I'm definitely an introvert. I would love new friendships, but I have health issues that prevent a lot of activities and travel. Plus the usual muddled schedule of lessons, scouts, church activities ... it is very hard for me to find a *mutual* time for playdates. I am a member of a cover school that does many field trips and activities ... it's large enough that I don't feel I'm a burden on the group when we can't participate or help out, but it's also hard to get to know folks that way. I'm also a member of a playdate co-op ... due to the health issues, even though we've been members for about 5 or 6 years, I still don't know everyone's name! (I am also pretty bad with names in general.) I get embarrassed at having to ask names every time. Plus they all know each other from other activities, so they can more naturally cluster together to chat ... they are happy to include me, but I have to make the effort to sit there and join in, and that's very difficult. Fortunately, I am blessed with friends who understand my issues and are willing to work with me, as I am willing to work with them in their circumstances. We've known each other since college, though, so there's a solid foundation beneath the homeschooling to keep us persevering. I remember making the very difficult effort to attend a ladies' Bible study at my church one time, and one of the women spoke about how she'd had this realization that she needed to stop hanging around depressing people and only spend time with those who were uplifting. I know what she was getting at, but it just HURT to hear her words ... I was suffering severe depression and panic attacks at the time (am slightly better now) and just felt thrown to the wolves ... apparently those of us who struggle aren't worthy of being anyone's friend! It was also sad how many folks were nodding in agreement. (We won't go into the other times I've tried to connect with this group and been badly hurt in the process ... they are all wonderful women individually, but get them in a group and the potential for hurt and exclusion just multiplies exponentially! And none of them are homeschoolers. Half are teachers.) There's a young lady at my church with a young daughter, who I am wanting to befriend. I think we have a lot in common, and I also think she could use a friend. But my inherent shyness combined with physical panic, and our very incompatible schedules ... it's been hard for us to arrange the playdate we both want to try. I hope I'm not hurting her by not being more prompt in my efforts ... but I am sure it does hurt some. And she's been through so much, and needs compassion too. Just because people don't call, or can't drive to your end of town ... please don't write them off. Sometimes there's a really good reason for it. (And sometimes there's not ... that's when you write it off!) I remember coming up with the kick-off party this past fall for our small co-op ... and then, due to where folks lived, it got relocated to just far enough away that I was physically incapable of attending. It was heartbreaking ... my own fun idea, snatched away so that we couldn't even attempt it. I hear they had a blast, though, and I was glad for that. Anyway, that's one introvert's perspective. :) Take it for what it's worth. Obviously I'm a tad biased. :)

Not sure what quality level you want, but Jumpstart has a Languages game ... more phrases than fluency, but it's cheap at least. :) Also see if your local library has programs you can check out to listen to. There's a "Teach Me" and "Teach Me More" (or maybe it's "Tell Me" and "Tell Me More") that has CDs and simple coloring books ... songs and vocabulary ... I first saw them at our library, but have since spotted shortened versions in, I think, the dollar store. Those might be a start, at least. Might see if any of your current movies have alternate language options, so you could watch, say, The Little Mermaid in Spanish. My pre-K kid tagged along with FLL 1 this year and loved it. She's a beginning reader, and I didn't do the writing parts with either kid, but she loved the narrations and poetry, and learned some of the grammar too. So it's fine for that age, with accomodations. History ... www.guesthollow.com had some free plans and book suggestions ... might find some there.

The only time I've ever had things like that happen have been traced back to purely physical (but very subtle) cues ... not an ahead-of-time premonition, just an awareness that something was going on, before we were officially made aware ... like the smelling smoke, or the time a plane I was on had engine trouble (could feel the barometric pressure changes as we kept changing altitude ... knew something was wrong but didn't know what till they made announcements later). Definitely trust those senses, but don't overplay it or the poor kid might end up with anxiety issues. (Don't ask me how I know that one.)

Does your son have a manual? Did she at least tell the parents to get those? Because the parent/child rule is in that, and every Tiger achievement has three components ... a den activity, a family activity, and some sort of outing. We have a tiny pack (that's why my den is Tigers through Bears, and the other den is Webelos) so we wiggle the requirements a bit, but in every level there is a lot that must be done at home, with family. If she didn't tell y'all at least that much, then it's very poor leadership indeed. I will say, I can agree with the poster above who's quitting leadership. I've spent much of the year trying to whack parents over the head to read the manuals ... and since we have told them, there's really no excuse. Some of our early boys dropped out mid-year, and several more joined late, so that's complicated things for us ... I was about in tears this month because so far the ONLY child in our entire pack to reach rank this year was my son. But my whacking has paid off ... a few other boys are going to be there by next week (our closing party) and I'm pretty sure my co-leaders' kids are also there, they just haven't marked up their manuals yet. I only got into this because our pack leader and former den leader was expecting a baby last spring and sensibly said she couldn't lead everything this year. It was Step Up or No Pack, so here I am. She still handles the paperwork, and another parent stepped up for Webelos, and we're doing okay. Still need more help though, but I think some parents are coming around and considering it. That's very different from the drop-off, video game scenario though. I'd go crazy with that. If you do get involved, see if your area has a Roundtable or something similar. It's a monthly meeting designed to give you ideas of what to do using the Program Guide themes ... you're not forced to use them but it does save some brainstorming. Our roundtables are pretty fun and it is good to hear what other packs are doing ... sometimes you can team up with another pack to achieve something neither can do on its own.

Oh, sure, I totally agree! Except that this was our VERY FIRST attempt, and they advertised it as 'beginner' (they also had an advanced route), and they also told us everything was supposed to be right by the trail (as it's part swamp, this is rather critical!). So when we couldn't find things ... it was so hard! Those back and forth trails .... Though, when we realized the coordinates had been reset, and we used our sheet and figured out how to reprogram the machine ourselves, that did help some. (It had been set up with a pre-guided geocache tour, basically, for newbies ... and it really wasn't for newbies at all. Even more experienced cachers were giving up in frustration, and more than one doing the advanced version compared notes with us to make sure they were on track ... they were having to solve puzzles for the coordinates, and were finding the stations in a different order. It was a total disaster, as far as what they intended the event to be for. The route proper shouldn't take even more than an hour, going by GPS, trail, and common sense, and it took us and most others who didn't quit at least two and a half hours ... thereby missing the entire rest of the Earth Day activities they were hosting.) We did it ... but I was afraid I'd scared my family off the hunt for life. Thankfully the nearby letterbox was sheer joy for my kids to find, and the cache we found at camp recently (me and dh) was fun, so we're interested again. I think it could be a really cool hobby.

Not owning a GPS, I am more drawn to letterboxing. We found our first, too, not too far from home. We did try geocaching at an Earth Day event locally ... they loaned GPS's to folks, but it was on the nature trails and someone had reprogrammed our list ... and trails don't go as the GPS flies ... it was a nightmare. We finished, but were pretty bummed at the end. Still interested though ... so (again, even though we don't own a GPS) I looked up some caches near where my dh and I went this weekend. One had a good enough map and some hints that we thought we'd give it a shot ... and we actually found it! That was cool! So we're looking into the hobby. Geocaching is part of Boy Scouting's 100 year anniversary stuff right now, so if you have a scout, try searching for some of their caches ... should be fun. I am hoping to help our Cubs hide a cache (none of the packs or troops in our Council are using the program ... our Council dropped the ball and didn't request the official kit ... and I hate for our region to be left out). We're gonna maybe hide some special celebration stickers in it, and make it a hybrid letterbox/geocache. Plus go find some simple local ones. (A parent has volunteered to guide us in this.) Oh, and our first letterbox had our first 'hitchhiker' too ... that is motivating!

On the overprotective side ... I trust my kids (though at 8 and 5 they are still pretty young so I don't have to test it often!) ... it's everyone else I don't trust. And laws and city statutes and posted policies at different locations ... it gives a lot fewer chances to allow 'practice independence' ... can't leave the kids in the car for 5 minutes to hand an overdue book to the desk librarian and run back out again, for instance. Given our heat, I wouldn't let the kids wait in the car more than 5 minutes anyway, but I *believe* it's against the local laws too. Can't yet let them go to the park alone, because even though it's just around the corner, it is out of sight and there aren't a lot of other kids in our area yet (neighborhood transitioning from retirees to families, slowly) and there are adults that use the tennis court in the park ... so not quite a safe bet yet. Things like that. I want to let my kids grow up and have some freedom ... I just can't find enough good opportunities. And then I have anxiety issues, and so does my oldest. Which slows it down more. Sigh.

Haven't read the rest, but... Our library system says that anyone under (I think) 12 must be supervised by a responsible adult. And they won't hesitate to get an unescorted child picked up if it becomes necessary. (Do you want to know how many times we'd be closing up our out-in-the-boonies branch and have some kid left behind, with no parent in sight, no way to reach a parent, and the kid with no clue what to do? Only recourse was the local police department. The teens always said they'd just wait on the porch, their ride would be along soon ... and we were more of the "over our dead body" mindset ... anything could happen way out there and no one would've known!) And there is no such thing as a safe place anymore. :( Your innocent 7yo walks behind a person using a computer ... do you know what that person is looking at? (No, you don't want to know, trust me! Rules or no rules, they find ways around!) Your child has to use the bathroom ... better have two kids of the same gender to be buddies, because otherwise who knows what might happen there? And there are always corners where librarians' vision is obscured, even if they do happen to be keeping an eye on your child ... which they do not have the time to do, and are not supposed to be legally responsible for doing. I would check the ages for being left home alone in your state ... that might be a good guideline. But having seen so much via different jobs ... my kids will probably have a driver's license before I let 'em stay most places! (Neighborhood park, perhaps sooner. We'll see. LOL.) Also, check the age for someone to be considered old enough to be 'responsible' for another child ... a 14yo might be old enough to be alone, but not considered old enough by the library to supervise even an 11yo sibling. Needs to be asked.

Did anyone else feel like just saying, perhaps they need to stop being unabashedly and just get a bashing over the head to make 'em think twice? (Sorry, bad puns running through my head....) I'd definitely walk, because I'm too chicken to confront, but then I'd be panicking about back-up solutions.

Dittoing. The two-deep leadership is a BIG rule ... not only for all scouting programs, but also for other things ... if you are meeting in a church, for instance, she may be violating their rules (and insurance) too. Plus the Tiger program absolutely requires an adult partner per Tiger. As a den leader myself ... that would drive me nuts. (There's no rule that they have to play 15 minutes at the beginning, but it is considered good form to have an opening activity for boys to do while waiting for everyone else to show up. There are good ideas in the Program Helps guide, which she can access online if she didn't buy a copy. My meetings go smoother when I remember to plan one of those.) There is a Lone Scout program, and you can certainly go that route for a little while, if the other den doesn't work out for you. Plus anybody can buy the Belt Loop guide and some of the other extras, which you can work on at your own pace. (ETA: Not sure how to file paperwork for earning them, though ... our pack leader does all our papers. Your Scout Shop should be able to help you figure that out.) We've loved Cub Scouts because of its family emphasis (siblings invited to Rain Gutter Regatta, Pinewood Derby, campouts, etc). And we tried not to let our Wolf and Bear parents realize they actually could leave. :D By having them stay and observe, they learn the routine and can later be begged into volunteering! (Ours is a small pack but we desperately need a few more leaders ... as it is I lead a mixed-level den and that's tricky to juggle.) Anyway, if you go the Lone Scout route, you might be able to round up a few other boys to do special events with, perhaps. And he would still be eligible for Day Camp and other things. Just be sure to get on any relevant local mail or email lists so you're sure to hear about stuff. (We're venturing into Girl Scout realm next year too ... and if we can't make the minimum, they'll be the Girl Scout version of Lone Scouts, "Juliettes", and just happen to meet together... would save a ton of paperwork that way, for sure... I am so crazy for trying to lead both but it has to happen if we want something to match our schedule.)

If depression and a panic disorder count, then add me to your list. And yeah, there are hard and crazy days. But it still seems worth it. (Mine are 8 and 5 right now.)

I wouldn't discount the vision issues even if he's showing the behaviors elsewhere. I've not been tested by a developmental optometrist (or whatever it is), but I do 'officially' have lazy eye ... not sure that's really what is going on ... but my eyes do work independently of each other. It doesn't hamper my reading unless I am tired or read too long, but it *can* hamper it ... and it causes vision issues elsewhere too. (Not good to drive when your eyes are too tired and you can't tell which one is seeing where! But that rarely happens.) Anyway ... thought it worth a mention. I would love to have my eyes get better, but the last doc I saw said it would be surgery (to shorten a ligament or something) and that's just too scary to contemplate. When my vision is tested, though, it's a good 20/20 (or used to be, it's been awhile). I see very well ... just don't see very coordinated sometimes! Never heard about an ADD/vision connection ... my psych. is looking at ADD for me (to match my panic, etc) ... this is interesting.

Wow, I'm so glad I didn't read this thread a few weeks ago! I am SO sorry you're reacting so badly to the melatonin! I have a panic disorder, and am on medication for it, along with depression meds. Insomnia was one of my biggest issues. We'd tried melatonin with no effect a few years back. Recently we added an ADD med (a stimulant) to the mix, which about killed me the first week but is now actually helping. But sleep was still an issue, so I added melatonin. Amazingly, it WORKS for me ... which is odd now that you've posted, because if it's possible to react badly to something, I will react badly to it. My doc has to start me on micro-doses of everything. Every body processes things differently. I do hope you can find something else that will help you sleep! (And now I hope I don't panic about panicking while taking the melatonin! Ack!)

FWIW, (and I will admit that I got stuck in Cervantes and gave up on WEM, but will go back to WEM at some point) ... just practice reading. And then you'll get better. If it helps, if you're a 'logic' level reader in your estimation ... then practice on a novel that's written for that level! There are a lot of great children's classics that you can enjoy in one reading, and then go through and find things to study further (perhaps some worldview, perhaps some history you weren't aware of before ... things like that). You will be able to finish a project in a shorter amount of time, and the more you read, the faster you do get at reading. And as someone said above, they read a lot of older (harder) authors in between a reading, and found they'd grown at the end and could read harder and longer things ... and that's when you're better able to tackle the analysis. I'm a naturally fast reader, though I will admit I spend most of my time on children's literature. :) And I'm a re-reader ... if a book isn't worth re-reading, it wasn't worth reading in the first place. (A paraphrase of C.S. Lewis, I think, and I heartily agree. LOL.) At least, it's not worth re-reading at that point in your life. But as a re-reader, you'll naturally start to pick up on more each time you read, even if you already recall tons of detail and plot the first time around. The more of one author you read, the more you see the style, the themes, the situations (and even the writing flaws) that the author shows. And then you get better at spotting those things within the same genre ... and then it expands to being able to spot those things in just whatever you read. I'm no literature expert ... and though I have my minor in English, I'm not sure I deserved it at the time ... I've learned so much more since then (especially when working on trying to write novels ... that's a great learning experience!). I can still see, over time, how my ability to read, analyze, and discuss a book (or movie) has improved over time. It does help that I've got close friends who read similar books and also love to analyze them to pieces ... informal book chats can really help you notice things you might not have noticed on your own. Rambling ... but just wanting to say don't give up hope. If the approach isn't quite working for you as written, then be a homeschooler and adapt it! Find a new babystep to your goal (like starting with kids' books). (In college I never did get time to reread the novels we were supposed to analyze ... what a pity ... because most of them probably deserved better. We would have been better taught as students if we'd spent the semester really working on just a few books, than trying to cram in a whole era's worth at once. At least in the earlier levels.)

While diet, meditation, and exercise ARE beneficial ... sometimes medications are too. Though it can be a pain to find the right ones. As someone who has dealt with severe anxiety, and depression, for the past nearly ten years. (And we're only just now beginning to find the right combinations of meds.) OP: If you can fight it off with the great natural suggestions you've been given, that's awesome. The sooner you can find something to help it, the better, so your body doesn't get into the anxiety 'habit', which then becomes very hard to break. If you can find triggers that will help. Caffeine for some (including chocolate, or the amounts in some medications), hormones, weather (air pressure changes), a situation or thought that pops into your head and sets you off, perhaps even a weird food allergy or an annoying scent or something. Anyway, if you can find something (or a combination of somethings) that might be triggering the adrenaline, it's easier to be pre-emptive with the exercise and meditation ... hard to do deep breathing when you're in a full-blown panic attack! (Especially with allergies! Sigh.) Has there been any lifestyle change lately? Or a new medication that might have a weird side effect? Or anything like that? Good luck getting it under control! I do not look forward to perimenopause ... I figure we'll just about be getting me under control by that point, and it'll knock it all down again. :tongue_smilie:

Was there insurance on it, since there was delivery confirmation?

I suffer with anxiety and depression year-round, but since my second child, my cycle has been slightly more predictable (never was before) and now even dh can tell when it's coming ... usually sooner than I can. I just have to take a deep breath, remind myself that it will pass, and maybe take an extra Xanax. (Mine will go from depression to panic attack fairly quickly if I am not careful.) I do hear of women who take low doses of antidepressants one week of the month, just for that purpose. If the natural remedies don't help, it's worth checking into.

I think that's part of the reason for scaffolding in the classical education model ... you keep revisiting subjects, but more in depth, so that it sticks better and you really learn it. My kids forget what we've learned all the time ... but then they'll come out with the oddest recollections too. You never know just what will stick ... so you revisit at different levels, and just let it build up till it does stick. (Or so I keep telling myself.)

No, only ten books! The series ends this year. They find more than one clue in each book ... some are more critical than others. I myself am enjoying them a lot. The writing isn't always the best ... but they had to find a style that each author could remain consistent with, and so far that seems to be holding up. The puzzles can be fun to solve, too. And the brother/sister relationship seems to be worked out well. It *seems* like a cross between Series of Unfortunate Events and National Treasure on an international scale, presumably with a happy ending. The cards are useful if you intend to play the online games and compete. If you find used ones and want a card set, you can write to Scholastic (there's info on the game website) and they will send a code for the virtual set. My first one was secondhand, and apparently printed even before the cards came out, so that's what I had to do for that. The cards for each title are the same, but the card packs contain a random assortment, and some will duplicate with the book cards. Just so you know. If you don't want to get into all the collecting ... that's a heads up. But the cards do sometimes have fun puzzles and codes to solve, and even after the online part is over, the real cards will still be a fun item.

I don't have a photographic memory by any stretch of the imagination, but I do have a good visual memory. I read very fast ... I'm a natural speed-reader, I guess. It's not skimming for me ... I can do that too ... but my natural reading speed is just plain fast. I don't necessarily recite it all verbatim after one reading, though. It has not hampered my comprehension ability. (Well, except in Spanish class once, where I read too fast on a passage and missed a critical 'no' that changed the entire meaning ... but that came out funny...) My husband, who is also an avid reader but goes much slower, gets annoyed because I can read super-fast and recall all the details, while he concentrates on each page and has less recall of detail (though very good comprehension). It blows all his theories of speed-readers cutting corners. LOL. I had a similar moment to the story someone posted above ... our college Honors forum class had a guest speaker who brought an article for us to read before she spoke. Since it was presumably a limited amount of time, I did what I usually would in that situation ... I skimmed to get the gist of it, then went back and read it 'slowly' ... and then since there was still time, I re-read it. When I looked up, the speaker gave me a look that clearly was asking if I'd really read it, and I don't think she believed me when I nodded. But I had. Twice. Plus a skim. I do have a pretty clear recall of 'where' in a book I can find a quote ... I can get a feel for if it was, say, on the top left of a page spread, or in the middle right, or whatever. So reading different printings of a book actually throws me off because the words are in the wrong places! And I learn best when I can see things written or drawn out. But I do not have a photographic memory. It's kind of weird. (I'm also a re-reader ... all the natural speed readers I know are as well ... if it's good, then we read it again ... we just do it a little faster. It doesn't have to get in the way of the enjoyment of a well-worded passage or anything. And I do feel like I'm in the world of the book when it's a story ... I hear the voices, etc. I would say I actually do hear each word in my head, but mathematically that doesn't seem quite possible. And it can be kind of annoying because I 'absorb' print like a sponge whether I want to or not ... a glance at a newspaper or a cereal box or whatever, and I've already read half of it. Sigh.)

You said Blue Cross doesn't cover eating disorders ... but can you get a doc to label her with something else that it might cover? If there's an eating disorder, there's gotta be some depression or anxiety or something else, which I would think they DO cover (they cover my psych and meds, at least the plan we're on). And the eating disorder has got to be wreaking havoc with her innards, so there may be something else you can work on too. (I worry about this myself ... my panic originally manifested itself as several years of throwing up ... I am afraid to think what damage that did ... sigh. Not bulimic ... but I sure do limit what I eat now for fear of going through all that again.) ETA: Yes, it's a long battle. I had a college friend who I met after she'd been through anorexia treatment, and was still seeing a nutritionist. I also happened to work with her mom (small world), and she kind of asked me to befriend her daughter and keep an eye on her. (I would've anyway, as I liked her.) It was interesting to watch her struggle with choices ... and of course I didn't always know what to say. But just being friends was good. Wish that friendship had lasted longer though.

Since you did email her and say hike, she could easily have emailed back and questioned further if she had health issues that worried her (which I would've done). Since she didn't ... she was probably fine. And probably thought it was well worth it, even if she was a bit slower on the way back. So even though I said I'd have trouble ... I would also have (hopefully) had the sense to give you a heads-up. Reminds me of our latest Cub outing... our Webelos leader is a wonderful man and helps our whole pack with campouts and hikes. But his family is a tad more outdoorsy than the rest of us, so I think his estimates, and his group of boys, are a bit, um, optimistic? LOL for my younger group of boys, and me personally with my help. I had a little chat with him afterwards about his definition of a 'mile' versus my definition. LOL. And he started out with a steep part ... scared me to death because I am terrified of heights ... no one else but me was bothered, but we were RIGHT at the edge of a nice long drop down the mountain ... I was scared for me and also worried we'd drop a kid. I probably whined more on that hike than any of the boys did, and they were definitely fussy by the time we got back to camp. (But I kept my fussing quiet and mostly toward my husband, who was there to support me.) And because I walk slower, I tend to be our 'caboose' to make sure we don't lose any stray kids at the end of the line. Works out fairly well. So ... you did FINE. Wouldn't hurt to check in and see how they handled it, for future reference, but it sounds like you did all you could.

We didn't start in PS, just some mother's day out type preschool stuff, but my kids do some of the same things ... stopping to smell the roses (literally), playing, generally staying 'younger' but not necessarily immature. My 8yo boy still enjoys Dora, and will still admit to playing Elmo games on his V.Smile Cyberpocket. How many 2nd graders would admit to Elmo? (I try to head him off about such things in public, though, LOL.) I love that my kids, while they do squabble a lot, are also each other's primary playmates. They don't think of each other as best friends because they're still young for that concept and they take each other for granted ... but they are pretty close. They do have other friends, though, that they'd give that label to. It's nice to get time to be a family. Over the last year and more, we've added scouts, and this spring Upward soccer, and suddenly our family schedule is INSANE (partly due to all the meetings I have to do to train for cubs and girl scouts and stuff and partly due to practices). I don't see how folks manage to do this on top of PS schedules ... I greatly admire those who pull it off and still have family time. (And I do know families who do this ... they put me in awe.)

Proud of surviving the school year, so far. :D Proud that I opened and checked ALL the experiment kits as we received them (I usually order in spring, and some kits of course don't get used till the end of the school year!) because I found missing equipment and instructions. Well, actually, I didn't find them ... but you know what I mean. Proud that I am going to try to be brave enough to attend the state convention, which is out of town and therefore sets off all my anxiety and panic problems. Would like to be less medically difficult next year. Would like to get the schedule nailed down a bit better ... good this year, but we'll be adding a bit next year, and I know it takes time to adjust. Ack! Would like to relax more and remember that they ARE learning whether I think so or not ... it just shows up at odd times, and not always when Dad asks them, "So, what did you learn today?" (At least he knows not to take the answers too seriously!) Would like to schedule less out-of-house time, but a few more family weekend trips, if I can get to where I can travel. There's good stuff around here. Would like to be less paranoid about camping, especially as I'm a Cub Scout den leader and about to be a Daisy/Brownie Girl Scout leader too.

Well, if she said it was fine, then it was. :) And I will add, if I ever made it TO the Highlands, I'd certainly risk taking the walk. I bet it's lovely there!