Whenever possible, Ds worked through the entire problem set before reading the solutions. If he got stuck on a problem, he'd read through the solutions for all the problems he'd already solved to see if they would show him a pattern and help him to solve the tough problem. If he was still stuck, he'd skip the problem, complete as many of the other problems as he could, read their solutions, and give the tough problems another try. I think it's worth trying a few different methods during the first chapter or two. AoPS is so different than any other math program we've used that it took us a few weeks to figure out how to make it work for us.

Ds21 flew to Bangkok in early June, and has a flight booked home from Hanoi on August 16th. Last we heard, he was somewhere in Cambodia. You're only young once, right?

White board. We had a chalkboard in our kids' playroom when they were younger, and it was an absolute mess. Never again.

Will he wear athletic shorts? I've never been able to get Ds11 into trunks. :grouphug:

When our kids were younger, we always took two family vacations every year. One was to visit my family in Canada, and the other was to somewhere we'd never been before. Now, we're at an awkward phase where our schedules make real family vacations nearly impossible. So, we're doing a couple shorter vacations as a family, and longer trips in smaller groups.

I don't think teens begin drinking because they're curious about how alcohol tastes. If they're curious about anything (and not just drinking to fit in), they're curious about what it feels like. Unless you let your teens drink enough at home to become intoxicated, I'm not sure that letting them taste alcohol will make any real difference. At least a couple of our kids have asked to taste beer before they were teens. Dh let them stick their finger in his beer and lick their finger. They tasted wine at their First Communion and were put off enough never to ask to try mine. Because the legal drinking age in the US is so high, and because it's legal in our state, we did allow our oldest son to drink beer in our presence when he was 19/20. Most of our family and friends do the same with their college-aged children.

One beer wouldn't worry me at all. We've asked Ds21 to limit himself to one beer when he's driving. He's a big guy and would be fine after two, but I worry that two quickly becomes three. With Dh, I'm around to nag him about sticking to two. Neither will drive after drinking any liquor, because it's harder to gauge how much you're drinking and to know the effect of each type of liquor.

We don't school year-round, but Ds18 (who has learning disabilities) has always been willing to work for an hour or two every morning during the summer. It helped that he's an early riser, so he could often finish his school work before his brothers were even out of bed. I never asked my other older boys to do any school work during the summer, but I'm sure they would have been much less cooperative.

I'm reading The Boy in the Striped Pajamas with Ds13, and Bridge to Terabithia with Ds11. I didn't plan this well because it's super depressing on my end. Ds6 and I are buddy-reading Pippi Longstocking, which has always been a hit in our house. Dh is reading Grandpa's Great Escape with Ds11 & Ds6, and it's getting some pretty loud laughs from all three of them.

We started homeschooling when I pulled Ds18 (Aspergers and LDs) from public school when he was 7. The next year, we brought the other kids home. Starting out, I expected that we'd be able to remediate Ds18's learning disabilities within two or three years, then he'd go back to public school, and eventually on to college without any real difficulty. Aspergers didn't seem like a disability at that point - he was just a little quirky. By the time he was about 10, I was worried that he would never make it through high school. Around 14, we decided that community college was probably the most reasonable goal, and he starts in September. My expectations for my other older kids were about right. In public school, Ds21 and Ds17 were both among the top 2-3 students in their classes, but weren't outliers by any means. I figured pretty early on that they would both be on the honors/AP/DE/whatever track for high school, and would have the choice to attend "good" (not elite) colleges with partial scholarships, or mediocre colleges with full scholarships. Ds21 starts grad school in September, and Ds17 is hoping to attend the same school.

Our oldest just graduated from college. Each month, we transferred him enough money to pay his rent and utilities. At the beginning of each semester, we included enough to pay for his tuition and books. He sent us the receipts for our taxes. We didn't put any conditions on the money other than that he had to continue to attend college. If he'd failed or dropped out, the money would have stopped and he would have had to get a full time job. Beyond that, we trusted him to act as a responsible adult and to make good choices for himself. He did. Our Ds18 is not ready to make those types of choices, so he'll live at home for the next few years and attend our local community college.

I assigned a full credit for "Conceptual Chemistry with lab".

Dh buys online from Brooks Brothers. We live in a warm climate, so he goes through shirts pretty quickly no matter what kind he buys.

I'm not sure why we thought it would be a good idea to school through the first week of June, because that's just not going to happen. We've had a crazy, busy week, and it's only going to get worse from here (dance recitals, baseball tournaments, prom, Ds21's college graduation, etc.), so next Friday will be our last day of school. In exchange for giving them an early summer, the boys have agreed to complete a list of projects/chores that Dh is putting together. Everyone wins!

Ds21 pulled an all-nighter on Thursday night to finish writing his honors thesis, which had to be hand-delivered at 9am yesterday. He finished around 5am, but was worried about sleeping through his alarm and decided just to stay up until it was safely in his professor's hands. The honors students all handed in their papers at the same time, and Ds said that his classmates looked exhausted and none of the ones he talked to had slept the night before. This was the last week of classes, so most of them would have had 2-3 term papers due, in addition to the honors thesis. Dh and I both pulled occasional all-nighters in college. I was a procrastinator, and he was in a very tough engineering program. There were a group of guys in his program who pulled one all-nighter every single week so that they could keep up with their assignments, and Dh said it wasn't unusual to go into the lab early (6 or 7am) before class to get some work done, and find a half dozen students who'd been working all night.

Ds is relieved as well, but isn't super confident about his score because of the formatting. Thankfully, we haven't seen any schools that require a 5, and Ds's top choice gives credit for a 3.

Antigone? African American literature is pretty balanced between male and female writers and characters. Uncle Tom's Cabin, Their Eyes Were Watching God, The Color Purple, A Raisin in the Sun, Beloved, etc.

Ds17 says he'll be ready for US History and Biology, but decided within the last week not to sit for the US Government exam. It was the first course he neglected whenever other things came up, and now he's just too far behind to catch up without jeopardizing his other exams. His top choice school accepts the CLEP exam for US Government, so we're going to look into going that route instead.

Congrats to you and your son, Lori, and to all the proud moms and accomplished kids! We'll have our first college graduate next month, assuming he actually finishes his honors thesis! Ds21 will graduate with a BS in Psychology (minor in Biology) and is heading back to the same university in the fall to begin graduate school.

I would only force my child to break his commitment if he showed such poor judgement that I could no longer trust him to work with children. If that were the case, he wouldn't be "grounded", but would probably be headed to rehab or some serious counseling. If I was worried about the driving, or him not going straight to and from work, I would drive him myself. It's only four weeks.

I'd love to be added to the group when you have a moment!

It doesn't sound like "playing around" to me, but pretty well within the scope of normal teenage boy behavior. My 13-year-old threw a entire Sprite in his brother's face last night. Sigh. I do wonder, where was the PE teacher when this was going on? I think the teacher should be the one to contact if you feel that your son is being targeted during class, not the other parent. It doesn't sound like either boy is completely faultless in this situation, so I would probably leave the situation with the other boy alone, and just talk to my own child about his part in the altercation, keeping some space from the other boy, asking the teacher to intervene if the other boy starts something with him, etc.

We don't have any rules set in stone. Dh and I make decisions on a case-by-case basis, and have made very different decisions for different kids.

For me, it depends how "casual" you mean. I think leggings are cute on little girls, and are appropriate in all but the most formal settings. On tweens/teens they look very, very casual - fine for hanging out at your best friend's house, or while doing physical activity, but not really appropriate for school, restaurants, birthday parties, etc. In those cases, I would have her wear a skirt or dress with leggings underneath.

Ds11, who has autism, was the most work at age 2-3. With the others, I found the first year the hardest, by far.