Do you happen to have a friend who could take your son out for dinner and financial planning? Someone your son will see as neutral (not on your side) and who has a nice enough suit and car to convince your son that this guy knows how to get money. They could create a rough "10 yr plan" of where your son would like to be and this guy could help him think of ways to make that happen, be they suck it up and live at home, work like crazy this summer to buy a car and get a campus job, join the military, or whatever. Basically, I'd try to separate the issues and have someone my son would respect about financial issues go through those with him. If he does join the military, try to get him somehow to set up an account to put his bonuses in that he can't get super easily. Sounds like his paychecks won't be put into savings, and if the bonuses could be, that would help his future a lot.

In Ga, students don't have to be enrolled until 6, but if you choose, as most everyone does, to enroll at 5 for kindergarted, you are then in the system and truancy laws apply. I'm not sure how it works for pre-k. It used to be that if you missed too many days, they gave your spot to someone else, but with the expansion of the program that may have changed.

Depends on the state. Ours actually has a "fighting words" clause that can be used to punish the one who provoked the fight by using language or taunts that could be easily expected to start a fight. I think the person who throws the punch is still also guilty, but if I make a crude crack about your spouse and you knock me out, I can be legally in trouble for the fight though I didn't get a chance to throw a punch. Just an interesting sidenote. In this case I don't think it's playing around. Maybe try telling the mom "I'll be addressing with my son the need to not provoke others. I would appreciate if you could help out by reminding you son of healthy ways to respond if my son, or anyone else, acts inappropriately." Then don't stress if she doesn't because you've done what you can. And chat with the teacher or another person who may have seen it just to try to get a more full picture.

Haha! I actually was tempted to ask "are you pregnant?" Then I realized I don't know you and might get taken for a jerk. I'm so glad your son loved his cake! He's adorable.

My kids are little, so this is based on my observation of my brothers, but I remember when my baby brother (youngest of 4) was about that age and began growing up so much. It was when he really began to shine as an individual as he took to the role of leader of the younger set. He didn't regress to their level; he helped them rise and make good choices. Up until then he had very much been the baby of the family, prone to whining and giving up easily, When he hung out with the teens, he sometimes regressed into that role of "the baby of the group," but not with the younger ones. Of course he transitioned to hanging out with older kids as he got older, but he learned a lot from being naturally thrust into the role of leader.

Not everyone is saying to get him a new toy. Most are suggesting seeing how he acts later or talking with him to see what it is he was expecting and why he is disappointed. My daughter is right about that age and it could be something like "This one doesn't really fly" or "You were supposed to say 'tah-dah' when I took it out of the box." Children don't learn to have real good manners unless adults show them how to take others' feelings into consideration. Automatically saying "thank you" when you get a gift you hate is not a virtue, though it may be taught as a stop-gap measure with certain relatives. And if my child responded, "I told you at Christmas that I'm too big for dolls now" or "Didn't you hear me say that I'm scared of super-heros" or something like that, I'd apologize for not listening and get the kid a new toy. Because sometimes I don't listen when I should, and a kid shouldn't get a present from me that he already asked not to get. (though I strongly doubt that was the situation in the original post.) ETA: 3 people suggested possibly getting a new toy.

If there is a "nice" gas station on her path that has refillable cups (like Quiktrip has a deal where if you bring in the refillable cup, your drink is way cheap), maybe get a cup/mug like that and put a few gift cards in it. Like a gas card, a card to a couple restaurants near campus, etc. An Amazon card enough for a Student Prime membership might be nice, too.

This reminds me of how mortified my friend in high school was by her mother loudly talking to another mother "Oh, Susy just really loves her thongs! She wears them all the time. I don't see how it's comfortable." Her mother was referring to flip-flops, but that's not how it was being taken. Susy's mom would also get really mad if she referred to a guy as "hot." To us at the time it meant "cute in not-a-little-boy-way" but she viewed it as extremely sexual, like "get-it-on-tonight." I find words that have an implied threat or violence to be the worst. I can't really cuss because I feel stupid when it comes out of my mouth, but none of it bothers me much unless there's lots of anger or people are loudly cussing in an area where young children are expected to be (school, playground, etc) My husband, being military, does cuss in some situations and not others. He actually uses the word "poop" as his most common go-to, which other guys in his unit thought was hilarious and so adopted. But only for its cuss-word connotation "Poop that mortar was close!". When talking about what they did in the toilet, stronger words remained in use.

Mine are little (2 and 3) so it's really basic at this point. Right now my almost 4 year old knows to treat everyone politely and to listen to adults who are in charge of her, but if any adult tells her something that she thinks is wrong she should ask me or her father about it. We explained that if she says "I need to ask my mom first," all good adults will think that's a good answer, but if someone gets upset by the answer, they might be a tricky grownup she should stay far away from. She knows that not all grown-ups are in charge of her but she should be polite.

I finally got a chance to watch it (two small kids and a husband who is very busy, plus some travel) and I was amazed. I had been hiding under a rock to avoid spoilers, and it worked. Then I read this thread at long last.

My dd is turning four mid-summer, so I guess that would make her K4 next year. We'll be continuing on with what we are doing. MEP level one. We will likely finish that around February at our relaxed pace, and then I'll decide whether she's ready for year 2 or do some MM first grade to fill out and practice. We've been reading through Progressive Phonics and she's in the intermediate books now. We'll probably finish in November if not sooner, so then, I hope, we'll be ready just to do lots of buddy reading to practice and build stamina. She's smart and mature for her age, but she is still just almost four, so we work in short bursts. She's just gotten interested in handwriting, so we'll be working little by little on proper letter formation. After that we'll add in short bits of copy work for practice. If she's interested, after we get printing basically down we'll start working on cursive a little. If I add anything formal to that, I'll add in a geography program. Otherwise content is covered via lots and lots of reading, talking, and exploring.

Is there a reason she cannot do a year of Latin after AP? Maybe something involving lots of work with original sources?

"skin of my teeth" is from Job, if I remember right. To brag:9 of 9!

I would ask things like: Are you accredited or have another system in place to ensure quality stays high? What do you do if one of the two counselors has a problem? What do you do if a child can't physically handle the camp/wants to leave/gets sick/is being a danger to himself or other campers? How often does that happen? What are some common problems your campers face? What would your ideal camper be like? I would want to hear well thought answers that seemed honest. I'd be turned off by "oh, that sort of thing never happens" or vague "we meet kids where they are so physical. Conditioning doesn't matter" sorts of answers. I'm writing this as a former camper and camp employee.

B if it's a normal situation, but if there were circumstances like some girls being "conscientious objectors" so-to-speak, I might view the public awards as a mean spirited way to punish those who believed, for whatever reason, that it was better not to participate.

This builds off what some others said, but I think it would be helpful to have a concrete explanation of what skills children develop through various playful activities and how those fit in the big scheme of things. It's easy as a mom of little ones to read Charlotte Mason type things and think, "wow, this sounds so great!" but then realize that my kids aren't following the script and wonder "if my kids aren't carefully observing the changing seasons and learning to identify the various trees in our neighborhood park, are they really learning anything from running around like hooligans/dumping woodchips/throwing sand into the lake?" Especially these days when brightly colored pieces of plastic come labeled with "This toy will teach your child the alphabet in three languages, develop manual dexterity, and turn him into a brain surgeon," I think it would be reassuring to hear the direct benefits of simple play. Something realistic to what most kids actually do when they play. When your daughter works for ages to make the largest possible mound of woodchips on the base of the playground slide, she's not only developing her motor skills and observing the effects of gravity, she's also increasing her ability to concentrate for longer periods of time. This will be vitally important later when it is time to sit down to lessons and concentrate. When another child comes down the slide and "ruins everything" and the two of them get into an argument, your daughter is learning emotional resilience, problem solving skills, and communication skills that will help her face challenges in her later school work and life. When your son takes the carefully prepared paint pallet and mixes all the colors into one muddy mess, he's learning cause and effect and when he smooshes the whole mess into his hair he's learning...something I hope. I assume you know the specifics more than I do, but I know that when my friends with little ones hear "learn through play" they tend to think "I should draw numbers on the driveway with sidewalk chalk for my two year old to jump to as I call out the number," rather than learning through free play. It would also be helpful to have some suggestions for when to step back and let kids play completely independently and when, how, and whether to step in to show them neat things they might not figure out on their own. How to help them learn without ruining their creativity and making them dependent on Mom for fun. I, personally, think it would be a good idea to say something that gives "permission" to moms to do school-work type things, Everyone knows of a child who loved to to workbooks and it didn't ruin that child for life, so I think it would help the audience if you said that it's fine to do school work for 30 minutes a day if it's of interest to both parent and child, but that such work will be a very minor part of what the child learns each day, that the bulk of learning will still happen through play.

I would love to do that trip! I've traveled there before and want to go back. If I were going I would just have several contingency plans, make sure I had plenty of ways to get my hands on cash if needed, and start really early on the visas. I say this as someone who was in France this past fall, but the rash of recent attacks has actually made me figure that since bad things could happen anywhere, we should always be as ready as possible, but we shouldn't bother trying to guess where the next one is happening. Just live life but know that at any moment, for any variety of reasons (terrorism, illness, accident, bad weather) things may get messed up and having a back up plan is a good idea.

Thank you all for your thoughts on this. I know a lot of it will depend on what my children like as they get older, but I'm afraid you haven't sold me on the Great Illustrated Classics kinds of adaptations/abridgments for children. Frankly, I don't want my kids to divorce good story from good writing unnecessarily. There's a lot of junk out there for children, and for adults, but when I see the lists of wonderful books people recommend for children, I think I'll have plenty of great stories with good writing to keep them in books. That doesn't mean I will snatch an adaptation out of their hands at the library, but I probably won't put it there. It struck me while reading the comments that I have far less problem with adaptations of books written in other languages, particularly dead languages. The Children's Homer is on our shelf right now. I guess my thought is that since I can't read it in the original language, it's okay if the language is changed even more to help my children understand it. That may be hypocritical of me; I don't know. Oh, and reading a synopsis of Shakespeare's plays (or similar) right before watching this is a great idea I'm filing away for later! Thank you.

Can you or someone point me to a list of worthwhile adaptations? If I do decide to use them, I think I'll pitch the idea if the first three or four I try are complete duds.

I guess my question for that is, why not wait until it isn't too much for them? What people are saying about reading them just before the real version makes sense, or as preparation for actually seeing the play. I guess I'm asking you (general you and specific you), how do you decide which things are so valuable for children's understanding or cultural awareness that they need to be exposed to them before they are ready for the full thing? (I hope that comes off as a sincere question and not aggressive. My kids are climbing all over me at the moment and so I can't concentrate to edit.)

Forgive me if this has been discussed recently. I see a lot of people here who use children's versions of classics like Shakespeare's plays as early introductions to these works. I understand the desire to get kids into great works as early as possible, but at the same time, it strikes me as a little ...icky. I think my negative emotional reaction comes from two things: 1. An abridged, illustrated version of The Three Musketeers that made eight year old me hate adventure stories and anything by Dumas, and 2. Discussing A Midsummer Night's Dream in college with an acquaintance (who was homeschooled k-12) who responded "I know all about that. We read it in second grade," and then knew about as much of it as you'd expect from a second grader. My kids are still really young and I'm loving building up our library, so I'd like to hear the voice of experience on this. What am I missing as far as the benefits of children's adaptations? And how do I avoid the pitfalls of either terrible adaptations or arrogance from my children if they feel they've mastered something advanced? (This second concern is both a tendency I've seen in academic homeschoolers in my area as well as a tendency that runs in my family, to be honest.) If you avoid such adaptations or abridgments, I'd love to hear your take as well.

Have you found a way to do this that doesn't end the ability to make lists for that profile? I don't like that with a child account it shows all the shows in the acceptable rating range, so SpongeBob is right there with Curious George.

My husband is in the national guard, so we've been given Boy Scout popcorn donated to the troops. Too much was donated to send it all overseas, so pallets of it were left at the armory. Gross stuff, except the choc covered pretzels which were okay. When dh was in Iraq he had 50 or so boxes of girl scout cookies donated to him and he couldn't give them all away no matter how he tried. All that to say, lots of people hate these things but want to support the scouts, so they send overpriced junk to soldiers.

Is your son the kind who can pull off "Really? You're still teasing me about something from TWO years ago? I hope you get some new stories soon!" and then walk away (apparently) calmly while shaking his head? You wouldn't want him to take it so far as to bully the bully, but if he can take a "that's a silly thing to bring up, we were practically babies then" approach, it would probably diffuse the other boy's fun when teasing him. If it works, he could learn to use that approach against a lot of verbal harassment to great affect. A physical bully, or one who increases aggression, is a different matter.

For very affordable water views, I know a lot of people from Atlanta and Augusta retire to the lakes on the border of Georgia and South Carolina. The lakes don't give the "big water" view so much, but if you looked around I bet you could find something beautiful. The upsides would be affordability and being much more protected from hurricanes. The down side would be being basically in the middle of nowhere. Maybe not quite nowhere, but 1.5-2.5 hours to go to museums, nice restaurants, etc. Decent things are closer, though.