off.

Ds12 recently started a car washing business, so our cars are spotless and I'm out $200. Typically, our cars are full of sporting equipment, extra clothes, and books, but I'm strict about everyone taking food/garbage out of the car when they leave.

Please invite me to the group. I'd love to join.

How long has he been at the new studio? If he's switched recently, I would hate to see a kid with a passion for dance quit just because he wasn't dealing well with the transition (especially if ASD is involved). In that case, I'd probably have him stick it out until the end of the year. If he's been there for months and really isn't enjoying it, I'd be more inclined to allow him to change to another activity.

Ds22 has always been indecisive about his major and career goals, and he's gone back and forth so much that I've barely kept up. He applied to college as biomedical engineering major and wrote that he wanted to eventually become an orthopedic surgeon, but by the time registration came around, he'd changed his mind and instead started out as a physics major. I'm not sure how many times he officially changed his major, but in his first two years he switched paths from physics to English to classical studies to linguistics to psychology (that I know of). He graduated last spring with a major in psychology and minors in English and linguistics, and is now working on his PhD in educational psychology. Ds19 has wanted to design skate parks for a living since he was 14 or 15. Last year, when we were investigating diploma and degree programs together, we came across "industrial design" and that's his current goal. He's taking classes at the community college for now, and will likely transfer to the local university after 2 years. Ds17 has been planning to study biomedical engineering since he was 15, and is waiting to hear about his college applications.

All of my college students (1 grad student, 1 freshman, 1 DE student, 3 different schools) all start classes on January 17th. I'm going crazy, because trying to get a 14-year-old to conjugate French verbs is hard enough when his three older brothers aren't having a Nerf gun war in the backyard.

For an average 9th grader, I would aim for 7 credits, with 1-2 of them being light/fun "elective" courses. Philosophy, religion, art, music, PE, etc. do not have to be full credit courses. You could do something like: English (including literature) - 1 credit Algebra 1 - 1 credit Physical Science - 1 credit Social Studies - 1 credit Spanish - 1 credit Logic - 0.5 credit (September-January, or 2x/week all year) Religion - 0.5 credit (February-June, or 2x/week all year) PE - 0.5 credit Art - 0.5 credit If you do these courses for multiple years, you can choose to combine them into full credit courses. My 19yo graduated last year with 2 PE credits, which he earned over the 4 years.

To answer the original question: If I found a clean pair of jeans on my laundry room floor, I would assume that they'd fallen out of a laundry basket, and would put them away myself (or ask my youngest to run them upstairs for me). I wouldn't question my kids about the jeans, because even if one of my boys had thrown his brother's jeans on the floor, it wouldn't be worth my time and energy to investigate just so that I could say, "Hey, next time your brother's jeans end up in your drawer, try putting them in his room instead of tossing them on the floor". If you want your boys to do their own laundry (and actually decrease your workload/stress), I think you need to give them room to develop their own laundry routines/systems. Telling them what time of day to do their laundry, asking them to do each other's laundry in order to meet your deadlines, etc. is not going to help them develop systems that work for them. They're smart kids. They need clean clothes. They'll figure it out.

With six boys (and their friends/guests), all of our leftovers and Christmas treats were gone by the night of the 26th. I'll cook another turkey on New Years Eve, which will hopefully last through New Years Day.

If our 17- or 18-year-old wanted to live with their boyfriend/girlfriend during their freshman year of college, Dh and I would strongly discourage it, probably to the point of refusing to pay rent for an off-campus apartment. I can think of so many reasons why it would be a terrible idea to begin college with a live-in partner (high school relationships are pretty likely to end or at least become rocky during the first year of college, I think it's important to have space to develop a circle of friends independent of the boyfriend/girlfriend, etc.) and at that point I think I'd trust our judgment more than our child's. After they've been out on their own for a year or more, I don't think it's my place to decide where or with whom my adult children live. At that point, I'm just not the best judge of what will make them happy. Ds21 starts graduate school in a few weeks, and will be moving in with his partner. Even if he were still an undergraduate student (which most 21-year-olds around here are), I can't imagine telling him who he should or shouldn't live with. He's a grown man, and has been perfectly capable of making his own life decisions for several years.

We struggled with getting shoes on Ds11 until about two years ago, when we found our best solution so far. He wears Nike Free 5.0 running sneakers, about a size too big, without socks. He leaves them tied loosely, just pulls them on and kicks them off. I put them in the washer and lay them outside in the sun to dry whenever they start to stink. They're the most comfortable running sneakers I've ever tried, and everyone in our family now has at least one pair.

In 8th grade, my older boys spent 5-5.5 hours a day. Ds19 couldn't focus on school work for much more than 5 hours, and the others worked fairly quickly and got a lot done in that amount of time. Ds13 will be in 8th this year, and we're going to try to keep his day to under 5 hours. He has a very busy schedule of extracurriculars.

I circle the problem numbers of incorrect answers, and then put a check through the circle when it's been fixed. I sometimes put a check mark through the problem numbers of ones that have been answered correctly, depending on the kid. My 6-year-old prefers to have 8 checks and 2 circles on his page rather than just the 2 circles, because he feels like I'm ignoring all of the ones he got right if I don't give him check marks. My older boys prefer that I just circle the incorrect problems so that I don't clutter up their pages.

I give letter grades, because it's the norm where we live and to be consistent with the colleges where our kids have dual-enrolled during high school. I don't use +/-. I grew up in Canada, where, as far as I know, transcripts always list number grades. The idea that two students, one who earns 100% in every course and one who consistently scores in the low 90s, can end up with identical transcripts still kind of blows my mind.