This is going to sound blunt, and I don't mean it to, but I think it's something to consider. Is there a chance that your daughter is not NT? Have you ever suspected autism? The rigid thinking and difficulty with social skills seem extreme. I myself was a very black and white thinker as a child, and I hated it with others didn't follow the rules, so I sympatize with her. But I also think that her trouble with keeping her thoughts to herself is atypical. The suggestion for counseling is a good one. But also, have you talked to the school and teacher about this? Social skills is an area that the school can evaluate for, and if it is affecting her opportunities to access her education, public schools are required to test and provide services, if she qualifies for them. The person in a school district who addresses social goals is a speech and language therapist (SLP). If her policing is affecting others in the class, and not just herself, it may be something that the teacher would agree should be evaluated. Finally, :grouphug:. I have a child who lacks understanding of social skills, though his issues present differently. He does get therapy from a SLP through his IEP, even though he is a private school, not public. Social skills affect employability, so it's important to get help for the long term, even if you make a different school choice for next year.

I'm actually a fan of CLE. And I liked it for my one child who, emotionally, seemed better able to work independently than how he responded to receiving a lot of direction instruction from me. (That's DS12, whose NP report said "inattentive" so many times, but didn't give an ADHD diagnosis). He really just disliked working with me, and, looking back, I think it is because I TALK so much, and he couldn't take it in. Being able to learn something without Mom having to talk about it was great for him (we did go over the lessons to correct mistakes together, after he completed them). With that said, CLE was not ideal for DD12, who has dyslexia, problems with numeration, and likely undiagnosed ADHD. It was OK. But she had a habit of rushing through just to get done, and so she would miss details and make mistakes. With math, she can understand concepts, but she has trouble with remembering math facts and overall number sense. She was not meticulous enough to work through a CLE lesson on her own and do it well. DD12 now attends a dyslexia school, where they work outside the box to teach math. Their approach resembles what Peter Pan describes much more than it resembles CLE. Okay, it does not resemble CLE at all. The classes are interactive and collaborative, where the students spend a portion of the time working together to solve problems. In middle school, they are allowed to use calculators while doing math, but the school still does give them regular practice in numeration skills. They want to keep improving those areas, even though they honestly aren't expecting them to ever be GOOD at it. The expectation is that they know and use tools, such as calculators and multiplication charts. They teach them unusual things, such as how to use the multiplication chart to reduce fractions. I am not a math person at all, so going outside the box to teach it is past my comfort zone. CLE was comfortable for me when we were homeschooling :), and it worked well enough. It's just that the approach her school uses is better for her. I think you could use CLE if you think that he would be able to work through a lesson (or half? maybe half in the morning and half in the afternoon?) with care. Let him use the CLE laminated math sheet, plus a multiplication chart, plus a calculator. Give him all the tools to work the concepts without having to also work out the math facts. Then provide separate math fact practice at another time of day for a short period. I think if you are a mathy person who can teach concepts creatively and not overwhelm him by being right there, present as the teacher all the time, using Peter Pan's suggestions would be great. If you really, really need math to be more independent, because working with you doesn't go so well, and you need to use your time together for other remediation, I think you can make CLE work. It would have worked better for us if I'd been able to tweak it more, but at that stage, I just needed to be able to get math done each day. My kids didn't object to CLE (I mean, it was not something they groaned about and hated, even though they would have preferred not to do math at all ;) ).

I make one like this in a pie plate, but I use Fritos. And they go on the top, not the bottom. So it's crescent rolls for the crust, then taco meat, cover with shredded cheese, and then top with crushed Fritos and bake. We call it taco pie. Everyone loves it. DD12 even made it for a school project (her goal was to make dinner for the family).

I haven't ever made that, but my mom used to. We called it Johnny Marzetti. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Marzetti Hmm. Wonder if my kids would like it. I haven't thought of that meal for years.

OP, I find it curious that you posed this question but haven't posted since. Are you still reading this thread? Why did you ask the question?

I cook round steak in the crock pot (for Swiss steak, with tomatoes and onions), and it comes out very tender. But it doesn't stay in chunks like stew meat. It falls apart into shreds at the touch of a fork. I'm sure it would be fine for your stew recipe, as long as you don't expect it to have the same appearance. ETA: You wouldn't need to cut the steak up into cubes before putting it in the pot. Just cook it whole, and it will fall to pieces when it is done (6-8 hours on low).

To build pre-multiplication and -division skills for that age, you can teach skip counting by 2s, 5s, and 10s. Then 3s, 4s, etc. You can use manipulatives to let him see what he is doing. He may be able to memorize the skip counting easily, but you want to be sure he understands what he is doing and is not just chanting the numbers. It's likely he will be able to see that two groups of 3 equals 6, etc., and you can practice this around the house. Food is particularly fun to divide into equal groups. You can give him nine cheese crackers in three piles of three crackers each, for example. Or give him a pile of crackers and tell him to divide it into equal groups before eating them.

I agree with JanetC's advice to request for the public school to evaluate your son now, while you are still homeschooling. Under federal law, they are required to, if a learning issue is suspected. Unless you have a very unusual school, they will not provide accommodations for ADHD until the evaluation process and his individual plan (IEP if special education is needed; 504 if needs can be addressed by accommodations without modifying the curriculum or working with an intervention specialist) are written. The school legally has 120 days from receiving your written request to having an IEP in place. That is four months! And some schools find loopholes that allow them to stall. So he would be without an extra support for all of that time while also adjusting to a new school environment. If you place your request for evaluations now, he should be able to have the documentation in place before classes begin in the fall. That can make a big difference in whether he finds school a success or a frustration. Here is the federal timeline. (You can find this information online, if you haven't researched it yet, and there are also some excellent books you can read about the evaluation process.) * 30 days from the date the school receives your WRITTEN request to decide if there is enough evidence of a possible learning issue to warrant evaluations. * 60 days after agreeing to evaluate to complete the testing and present the report to the evaluation team (which includes the parents). * 30 days after finding a learning issue to write an IEP. Total -- four months. If they find that an IEP is not needed and a 504 will do, it may be done more quickly. Schools generally do not accept private psych evaluations as complete evidence of a learning issue that needs to be addressed; the law says the issue must affect performance in the classroom, so schools want teachers to agree. Right now, while homeschooling YOU are his teacher. Once he is enrolled in school, they will want opinions from their teachers before agreeing to help. You may know all of this already, but I thought it was worth mentioning. When my kids entered school, I walked into our first meeting with a pile of documentation about my kids' learning disabilities, and it still took months for their IEPs to be in place. School has been very good for my children, by the way. Most of them began school before ninth grade (DD16 started in 9th), and we had some adjustments to a new way of doing things, as you might expect. Overall, our decision to enter school has been positive, and I hope it is that way for your son, as well. ETA: Just to be clear, schools are required to factor in private evaluations as part of the process. But they don't have to believe everything in the reports will be an issue in their classrooms, just because it is written on the papers. They want to do the testing and see for themselves.

Sweetpea, I'm sure you have addressed this in other threads, but I can't remember -- does your daughter have an ASD diagnosis or a NVLD profile? I ask, because reading comprehension issues can go along with ASD and/or NVLD.

DD16 was able to get credit for PE from her high school for her extracurricular dance classes. Other students, following state guidelines, get credit for two seasons of a varsity sport. Which is many fewer hours of athletic activity than DD gets at her year round, six day a week dance classes. Her principal had no qualms about approving a PE exemption.

DD16 is an advanced ballet dancer. She is in class at the dance studio for about 20 hours a week. Professional dancers dancing full time will be in class and rehearsals up to 40 hours a week. Dance is a year-round activity, unlike most sports. It's hard to find an athlete who does that level of training, unless they are at an elite level. It is an art, but it is very physical, and uses all aspects of the body, including the brain. Dancers are as conditioned (or more so) than any other athlete. A dancer who is very physically capable but lacks artistic ability will not become a high level ballet dancer. A person who is extremely expressive artistically, but does not have the ability to master the physical techniques, or who lacks strength and stamina and does not improve in those areas, will not be a successful dancer in the long run. Children who take dance once or twice a week when they are little reap many physical and mental rewards. Teens and adults who dance recreationally can use ballet as a fitness activity.

I love watching HGTV shows, but I do wonder about what happens later. During the big reveal, everything is perfect and pristine, but NONE of the homeowners' personal possessions are in there yet. There is no way that things stay the same. I wonder especially about all of those open plans where the kitchen is visible from the front door. Sure, it looks pretty when staged for the cameras. But how would anyone keep their kitchen constantly clean and still manage to feed their family three times a day? That would drive me nuts.

I am so sorry for the loss of your precious girl and I'm thankful that you have assurance that she is in Heaven now. :grouphug: :grouphug: It would be so understandable for you to feel the need to delete your original post. Can I suggest that you print it out before doing so? You can file it away and never read it, but in the future, you may be thankful to have a copy of such a heartfelt remembrance of her time with you.

I loved Paddington 2! I just saw 12 Strong today (stole a little me-time while my kids were in school). I would have chosen Darkest Hour or Lady Bird if they had been showing at the correct time for my schedule, so it wasn't really my first choice. However, it was gripping and inspiring and included themes about loyalty and what is worth fighting for. If you can handle intense war scenes -- mostly people being shot from a distance -- and a few swear words (not as many as you might think for a movie with such an emotional and raw topic), I recommend it.

I once had the bank record a $300 deposit as $3000. That was kind of fun. But also annoying to have a mistake to deal with.

Two of the scripts that the NP suggested were for us to use with him consistently, so that he would/could eventually begin to use them for talking to himself when he felt anxious. 1) Plan A, Plan B. This is "If Plan A is not working, think about Plan B." Here the idea is to work on the rigid thinking and help him see that he can listen to and think about new ideas or ways to approach a problem. (DS is often unwilling to accept that there is a different way). 2) Big Deal, Little Deal. "Is this a big deal or a little deal? If it's a little deal, then we can figure out how to let it go. If it's a big deal, let's figure out how to turn it into a little deal." This is about keeping things in perspective. https://www.amazon.com/What-When-You-Worry-Much/dp/1591473144/ref=pd_bxgy_14_2?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1591473144&pd_rd_r=YXHAZ4NFQ09GQC1VKJ2A&pd_rd_w=WmyDa&pd_rd_wg=sxASQ&psc=1&refRID=YXHAZ4NFQ09GQC1VKJ2A You might look at this book, or others in this same series.

When DS was younger and schooling at home, he would freeze, and I would try to push him to work through it, and he would just freeze more. And he would get upset and have meltdowns, and it would derail school for everyone, because I had my three youngest doing most of the same lessons together. I never managed to figure out how to pull him out of it; his anxiety would just spiral, and the things I tried always seemed to make it worse. We finally enrolled in school, because I felt I couldn't teach him any more, and my other kids needed more intervention than I could provide on my own. I hoped that having different teachers would help him. And it did, because his episodes were less frequent. But it was not a complete fix -- he came to tears a few times at school and, as I mentioned before, he could get surly and seem disrespectful with teachers, and he still would shut down over homework (lots of homework assigned by that first teacher). I just thought I'd add that, because my other post only mentioned the freezing and the arguing. What I wrote here does not really fully describe how bad things could get, but... it was bad. He just had walls, and I couldn't help him, and the things I tried to do would backfire. And this was practically every day while homeschooling. Or if he was having a good day, one of his siblings would have a bad one. We were all miserable. I'm not suggesting that school is a solution for anyone. It is just what was right for our family, because homeschooling was not working. We stuck it out until he was in fourth grade. In fifth grade, he had a teacher who found a method to help him in class. His shut downs at school were almost always when he felt overwhelmed with an assignment, when he was unsure of instructions, or when he lacked confidence. His teacher would explain what he needed to do once or twice. Any more than that, and there were diminishing returns... he couldn't process the ideas and accept them and would start to argue that the teacher had to be wrong, or the assignment was impossible. So she would tell him to go to his desk, that she had given him all of the information, and that he just needed to think about it. She said he would sometimes sit there for ten minutes or more doing nothing, but then he would be able to start working. I think he was able to not break down emotionally in front of his classmates, although the teacher said she sometimes would see his eyes welling with tears. That is why in his 504, he gets extra time. Sometimes he needs to reboot. When we got his neuropsych report, we found that he can remember and process information better after a time lapse. So right after getting an assignment, he can't always figure out where and how to start. After 15 minutes, he is more capable; it's an executive function issue, where he is not organizing the information in his brain systematically. And when he panics about not understanding, his anxiety increases, and he just shuts down. The truth is that he CAN understand how to do the assignment. It just takes him longer to process it (this is not technically about his processing speed). It used to frustrate me so much when we were homeschooling, because I just knew that he could do things and that my lessons were not too hard for him. Yet he couldn't. It often seemed to me, though, that he wouldn't. I really struggled to understand this dynamic. I wish I had been more understanding when homeschooling, but all of the times I tried to encourage or push him just backfired.

I'll be the lone voice of dissent, I guess, and admit that I didn't like The Greatest Showman as much as I wanted to. Hugh Jackman is one of my all-time favorites, so I had high hopes. I won't go into details, in order to keep from throwing cold water on anyone else's enthusiasm, and I think I'd need to see it again to articulate just exactly why it was less satisfying for me. I know I was bothered by the lack of grounding in time. The girls never aged, for example. But I still love Hugh Jackman. And my girls loved the movie.

Shutting down is so hard to deal with. I have three kids who need support for various issues, and though they have all been challenging to address, DS12's shutting down behaviors caused the most roadblocks when we were homeschooling, because we would just be stuck. He is in school now and has a 504 plan with accommodation for support, because some of the issues were present at school as well as at home. We really, really struggled to figure out what was happening with him and had various rounds of testing for issues. We finally figured out that it was inattention and executive function struggles (though not enough for an ADHD diagnosis in his case), combined with anxiety. It's the anxiety that triggers the shutting down in his case. He gets overwhelmed, and he can't move forward. I agree that task initiation plays a big role for my son. Actually, it can be a problem for me, as well. Taking a break, breaking tasks down into smaller pieces, frequent checks for understanding by the teacher, extra time for assignments and tests are all accommodations he gets at school He has not had as many shuts downs at school this year that have been obvious to the teacher. But there has been more than once when he has "worked" on a project independently during class, but unbeknownst to the teacher has been not producing any work. For example, he had one writing assignment that the class had two full class periods to work on independently. And then we as parents discovered right before it was due that he actually only had a few phrases written -- no research, no notes, no sentences, no paragraphs. He will just sit there and do nothing, apparently. In past years, he would often argue with the teacher that the assignment was "impossible" and not be able to process helpful ideas given to assist him. He would insist that they would not work. This year, I haven't had any reports of arguing from his teachers. Evidently he now just sits silently and does no work. Which is really not better (though the arguing was inappropriate). It's hard. Every person is different, but you may be able to teach your child some self-calming techniques (you can google for ideas), good self-talk (you can teach scripted things to repeat to themselves), and ways for the student to ask for help and break down things into smaller chunks. It's hard to teach these things to someone with rigid thinking, I know.

I had a cat who liked to play fetch. He had some little fuzzy pom poms, and he kept them near or in his (dry) food dish. He particularly liked to play at night while I was preparing to sleep, and I could toss the ball from my bed down the hallway. He would trot back with it. I thought it was adorable. And then he took it to the next level and started dropping it into his water dish instead of his food dish, so he would bring me soggy pom poms. Not quite so much fun (for me). Unfortunately, he ramped it up another level and once or twice took a soggy pom pom into his litter box with him before bringing it to me :ack2:. After that, we only played fetch during daylight hours, so that I could see what he was up to. After a year or two, he stopped playing fetch; he only did it as a kitten.

Ugh. That stinks. My husband's previous employer was sold to a larger competitor. There was not a financial drawback for us, but they reorganized the company structure, and DH's specific job was eliminated. He was transferred to a different department and given a job that he despised. He endured that for two years before he was hired by his current company and was able to switch back into his preferred type of work. He was truly miserable at work for awhile. I hope it all works out for your husband and ends up being a good situation in the end, even though it's a painful transition.

There are some red flags for dyslexia in your description, so it would be worth considering having her evaluated. Testing that you do yourself may give you clues, but to be sure, an experienced professional evaluation is best. To get the most thorough examination, you can go to a neuropsychologist. The drawbacks are that it is expensive and often not covered by insurance. You would need to check with your insurance company to see what would be covered. We found it to be worthwhile, despite the expense. In some areas, you may find an educational psychologist who will do testing. The fees are likely less, but they may run fewer tests. If you don't suspect other issues, an ed psych may be sufficient. If you are in the US, you can also request evaluations from the public school, even as a homeschooler. It's important to understand the law if you go this route, but there are books you can read, and you can find information online about federal law and your state laws. The big benefit is that the school will run tests for free. The drawback is that they usually will not give you a diagnosis of dyslexia. They would call it Specific Learning Disability in Reading. In other words, they can tell you whether the student has a learning disability, but they will not be able to give you as much information as a private ed psych or neuropsych would. They can tell you if a SLD is present, but they usually cannot explain the WHY. They also may not have insight into what you can do to help her as a homeschooler, since their focus is the public school classroom experience. But it's free and it gives you a place to start. You just need to understand your rights under the law and how the process works. A third option is to see if there is a private dyslexia school near you. They often do reading screenings for the public. Just be sure to ask good questions about what kind of testing they do. They may not use a screening tool that is the best choice. I mention this because we ran into this problem ourselves. Where we lived before, the dyslexia school did some little 15 minute screener on DD that was not sufficient; they told us she likely did not have dyslexia. But she does. What you want is a test called the CTOPP. The CTOPP is the test of phonological processing, and it is important to run, because dyslexia is a phonological disability. The fact that your daughter has had so much trouble learning phonograms suggests to me that a phonological disability (AKA dyslexia) may be present. However, reading problems can also be caused by poor working memory, inattention, and/or vision issues, so it is also important to have a thorough vision screening. Working memory issues and ADHD are very commonly found along with dyslexia, so even though the CTOPP is an important test, there are other areas that should be investigated. A good psych can ferret all of that out for you.

Not all vaccine studies are for new drugs. The one we participated in was with a well established vaccine, but they were investigating giving it at a different age. I think there was another study (that we didn't do) that investigated whether a certain established vaccine was more effective if given on a different dosage schedule (one that required multiple shots).

I wouldn't think anything of it. Our former pediatrician participated in many clinical trials, and my own children were in a vaccine study. No big deal.

Thanks, Lecka! Very helpful!