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Xahm

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Posts posted by Xahm

  1. Hugs to you, and I'm following. My kids have a young cousin in the hospital, and the outlook is not at all good. I'm struggling to give the right amount of information the right way, but in the end I'm not going to be able to protect my kids completely. Bad stuff happens, and it's so hard to see our kids have to process that. (Much harder on the parents and sisters of the cousin in question, in a way that can't even be compared, of course!)

    • Sad 6
  2. My 5th grader next year will be doing some stuff with older sister, some with little brother, and some on his own.

    Math: finish BA 5, start AOPS PreAlgebra and/or Patty -Paper geometry

    ELA: Mosdos lit and assorted novels for lit, AAS finish 5 and continue into 6 and maybe 7, MCT finish Island and go to Town for Vocab/Grammar/Writing

    History: SOTW Middle Ages

    Science: REAL Science Odyssey Biology level 2

    Music: singing and Hand bells at church

    PE: co-op style Homeschool PE, gymnastics

    Last year of Cub Scouts, beginning Scouts BSA

    I'll be trying to do French and a few other things, too, but we'll see what actually happens.

  3. 6 hours ago, DawnM said:

    Do you have a hybrid school of any kind she could attend part time?   We have several in our area.   Some are actual schools where you can go part or full time (private) and some are places you just take classes individually, which would probably not bring the consistency she is looking for.

    PS: for the record, I allowed my kids to go to school when they wanted to.   Oldest HSed until he dual enrolled.   Middle went in 10th grade, 3rd went in 7th grade, and youngest is currently in PS kindergarten.

    Thanks. There's such a school, but it won't make sense for our situation until the year after next when she's in 8th. We have a plan for this coming year that seems satisfactory to all, as well as the outline of potential different long term plans. I really now have to figure out how to let her process her thoughts and concerns verbally without my taking them on as additional stress. It's easy enough at the moment for me to realize I don't need to jump in and fix, "I think I have a crush, what do I do about it" or "what if there's nuclear war and it doesn't even matter whether I can go to college" because it's obvious to me that I can't fix those things, but it's harder when the concern is about education, which i can, mostly, control. Not all her venting and worrying needs to mean instant major changes because she's 11 and changes her mind a lot, but it's good for her to know I'm listening and taking her seriously and addressing what needs to be addressed. It helped me a lot to come here and vent about how she was venting to me, so thank you all for being good listening ears.

    • Like 1
  4. Thanks, all. There has been a lot of helpful advise about this particular concern. 

    Of course, this issue that had been coming up repeatedly for a few weeks hasn't come up again since I posted. I suspect there will soon be a new concern soon because that's how life goes. I remember being that age and constantly worried about one thing, then the next. Part of the difference is that I bottled them all inside me and had undiagnosed panic attacks for years, but she processes them verbally with me and a few other trusted adults. That's a good thing for her, but now I need to learn how to take her concerns seriously but not personally. Also, how to not take them too...literally might be the word for it. I guarantee that if I enrolled her in school right now, she'd quickly come to me concerned about how she can possibly meet all the goals she has for herself wasting hours in school each day. That may change in a few years, too.

    • Like 5
  5. 53 minutes ago, Bambam said:



    But I also would tell my kids that we've discussed this topic, this is the decision, and that topic is now closed for discussion - unless they bring something brand new to the table. We are not going to rehash this again and again and again. 
     

    I may need to have her submit, after initial discussion, further concerns in writing. It may help her organize her own thoughts and figure it which aspects are most important. If she can include potential solutions, even better.

    • Like 1
  6. I'm on team wait for the second car. The longer you wait, the better habits you form and the more money you save. Also, if you buy a new car in 2 years, in 5 years it'll be a 3 year old car, not a 5 year old one.

    As for teaching kids to drive, when we get there some day I'm hoping for something large but with great visibility. The vehicle I currently drive scares me because the are large swaths behind me I can't see well. I agree that it's easier to learn on a big vehicle then switch to a small one right before the test.

  7. Just now, Katy said:

    Does she understand that needling is a form of social testing? If she shrugs it off and makes a joke so that it’s clear they cannot make her feel bad about herself OR be horrible to others, they’ll decide she’s confident and cool and let it be. Middle school is 10% academic, 90% social tests. It’s constant. 

    I'm pretty sure, based on my trying to cooly observe at a distance, that she plays it cool there and then gets concerned thinking it over hours and days later.

    • Like 1
  8. 15 minutes ago, Katy said:

    You wouldn’t be the first person to call a local school and ask if she can shadow a student for the day or three to see if she’d like to enroll. Some kids lose their FOMO when they realize how much kids in public school are micromanaged and over scheduled. School is essentially a babysitting service to keep kids out of trouble all day.  Others find the lack of freedom ranks second to their ability to carve out an identity away from their parents. 

    I've strongly considered it, but the middle school principal had to be replaced mid-year due to parent concerns about out of control bullying sending multiple kids to the hospital. The new principal has too much on her hands to consider letting an unenrolled student shadow. I have signed her up for a couple of public school at home classes next year to help fill her need for 1. Being able to more easily explain to her friends what she's doing at home and 2. Getting a grade from "not Mom" so she can see how she's doing. Hopefully the classes will be good, but we can drop them if they are awful. We'll continue to support social opportunities, too.

    • Like 1
  9. 17 minutes ago, teachermom2834 said:

    Well….I’m one that actually does admit my kids missed out on a lot of stuff because they homeschooled. I had three homeschool all the way through and I have one in a private high school now.

    We just couldn’t replicate everything or even most things. We found acceptable substitutes for some things. We did a few things better. 
     

    I did give them the choice at high school and they did always choose to continue homeschooling but they definitely missed out on things. I don’t know if you would give yours the choice in high school. If you do plan to allow that choice at some point then that would be how you deal with it while being truthful about the pros and cons. 
     

    Some people have amazing homeschool communities and support and their kids have interests that make it such that they really feel they can replicate anything their kid might wish to experience. That just wasn’t the case for us and I wouldn’t have been truthful if I have told them we could. 

    I have talked to her about how everyone misses out on stuff. Homeschooled kids legitimately miss out on certain things, and that is sad, but public and private school kids miss out on lots, too, without generally knowing about it. At times she understands and accepts that, but understanding fades at times.

    A lot of this anxiety comes, I think, from the ways middle schoolers talk to each other. Everyone is a little insecure, so they find the things that are odd about someone else and needle on them to make the other person feel insecure. My daughter's "oddness" is that she's homeschooled, so some of her public school friends make her doubt that. I don't think they are bad kids or trying to be mean girls, but I hope they grow out of it soon.

    There will be more choices offered in high school, but we have to survive middle school first. Unfortunately, our area just doesn't have as many choices for middle school age kids, particularly acceptable choices.

    • Like 1
    • Sad 1
  10. My oldest is sixth grade and is starting to be very worried about what she's missing out on. I'm trying to be reasonable with this, addressing actual concerns, taking things seriously but not personally, etc, but it is hard. She's a good kid, very intelligent and kind, and prone to get very worked up about her concerns.

    Today she was asking me whether she would get to have a high school graduation. I assured her she could and it would be her choice about whether to participate in a large group, a small group, or just be honored in a ceremony with close friends and family. She kept finding problems with each possibility, despite being 11 and having no real experience with or knowledge of graduations of any kind. I expect someone, either child or adult, asked her whether homeschoolers get graduation ceremonies and she wasn't happy that she didn't know an answer to that.

    I know her need to socialize with peers is increasing, and so we've been increasing her opportunities. It's not the same group of kids every day, but she has outside-the-house social interaction with stable groups of people five or more times a week, with some kids overlapping so she sees them multiple times a week. We are working to increase this further, but as long as she has friends telling her that she's missing out by not being in school, even if they complain about their school all the time,  she's going to continue to feel like she's missing out no matter how much she gets to build solid and close friendships with a variety of people.

    I know. It's a function of the age, the natural insecurity of that time of life, the need to test ideas, but it's exhausting. I don't want to tell her to stop complaining to me because I don't want her to feel she can't come to me with concerns, and I know the ability to decide what is a legitimate concern and what is a whiny complaint is not easy to develop. There are absolutely times she needs to tell me that something isn't working so that we can fix it. I don't really want to bash the local schools and tell her just how good she's got it, but as long as she's comparing our actual reality with a fantasy of what could be, she's never going to be content. 

    How do you address this with your adolescents? 

  11. 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.

    • Like 1
  12. 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.

  13. 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.

  14. 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.

  15. 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.

    • Like 2
  16. 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 

    • Like 1
  17. 1 minute ago, Miss Tick said:

     

    If you don't want to include a copy of the book, you could fashion the box to look like the book.

    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)

  18. 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.

    • Like 1
  19. 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.

    • Like 7
  20. 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.

    • Like 3
  21. 11 minutes ago, ScoutTN said:

    I work in a large church. A parent or teen sibling, with the correct numbered tag, picks up children infants-4th grade. No kid ever leaves a children’s ministry event or program on his or her own recognizance. This is basic and has been for decades.

    Two deep leadership and buddy system in scouting are also good, basic, long-standing safety measures. Bad things can happen when these are ignored.

    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."

    • Like 1
  22. 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.

    • Like 3
    • Thanks 1
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