Yeah, that doesn't sound fun to listen to. Shalom22 has good advice.

Astrid, you look charming! What a good cause you all were out to support. Blessings.

My boys retain stuff a lot better when they're busy with their hands while listening. Play dough, Legos, coloring a page of something related to the reading, or tracing. When my oldest was younger, he wouldn't do conventional narrations. He just wouldn't tell me things, because he knew I already knew it. Why say something useless? He just refused. Then someone on the old board shared how her son did Lego dioramas of some aspect of the read-aloud. Eureka! DS would listen intently, then begin building a scene out of his Legos that illustrated something in the story. He explained it to me aloud, I took a digital picture of his creation, and sometimes printed out a paper copy of the photo to add to his school notebook. Maybe your children would enjoy painting a picture or building a scene from other materials. Ears + Hands = Brain!

I'm voting 'too easy on the older child' because he was a challenging baby and even more so as a toddler. I didn't transition well to the toddler stage where needs and wants diverge, and he looked to me for all his entertainment and social needs, and he was (and is) an extremely social, interactive child. He was exhausting, and it took a long time (or at least it seemed an awfully long time) to figure out how and when to let him scream (and then get bored with that find his own project to do) and when to GOYB. And I was married to the father but single parenting, if you know what I'm talking about. DH and I have both learned and grown; we'd do things a lot differently in some respects but the fundamentals would remain the same. BTW, both boys have settled into lovely children, whose company I enjoy.

Go to Andrew Pudewa's website and buy his lecture on "Teaching Boys and Other Children Who Would Rather Build Forts All Day." https://www.excellenceinwriting.com/index.php?q=product/teaching-boys-amp-other-children-who-would-rather-make-forts-all-day His lecture is -- hands down -- the best information on teaching boys I've ever heard. Some ideas I gleaned from Pudewa: *All of these are generalizations, and necessarily limited* - boys need movement to keep their lower brains busy so their higher brains can learn - boys don't mind small noises (pencil tapping, foot bumping walls, creaky hinges) of the sort that drive girls and women nuts and prevent us from concentrating - boys prefer a cooler temperature for classrooms - boys hear a smaller range of sound than girls do - boys concentrate more deeply on one thing at a time - boys tolerate and even enjoy a much louder, tougher teacher approach than girls do. A girl might be in tears at a loud teacher's correction, whereas a boy might finally "get" the correction when softer, calmer approaches did nothing. - boys thrive on competition - male bullies are physically powerful, but socially maladroit. (Female bullies are social powerhouses -- see "Queen Bees and Wanabes")

Couple of ideas. Teeth grinding can be from 1) depression issues & leads down the path toward the ugliness of TMJ or 2) a habit that's a genetic gift from our ancestors. My son inherited my occasional teeth grinding, unrelated to depression. I'm going to ask his dentist's advice. It doesn't seem to be frequent or intense. It's important to get it treated in adulthood, because it really can wear down your enamel, and your body doesn't make any more to replace it. I broke a crown twice thanks to this expensive habit. You can buy a dental guard at the drugstore if it's not a big problem, or your dentist can make a custom guard that fits your mouth perfectly for more money and better protection. DH reports that my teeth grinding has stopped, after wearing my custom guard for a year or so. He says it must have re-trained my body. Who knows? My crown has lasted this time!

I'm thinking along the same lines as Mrs. Mungo. A little aversion training might be in order. Not necessarily involving nudity, but not necessarily omitting it.

That's making some lemonade, girl. WTG! And I agree, learning a new skill is a tremendous boost. I once read an article about a young couple that learned how to do a lot of complicated repair & construction skills out of frugal necessity, but were quite rightly proud of themselves and what they had learned. The woman's memorable quip was "It's wonderful what you can manage to do, if you can read and have a brain."

I hope the vinegar works for you. My laundry is still crunchy; might be our extra-hard water. I use the vinegar as a rinse aid to get all the detergent out, otherwise DH's skin breaks out in hives. We too, don't really mind the crunch factor.:D

I see-saw between sitting in a stupor channel surfing and reading "The Great Tradition" -- a book about classical education. I'm on Clement of Alexandria now.

I'd venture a guess that it's because Dr. Who fans are nuts. ;)

This is exactly why we have no pets! I love animals, but I know my own limits. ;)

R names: Reed or Reid, Rex, Richard, M names: Martin, Marcus, And others I just happen to think are groovy: Phillip (I wanted to name my sons this, but DH objected because I had accidentally mentioned a cute boy named Philip in 2nd grade :lol:), Neil, George, Connor, Simon, Geoffrey, Conrad, and of course, Flav-a-flav.

Born in 1962, in the U.S. My mother breastfed all three of her children for about 4 months, I believe. Can't ask her, she passed away many years ago. I do remember Mother sterilizing bottles for my little brother. It was quite a production back then. I breastfed both my boys till they were four, then we had a weaning party for them, complete with cupcakes! They got to blow out candles on each cupcake, thus making the party even better than the recent fourth birthday. We sang "Happy Weaning Day to You." :D Mother would have been very happy to see her grandsons so healthy and happy on mother's milk, although probably would have been shocked at how long it lasted. She was the best mom anyone could ask for, and I missed her terribly when I became a new mother. My DH was born in 1957 and was completely bottle-fed. He's completely brilliant, but has allergy issues. I'm sorta-kinda-brilliant ;) and inherited my father's eternal rhinitis (induced by allergy to dust, most likely).

Chase the lowest common denominator and this is where you end up. How disheartening.

You don't need e-mails to tell you what you need to do! De-clutter for 15 minutes several times a day. Clutter is delayed decision-making. You have to make decisions to be able to find a storage space for all the different things, you have to set regular times for the offenders . . . I mean, kids . . . to stop everything and put away their toys and equipment, you have to set up a system for handling your own paperwork so that it gets handled in a timely way and then filed quickly. Julie Morgenstern has some excellent books, I especially like "Organizing From the Inside Out" because it talks about the inside work you have to do in order to actually change your outside habits. You can tidy up, but you can't stop the avalanche until you change what you're thinking and thus what you're doing to create the mess. But doing the 27 fling boogie is something you can do anytime, and it's a great start! Get going, babe!

Mine have potential, but it's still being expressed in jokes about bodily functions. Maybe someday it will turn into wit. The older one's fast though. My Dad used to say that he judged a person's intelligence by how long it took them to get a joke.

I can't imagine anyone saying they wish they hadn't studied the classics, but I can certainly imagine saying they wish they had more time for taking classes that are more quirky, you know, following a rabbit trail of one's interests. But wouldn't we all say that, too? Never enough hours in the day.

Oh no. I'm so sorry, Jo. I'm praying hard.

Some friends of ours listed their downed tree as 'chop your own firewood' on freecycle and got rid of it really quickly. ;)

Browsing in one of my "Teaching Company" catalogs, I read an article about the appeal of extremely demanding religions. These are the groups that are growing while mainline Protestant churches (for example) are declining. Secular people look from the outside in and just cannot imagine why people would work so hard and give so much to their faith community. The speaker cited the work of a philosopher of religion (whose name escapes me) who said that religions with high 'buy-in' costs are actually a logical choice. Not that this is part of the decision-making process of the members, you understand, just that there are very pragmatic reasons for joining (or staying in) a high-cost faith, besides the religious ones. Help, for one. When you're in trouble, your faith community will swing into action to feed, clothe, nurse, and generally subsidize you, and offer you comfort. During the plague in London, William Penn, a wealthy son of a nobleman and admiral, watched as the Anglican clergy and wealthy fled the city while the Quakers stayed to nurse the sick, risking their own lives. It was impressive enough for him to eventually join the widely-despised group. The simplest kind of nursing care will increase survival rates of even horrible plagues by enormous percentages, so this kind of assistance can make huge differences in survival rates of communities in troubled times. A sense of belonging is provided by a strong community. No need for us to belabor the misery caused by the lack of this in the wider culture. Our little circle hug emoticon is one of the most used -- because it symbolizes what we want. A shoulder to cry on, advice, comfort, and guidance. No small things, those.

It DOES??? Monsoons? How odd. Golly, now I've learned something.

This is the first really positive article about homeschooling from the U.K. I've read. Glad to see the media are waking up. But not surprised the teachers' union is aghast. "Society has got to get a handle on this." Ugh.

Sources: - lots and lots of Baptist bible-education and discussion throughout my childhood with a philosophically-inclined pa. He was a chemist by trade but a dialectician at heart. - long, late-night discussions with my best friend in high school in which we analyzed the world and everyone in it. She was brilliant, deeply depressed, and a good friend. - reading philosophy in college. Shaking hands with the greatest minds of history is always a good thing to put your moral compass into better working order. - in college I adopted Kant's categorical imperative as my guiding principle. - reading Judaica from my landlord's library during law school. I can't get enough of the ethical teaching there. - continuous reading in theology and philosophy and psychology. - my psychiatrist DH introduced me to the Dr. Laura show. A modern version of the Greco-Roman moralists! Someone who actually said the victim wasn't always above criticism. People's actions are more important than their emotions in gauging the morality of a situation. Wow. - reading Joanne's parenting advice online once I had my first child. It made me a lot bolder in standing up for What Children Need in the face of a me-me culture that gives lip service to children but sacrifices them at every turn. In my local AP group, I'm the one who can be relied on to Be Blunt. :D - subscribing to some resources that I first heard about on this board: First Things, Touchstone, and Mars Hill Audio Journal. A lot of thinking goes into one's moral compass, and good advice comes from everywhere. I think the Holy Spirit is using a lot of folks. It's my job to pay attention and think critically.

It took us *forever* to have friends for the boys to play with in our neighborhood. I know how that situation feels. Lonely & sad for oneself and for the kids. [sniff] For what it's worth, *we* would be there at the park with you, then the boys would pull you back to our place for some serious pretend games and sports. And cookies. Lots of cookies. :)