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Xahm

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About Xahm

  • Birthday April 23

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  1. A lot of schools, particularly rougher ones, around here don't allow locker use. When I was in school they told us the fire Marshall banned bringing bags to class, but I was never fully convinced that was true. Now they have to, but the bags must be clear.
  2. My older two claim to be Hufflepuff. They love the idea of being loyal, hardworking, and sadly overlooked. I think they are pretty strongly Ravenclaw as they get great joy out of outwitting those around them. My youngest claims to love Slytherin, but he started claiming this at age three, so I'm pretty sure the eldest taught him to say this just so that she could watch people's reactions.
  3. Xahm

    Lice.

    I've only give through 1 round, but if the one with lice has easy to comb hair, it doesn't have to be a big deal. I got them from my 5 year old daughter, who also gave them to 4 year old brother. He had short hair, and after I cooked him with the nit comb once I never found any more. I really, really didn't want them and am a very cheap person, so I did what I found recommended on the Internet. I combed while my (quite long, thick but fine) hair was full of conditioner, then doused my hair with vinegar and tied a plastic bag around my head for a few hours to keep the vinegar there and not smelling so bad, then i washed and come with conditioner again. I got tons of lice and nits both of those times, then I just combed 2 or 3 times a day for a few days, usually getting just one or two, then every day due about a week, then every couple of days, then just whenever I thought of it. I don't think I saw anything past day 4. I didn't do the vinegar to my child, but she did get a short-ish haircut and we combed whenever she watched tv for a few days. We washed all bedding once and covered pillows in plastic bags with daily changed pillowcases over that until we were in the clear.
  4. We're struggling a bit to get back in the groove. We've finally got everyone healthy and through dentist appointments and Christmas stuff, so hopefully we won't have any more interruptions for a few weeks. My second grader is chugging along fine, but probably not doing nearly as much physical writing as he should be. My newly five year old is starting to realize he does remember his letter sound enough to read, but only starting. It's my older two who've been practicing the art of disappearing or telling me they aren't quite healthy enough to concentrate(to be fair, was definitely true several days), but they are a matter for a different thread.
  5. As everyone had said, you can just skip it if you want. I would check though to see if his focus on "bad guys" is actually making his anxiety worse. Sometimes kids that age seen to need "bad guy stories" to help them externalize and deal with their anxiety, but that can be hard to see as a mom. We'd prefer to shelter them from the bad stuff, and we feel like we're putting too much on them, but sometimes that's just our perspective. If my five year old asks me if bombs are real and if they really kill people, I'll tell him they are and that it is very sad. Then in my head I worry about whether that's too much because I've got pictures of carnage and stories of families turn apart in my head, but he doesn't have that. He just knows that they are a sad, real thing that kill people. He's seen pictures of broken down buildings and probably relates that to bombs, but then his mind moves on. If I refused to answer, he'd likely fixate on those broken down buildings and the thought of bombs and actually spend more time thinking and imagining it. Some kids are more intense, though. My oldest at age 3 and 4 would often go to her dad and ask him to tell her about something sad. So, he'd tell her about a border war or an illness or a destroyed treasure, and they'd put it in her "book of sad things" and she'd move on. She's the kid who had her first existential crisis at 3 when she figured out on her own that everything dies, so even though this was a terrifying thing for me to watch, it was clear she needed to think things through, and being able to physically "close the book" seemed to help her move on.
  6. We have a limited access highway near us that was poorly designed and has several "dump you into the left side of the highway with poor visibility" spots. I refuse to take any of those ramps and will always find another way. It's just not worth it. I don't love merging normally, but knowing that cars could be driving 90mph and not having a long enough line of sight to know... Nope
  7. I'm hoping my husband can handle making boxes look like books. He's good with that kind of thing. (We did a slack line a couple of years ago, and they are anti-trampoline)
  8. I like the Secret Garden idea. That sounds perfect!
  9. So, trying to come up with appropriate presents for and nephews when everyone already has so much stuff, I am getting one set a "War and Peace" themed gift: Nerf bullets and bandaids for war, stuff for a movie night for peace. Another set will be at the same event, so I'd like to do a play on a different classic book title. Any ideas for 6 and 10 year old sisters? Home schoolers, not overly sheltered, like crafts, playing outside, etc. They will be getting plenty of actual books, so we could go that direction, but it's not necessary.
  10. I might say something to the coach about how you'd like the coach to keep an eye out. That mom and daughter have behaved negatively towards your child, and you want the coach to know that if the coach sees it, it's part of a pattern, not a "one off."
  11. Part of this has to come as a result of grade requirements for scholarships, too. I know professors who would love to hold a tough love line and grade strictly to help students learn to hold themselves to a high standard. However, they know that if a student's GPA drops below a certain level, that student is going to become responsible for paying tens of thousands of dollars. I went to a magnet high school that required keeping a certain GPA and never having lower than a B in math or English class. Drop below it two semesters in a row and you were out. Some of us were escaping bad, dangerous high schools. The teachers knew it and tried to be as strict as possible while not sending us to gang-land as punishment for forgetting a homework assignment or struggling with a concept.
  12. This is just me musing, but I wonder if part of the problem is that we are giving ourselves, and our kids, too much credit for being better humans than we were in the past. This is extra complicated for me to sort out because I come from a "we're all dead in sin and have no good desires" and am now in a "we're made in the image of God but we're bad at it" state if understanding. Stereotypes are useful for our brains, even though they are frequently harmful, especially when we live in a more diverse society. We are very aware today of the harm that comes from race and sex discrimination, so we don't rely on that mental crutch and rebuke ourselves when we slip. However, have our brains gotten commensurately better at dealing with information? It strikes me that we've got more information than ever before while at the same time knowing that we shouldn't "chunk" this information into stereotypes, but it's it surprising that we're having major trouble with this, especially our young people? I very much don't know the solution to this, but I think we're going to need to develop some strategies besides, "treat every person and bit of information you come across as completely individual and necessary to evaluate on their/its own merits." That sounds great, but I don't think it's humanly possible. I think we're seeing the birthing pains of trying find a new way of organizing information that doesn't hurt people.
  13. My husband and I have both been asked to volunteer in ways that keep us from being able to pick up our kids in a timely fashion, and they are fully capable of walking to us. That's an example of a rule that, at least in our medium size church, makes no sense and doesn't increase safety. I like two deep leadership and the buddy system. I like simple rules like "at scouts we can throw things TO people but not AT them." I dislike when people misread the rules and say, "the rules say there must always be two adults, so there really have to be four adults so that if one adult goes to the bathroom, they take a buddy to avoid being alone and two adults are still with the kids" or"there's no way to always have 2 adults with kids at summer camp, so let's just ignore that rule." Or "new BSA rules don't let you play Frisbee because you are throwing things at each other, so the rules are dumb and should be ignored."
  14. We often call "deviled eggs" "doubled eggs" here because that's what my oldest heard and we couldn't make her believe "deviled" makes more sense than "doubled." You start with twelve eggs and end up with twenty-four doubled eggs.
  15. We've got better playgrounds in our area now than we did when I was a kid ('90s), by far. They tend to do a good job allowing kids to climb pretty high and test their balance in a lot of ways while being open ended enough for kids to come up with lots of different ways to play. They also have been designed pretty well to reduce the likelihood of severe injury, which is important. I expect my kids to get some bumps and bruises and I'm willing for them to break an arm or even get a minor concussion, but no major head trauma or complex fractures should occur from normal playground play. I'm really more concerned with how to deal with other safety rules that have sprung up. We had to really push to get the teachers to allow our 4, 7, and 9 year olds to walk together out of Sunday School to meet us in the sanctuary. (Same building). I'm not sure it would have been approved if it had been only one child. Scouts has some good rules written, but there is a tendency to interpret them in the most draconian way possible, far past what's written or intended. When that happens, they tend to get ignored or fun stops, neither of which is good.
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