I'm another! I make amazing certain plans...and weeks in I'm trying to get time to plan again. It's a mix of over-planning for their abilities and even more overestimating the energy I have stuff for every day. After 5-6 hours, I'm toast but I always plan for so many things as it's fine with one of them but across all four...yeah. Even my usually solid subject - maths - I'm tweaking for one of mine. The one who decided a week before the deadline to submit her name that she wants to apply for the exam-entry secondary school for next September which I'm trying not to overthink about (since even though she has to take the exam next month, results won't happen until March and things may change even if she gets in which isn't a certainty both with the exam and how oversubscribed it usually is - a few hundred applicants for 80ish spots for our part of the city) but it is making me want to tweak the literature list if this is the last year with her home but it might not be and yeah....

The Cosmo article reads like a large game of telephone, writing on the New York Post writing on an individual blogger mum and twisting her words for clicks. The original writer is mostly trying to think of a way of doing a Moana costume respectfully after her daughter fell into the Disney Princess deep end. Nowhere in the mum's original post is she telling others what they should do but writing out her own considerations and conversations with her child on the differences between Elsa and Moana. That was it. So yeah, it's a thing, by the media overblowing on an annual hot button issue to get clicks and wind people up on imaginary professionally offended and insane PC culture. Nowhere in the chain are any Polynesian people, it's all pointing fingers at who is better at being either morally conscious or indignantly unfazed by the supposed feelings of others. Really, having kids who love dressing up and costume design, this hasn't really come up. Yeah, there are some considerations - usually more about safety and materials - but there is a lot of dress up fun that has nothing to with all this and the hyper focus on it every year feels forced to me. It's like purposeful angst generated and flamed by the media to create divisiveness, distraction and a overly personal stake in something that does not exist on the scale the media attempts to portray. Or something. I have heard Irish people complaining about English people using Irish stereotype costumes, but it's likely to be more relevant in England than in the US. It flares up locally every March ending with complaints of St. Patrick's vs St. George celebrations and which the council is giving space/funds to going well into April with a few blips around this time of year with Halloween and Guy Fawkes (and all the anti-Catholic rhetoric around that...). We still have Irish pubs where English people aren't exactly welcome and I know quite a few English people who will not enter the more open Irish pubs because they were taught that that is 'their' space and that it is important to respect that (to be fair, all my local pubs also have signs for match days on whether away supporters are welcome or not. Pub space is practically sacred and even more divisive than costumes). Not exactly sure who is and is not wearing 'big girl pants' for this, but even when I don't get it as an American with only very distant Irish/English blood ties outside of marriage, I'm not going to argue with either side on how their heritage and living through The Troubles impacted their views and boundaries. Really, my spouse's family are among the most irreverent and anti-'politically correct' people I know, and I cannot imagine any of them thinking dressing up as Irish or making caricatures would be a good idea for kids nor anyone who thinks kids should dress up as 'slutty' anything.

I live in an old Victorian terrace home that leaks like a sieve and has quite high ceilings so it doesn't get stuffy until it's hot enough for open windows and multiple fans to create cross breezes (as we also do not have air conditioning or central fans or even ceiling fans). I can certainly see it being an issue in more air tight houses. I've been told plants can help with that but I've never tried and unsure about risking it (mainly the risk of knocking them over and creating a mess, we recently redid part of our room as my spouse paints in there because I kept knocking parts off the table).

I leave it up to them, generally now they have them closed. I didn't hear about the fire safety issue until a few years back (though our back up plan if a fire cuts off the stairs is one of the kids' bedrooms and they know the fire safety plans for our house) and do try to close the kitchen door now when I do lock-up when my spouse is working at night. As a kid I prefered the door closed but gained an anxious habit of staring at the light around the door thinking it would help me spot people/trouble. As an adult I tried to break the habit by having the door open but would just stare at the shadows in the hall instead. Other than having more people in the house (which still feels counterintuitive to me but it really helped my anxiety), the best thing to actually help which I found by total accident was putting hooks on the door and things on the hook so the line of light was already broken. That plus sometimes sleeping with a small desk light on has done wonders for me and so for my kids I ensure they have a light they can use at night rather than relying on the landing light and an open door.

I'm not sure I agree with the premise that caring for a child or spouse is revered on a societal level, particularly - in the equivalency to elder care - those with significant disabilities. A lot of people and even charities created to help discuss at length family breakdowns and mental health issues for carers and pretty much the only time I hear the mainstream media or society discussing carers in any sort of revered way or how hard it is is when there is another story of a disabled person abused or murdered by their carers, whether it's by family or care homes, - big flurry of people promising help that never comes. I've spent most of my life being a carer, pretty much all of it being a disabled person as well, and no one in that dynamic gets any sort of social reverence most of time, most of it is us just caring for each other. I think disabled people in generally are dehumanized and carers get a pedestal when society wants to look nice but otherwise ignored as something everyone should do when no one really teaches anyone how and there is little space for anyone to talk about it. Disabled people get told we should be grateful, aren't we glad they don't ship of us of or worse, how worse it could be and carers get told we should be grateful we can, we chose to have them/stay with them, if we don't like it... It's a struggle that none of the programmes actually deal with and many of them around the world are having their budgets cut so it often goes too far before help is available if at all. Shoving it all in the house because we "should" doesn't help anyone and the attitude that have turned all of these into morals doesn't help much either. We now have an older generation so afraid and disliking of the idea of being a 'burden' on their families because society is so values the illusion of independence and has turned it all into such an issue of character that, in recent UK survey, over half of older people viewed the TV their main social interaction and something like over 60% of disabled adults say they are pretty much always lonely because the social moral weight to care is also weighed with the moral weight not to need or ask for it. I run in my home a weekly group for disabled adults and it's not uncommon for the discussion to be how to get by with the least to others even when it costs us a lot. I think the moralistic view does nothing to aid that issue when it not only doesn't challenge but supports the concept that not doing it all ourselves makes us less than.

My August born daughter is Year 4 and is 8, so age minus 4. Most of her current work is mid-3rd grade I would estimate (almost halfway through 3A maths and her reading is at that level though is using a Year 4 list for spelling). England is very fixed on this - one can delay a child's entry until the term after one turns 5, but still goes in just having missed that time with everyone else who turns 5 between 1st of September and 31st of August so if she was sent to school I could technically wait until Year 1 to legally put her in but very few do that. Delayed entry and holding back are very rare and have to be agreed individually with the school. It doesn't matter much unless they choose to go into one of the school programmes like my eldest who want to go the tech school for Year 10 as everything else is moving towards being aged-based rather than year-based. My 8 year old was one of the last in SJA to enter as 'in Year 1', now it's a fixed age of 7 so now she's barely 8 with 3 years of badges :lol:. I used to debate to myself a lot whether I would want to hold her back or request delayed entry for year 10 if she went the same route as her older brother - because I overthink a lot. She was a child who begged to learn to read from very small...but really struggled and didn't really click until last year. How much she has grown in the last year and a half has been amazing and she's worked very hard to get where she is, but she still struggles sometimes in ways I'm baffled by (like today she got all her multiplication word problems answers correct first try without help...but was unable to write the equation involved in the problem. Like it should have been ? x 3 = 15, she wrote 3-15=12 but wrote 5 in the answer box :confused1: ). Now I just have a list of a few local options for different paths and we'll see when she gets there (not that I still don't overthink and check those options now and then, but I' trying to be more relaxed about it).

My best advice, with the circumstances as I read them, is for your friend to try to build a strong emotional support system outside of him - women's groups, hobby meet ups, things that have nothing to do with him than she can get joy from and build the connection to other people and mindspace that isn't about the issues going on with her spouse. If he will do similar, that might also help but with the barriers to both getting counseling and medical treatment, I'd focus just on what she can do for herself. For me, this has worked in a few ways: it helped me feel human and worthwhile again. It's draining and a heavy weight to get that blame even when we know it's not true. Personally, I feel better able to connect with my spouse even in our rough patches when I'm caring and getting care from other people outside of my house. It has helped me most of the time with my PTSD and it's depressive elements to regularly feel like I'm getting (platonic) love and care from multiple sources. When I was at my worst, in survival state, part of it was feeling that I had nothing that wasn't connected to my household and so no break from the headspace of all the issues there. I now do a weekly ladies cafe evening, plan movie days with a friend where we bring our kids together and watch older kids' movies (the stuff we watched growing up), currently trying to set up gaming chat for when going out is difficult, just connecting to people and building a life. With that, I feel more like an individual and more cared for which means I can deal with the rough stuff better.

Well, assumptions are likely with little information and asking us what we would do. What each us would do is coloured by our experiences, what is available to us, and the assumptions we would make at seeing that scenario. I don't think someone who is thin is necessarily ill, but neither do I think just because a parent say everything is fine, it is so. A 15 year old typically can say how they feel and what they think they need for themselves so I would prioritize what they think of their body if that topic came up. Maybe I just live in a particularly open house, probably due to wanting to be open about our disabilities and how closed my childhood one was, but we talk about our bodies and health and how we feel about them quite a bit. During a recent time when my 13 year old had a lot of people comment on his weight (shoulder injury so his shirt was off a lot with professionals remarking multiple times on how his weight affected how the injury appeared), I asked him what I wished I had been asked, "People have been commenting on your weight, what do you think about it?". We talked about it for a while - how he felt about the comments and his understanding of them, what he wanted to do once he was cleared by the specialist, whether he'd heard those kinds of comments before and so on. I made no weight recommendations or diet plans, food never came up, closest we got was him asking me to help him put into practice the specialist's suggestions because he didn't want that to happen again and he wants to be stronger and he made the joke his father usually makes about needing more vegetables to be strong. It was a great conversation. An aunt or uncle, not typically a random person, could have that conversation as could many adults involved in his life. As annoying and upsetting as it sometimes is, I'd far rather have the people in my life feel they can express their concerns to us and discuss it openly with my kid than be silent and turn away from my kids and assume I know everything about them and what they're thinking on something. I wish more adults had risked upsetting my parents rather than prioritize their feelings and reputations, the few who did really helped me in so many ways. Thankfully I now live where most teens can take themselves to the doctor or health clinics, if asked I would help them get the appropriate details they wanted to talk to a professional. I'm all about helping young people access care and good guidance. So yeah, as I said, I would ask - preferably when relevant - and take it from whatever answer I got. And yes, when adults and young people I'm close to comment on their weight - which is far more often than I like and typically about feeling like they weigh/eat too much - my go to line is something like "how do you feel about that?". I've had a lot of good conversations about social pressure and habits and all sorts that people have wrapped up into how they think of their bodies and weight.

As someone who was a similar size at that age (5'5" and maybe 90 pounds sopping wet), if I felt I had a good enough relationship, I would ask the child in question how they feel about it and take it from there. A 15-year-old likely knows how they feel and what they want you to think about it. Even if it's nothing, knowing someone is willing to listen about it can be wonderfully freeing. All 15 year old me wanted was an adult who would listen, take me seriously, and help. I would have loved if any of my family members had cared to ask and support me with it. What I got was a bunch of adults gossiping that I must have an eating disorder, compliment me on staying so slim and ~healthy~ and warn me to keep it that way, or looking the other way because I wasn't their business. It sucked, I couldn't figure out why I rarely felt hungry and why it was so difficult to eat sometimes, my access to food fluctuated a lot, and my physical skills, particularly my stamina, was shot before I left high school after having previously been able to walk for several hours at my leisure. Everyone noticed it, my classmates made snide remarks all the time as did more than a few staff members. I started hiding both my boniness and the few secondary sex characters I had in baggy clothes because I felt so weak and vulnerable, attempting and failing at the school gym and sports to be stronger, and my joints starting hurting and clicking which I was told was likely the result of being overtrained when younger. I learned very fast not to talk about it at all or I would be ridiculed. I would be 28, having gone through 4 pregnancies where my low weight put me in a high-risk category before anyone noticed my weight was a medical problem...after I suddenly gained over 6 kilos in 6 months and hadn't noticed because of everything else. It took my endocrine imploding with failing ovaries sending the rest of my body into a tailspin for anyone to see anything other than a skinny person who should be grateful they can eat anything and stay so trim. I still sometimes wish for the strong body I wanted in high school, but I'm having to deal with a lot of the damage not knowing has caused first. I really wish anyone would have cared enough to make me their business when I was in middle school or high school to ask me how I felt about my weight.

Like many other things, penmanship is very individual - my older two had practically identical instruction and one still struggles to write neatly at all while the other does lovely writing in multiple styles. There is so much involved with writing well that some will struggle even with "perfect" teaching. Little and often works well for us as it takes time to build up stamina and too much usually ends up being counterproductive. I'm not sure if WWE would be enough at this age for mine - mostly as some letters just don't show up a lot in this type of writing very much so separate penmanship can help with reviewing and practising all of them. I've not used a workbook though I have used Joy of Handwriting PDF sets and Don Potter's Direct Path to Cursive. Both of those would give a complete feeling, I would think, similar to a workbook and help to give regular practice or let you focus on trouble letters. Also lists with pangrams to cover all letters or with a lot of alliteration to work on a particular letter can be good for practice. With my current Year 1 active kid, we have a lap whiteboard that's lined using Barchowsky's Fluent Handwriting and Direct Path to Cursive. We do patterns for a line or two, then work on a letter or letter combinations (depending on what he's been struggling with), followed by another pattern of his choice at the end. We're working up to what my Year 4 child does for writing warm-up (writing out the whole alphabet, she picks 2 letters to work on, I pick 2, she writes out a line each of the 4 letter combination in cursive, print, and capitals before we do reading and copywork and so on. She will likely drop this for just writing out the alphabet as a warm-up as her older siblings do soon). My Year 1 also works on capitals when we do Webster Syllabary.

I think the focus on more labelling is an individualist consumer solution to a systemic corporate action - a bandaid that so far here has had little impact on improving quality of food (there was a big thing on labeling in the UK a few years back, it's mostly died down now). Advice, dietary guidelines... even if someone got good advice that fully took into their individual dietary needs, does that person have access? Does the community getting that advice? Sure, labeling and advice is good, but if my local shop only has one type of bread that day, it really doesn't matter what is on the label because that's what most people are going to buy. I know some enjoy traveling to source food, there are whole books and blogs and such on it, but that's not desirable or even possible for many before getting into how these sort of things tend to create more burden particularly on disabled people and women in general to do even more labour in the home to meet social standards. Everything I have ever seen these kinds of movies encourage is consumer based - we'll buy better and buy the supplies to make our own and everything will be better. The collective action used to bringing in the protections we have so far are often ignored and the groups who fought for many of them are often the most negatively affected by poor degrading regulations. Even the boycotts are typically the "we don't buy those anyways" affairs that have little organization or attempts at widespread change. It's little different to me than click activism, very appealing, makes a person feel good and knowledgeable... but there is evidence that people do less community wise after such tactics. The barriers for everyone else stay the same and corporations continue as they are. I get the appeal and that people like making and watching these sorts of things, and some may be inspired to do things based on documentaries, I just find the methodology very suspect and exploitative and the promised results in either direction rarely achievable. Really, treating a person and their pain as edutainment props...what good is going to come from that - is it going to change industries? make dental access easier for anyone? change any laws? Shock tactics rarely work on individuals in the long term, and with difficulties many have to getting medical care and the stigma that treats these things as individual failing, many of the inclusions in such feel rather thoughtless.

I'm wary of movies like this as pretty much any guinea pig food movie has results that no one else can replicate and far too often exploit poor communities for entertainment. I really dislike trying to demonize any food - that doesn't help any form of disordered eating - and making consumption of any food responsible for far larger social and medical problems. Acting like sugar is the demon people just need to be educated out of it with these flashy shock tactics and that will make everything better and pretty much ignore the socially enforced poverty and neocolonialism and trauma in many of the communities targetted with these kinds of documentaries I think is privileged people patting themselves on the back for being so enlightened when it's more to do with the chance of birth. Maybe that's because I'm on the opposite end in a community struggling to keep all its kids fed and to get underweight kids to be taken as a serious issue, living in a food desert where fresh produce is not in walking distance for many people but I've got 5 takeaways in a 5 minute walk, and spent too much time as a teen not sure of my next meal...the whole treatment of food as solely an individual's choices and problems are just a lack of good decision making rather than a complicated systemic web of issues of access and laws and business and media and barriers really, obviously, gets me riled up. The whole industry around these sort of documentaries feels very cruel to me. They won't give most of the people used as teaching props access to anything better. On the other hand, yeah, there is quite strong evidence that sugar has limited use by the body and the current food industry has foods balanced to be more sugary to the detriment of nutrition. We could lobby to bring in better legislation and regulations on so many things, better guidelines for how the media discusses science around food (I know we've had threads on here about news reports on food and how few actually believe much of it because how bad it can be), discuss science and media literacy, better zoning laws, higher food standards, reconsider and redistribute which foods gets support in being grown and deal with how much produce is wasted to maintain profits... have food treated more as a life essential people should have safe, good access to rather than just any other commodity and a race to the bottom. We'd need a lot of changes to do much of that and most things are looking to go the other way (particularly in the UK where the party in power wants to lower food standard laws so it can trade more with the US), but it's what would be needed to really do good for the most people. Personally, years ago I tried an uber crunchy sugar-free diet (ignoring that tomatoes and many commonly used vegetables here have fructose), I got much sicker. It was too energy intensive for me both physically and in dealing with living in a low access area (so much traveling and shopping, both of which would be on my list of least favourite things to do), I couldn't consume enough calories, and it further messed up my relationship with food and my perception of myself. I crashed and burned and felt horrible. I eat far better when I do less and use what's closer even when it's embracing frozen spiced vegetables, veggie meatballs, and premade rice bowls.

My Year 8 child is similar. He's done so much with spelling and English rules and such and he just doesn't retain that. I've considered dropping it, focusing more on good spell check use that I know plenty of adults who are poor spellers rely on, but as he's unlikely to be able to use those for exams and such, I feel we do need to try something new. He does have personal spelling work that he does independently with words I've collected (and try to put together by similar mistakes) from either his work of the Essential spelling list he does with his Year 6 sibling. It has boosted his confidence a bit - he usually only takes a few days to get each new set right - but it doesn't move to his work well. Like this past week, he's misspelt coming, traveling, potatoes, appeared, steadily among other words. We ended up doing a new spelling assessment for the beginning of the year and...yeah. A recommendation I got was The Word Wasp and Hornet as better for a older kid than Apple and Pears and both have colour text similar to above posts. I'm debating between this and Megawords to begin with him.

I'm usually not fond but generally ignore such terms of endearment as they are used a lot here. In my head, it's a case by case thing, I tend to be more wary if it's a big guy or a professional that has power over me because I've had so much experience of them being used dismissively or in a way to diminish/exert control but from other women or like customer service staff, it's fine for me...it happens so much when out I probably don't notice half the time. Certain ones, particularly hon/honey, I very much have a sex divide in my head of women using it to be nice while men too often have used it with me not so nicely. I don't tend to use them as often as many others I know except for with my family and close friends - my kids particularly get sugar pie, dahlin', sweetie, love, dear, duck... Where I am, everyone is m' duck. "Thanks m' duck", "Can I help you with that m' duck?" and so on. Supposedly it's rooted in an older English variant for duke and it's meant as an equalizer/showing value but for me...I (usually) resist quacking as well. My late father in law used pet/petal a lot. Pretty much no one here uses sir and even fewer use ma'am. That was an adjustment for me, sir still slips out with much older men sometimes, but ma'am is almost universally loathed where I am - except maybe for the Queen. I doubt it would be in any etiquette book here other than to warn it likely will confuse and annoy. I think it's seen as distant/aging so it's better not to use anything all.

Great ideas and advice so far. For early years (to 7-8/Year 3ish/confidently reading and a bit less wiggly), I use Jolly Music - it uses lots of old rhymes and activities and movement, pretty scripted which is good for me when juggling too much but can be adapted on the fly to suit the child (though better with small groups, siblings love getting in on the fun too most of the time). It uses the Kodaly method and is a good introduction to the vocabulary, ideas, and enjoyment of it. I also for almost every holiday/event create a playlist, mixing traditional and modern music and connect them to what we're doing for musical appreciation and history. May Day is far more interesting with small kids singing Morris dancing songs followed by picket rhymes.

One of the best recommendations I got when I switched over from MEP is if you got the big PDF set, do the review pages from the earlier years first before jumping in. That gives a gentle introduction to the style on things they likely know and helps catch any areas that weren't covered or mastered (mine all got completely lost in measurements which I didn't know about). If you just have your current year, then the author also has homeschoomath which has free worksheets, one from each section on the previous years would likely be similar.

I know my blood type. I've donated blood and it was checked during each pregnancy - thankfully none of my medical conditions require me to regularly know it though I regularly see it listed at the top of my medical notes. After the birth of my second child who arrived before the midwife or paramedics (I went from inconsistent 7-15 minutes apart contractions all day to suddenly really needing to push at 3am), the midwife's first words to me actually were "do you know your blood type?" followed by her being thankful I was rhesus positive so she didn't need to get that stuff out. It was in my medical notes which were close by anyways and she did go through them after she helped me into a bath but she seemed fine with my knowledge of myself. My spouse and I have the same blood type other than I'm rh+ and he's rh-, I'm interested in which my kids are though they've yet to be tested and hopefully that can wait until they're old enough to donate.

All of mine found it frustrating with Phonics Pathways to go back over pages they were struggling with, but writing out letters/syllables/words on a white board worked well even doing similar day after day and doing it one letter/sound at a time helped with blending. With my older three, I used Blend Phonics as it's a simple, free PDF. With my older two it worked well alongside the I See Sam books (with my oldest, the reading a whole book himself really helped it all click). My third struggled with reading so much, and she was begging for reading lessons and worked diligently through them though really seemed to forget everything between lessons that we tried a few other programmes, until, oddly (and it could be an age thing but we used it and she clicked less than a week later), we tried using Leapfrog Letter Factory videos. Like a week of watching it daily and it was all magic and clicked for her. I added the Preschool Prep phonics videos for a bit and then we did Ultimate Phonics free word/sentence list for reading and copywork alongside the I See Sam and other books (she's actually has about a month's worth of lessons still on that). With my current almost Year 1 child (and will be 6 in November) who followed along for those videos and the reading alouds, we're using Webster Speller Syllabary (there is a thread by ElizabethB about it in my signature, soror created a google doc version which is posted in that thread) because it fits him better than Blend Phonics for several reasons (mostly it's easier to keep lessons short and tweak on the fly as well as he isn't writing very well unlike his older siblings at this stage so doing capital syllables is more suitable than writing out words). It's working very well for us - big whiteboard across his lap, 3-5 syllable sets - I try to make sure to include at least one set with long vowel sounds and one set with short vowel sounds each day - all very relaxed - I write it out one letter/sound at a time, he sounds it out and blends, then he sounds out the whole set before writing it at the bottom of the board, and when we do all the sets we go through them as listed and then at random.

And dealing with as many barriers as possible will enable that to happen better. Not only is it harder to lose weight without looking into whole body issues, but there are a lot of risks to dropping weight without considering them. There is a huge risk with calorie restriction of the body essentially eating the muscle tissue causing long term damage to the heart and more and calorie restriction by itself does not guarantee weight loss as I said in my previous post (and why chronic dieting is a big risk factor for many heart problems regardless of the individual's weight or fat percentage). The body has needs and it will screw itself over in the long term if it's not getting those met today, imbalancing and eating itself even if it makes being healthy tomorrow harder, it wants what it wants now. That is why looking into sleep issues, looking into dealing with disordered eating and rebuilding eating competency, looking into insulin resistance and other hormone issues (insulin is a hormone, there are many reasons why the body becomes less sensitive to a specific hormone and there are many other hormones that could be involved, if that is an issue it will make it harder to lose weight, to lose the right kind of weight as obviously not all weight is equal, and to lose it well), looking into blood pressure and general cardiovascular health, the body is incredibly complicated and just focusing on one thing when so many other things affect and are affected by that one thing will make it harder and more risky particularly for a child. A holistic approach from the basics - sleep, water, food, movement - plus investigating underlying causes for rapid weight gain is important to long term health which is the focus of the weight loss. While the weight likely contributes to the high blood pressure, it is very dangerous to dismiss it as the only factor. Multiple studies have given strong evidence that a major part of why people who are overweight die sooner (even though those in the overweight category are more likely to survive things like heart attacks and such compared to typical weight and underweight people) is because of medical neglect - doctors not investigating what they would in a thinner person and both doctors and patients dismissing symptoms and concerns as being purely weight related means underlying causes are allowed to fester longer and become more dangerous. Weight-based abuse and neglect is a major health issue. Based on the tests, your doctor thankfully doesn't look like that is what they are doing but the idea that things are solely weight based needs to be nipped - it causes a lot of damage. The problem with fat is far more that it is a symptom of other issues within the body and sometimes mind with disordered eating that need to be dealt with than the risks of fat just by itself. As an example, while being overweight increases the likelihood of diabetes, one is more likely to be overweight if one is already insulin resistant which already makes one more likely to become diabetic. The body is fantastically complicated and finding all the pieces to give someone the best chance at a healthy future takes considering a lot of things. Start with basics, one step/piece at a time, and when the results come in ask about what other investigation could be possible for sleep, hormones, and such.

It reads like you both have had a very hard road. Personally, I agree with your doctor's choice to wait on the dietician - at 16, he'll still fall under Pediatrics and with his needs at the time, how they're going to change, and taking into consideration his additional medical needs is possibly going to take a specialist. There is a real risk of encouraging simply a different type of disordered eating and additional health risks with young people restricting calories that need to be considered so finding the right person when going beyond the advice the doctor gave. Part of the issue is how little we really know about the human body. Fat isn't just storage as was often taught when I was young, it's active and part of the endocrine system and various hormones and parts of the body play a role in how it's built, maintained, and lost and one small thing being not right can set off a big chain reaction and the more things off the harder to see all the pieces. We know now that the in/out idea is over simplified as one can gain weight on too few calories due to imbalances in catabolism and metabolic suppression which can be set off with too much calorie restriction. I would recommend Ellyn Satter's How to Eat protocols due to studies I've read on how well it works for helping various types of disordered eating over typical diet advice particularly for repeat dieters. Relearning how to eat well is a lot more than portion control and good food/bad food as most know, it's learning how to eat enough, consistently with enough variety and enjoyment and I think Satter does a good job discussing how to do and take personal responsibility for that which for a motivated young man might be useful. I know quite a few people who enjoy the fitness advice from Nerd Fitness and Mark Sisson which both have very beginner bodyweight workout advice which your dss may like (they also do food advice, and Nerd Fitness's meal ideas can be good but their overall paleo plans are a bit far for teenagers and likely better when older and better at eating generally). One often over looked issue is rest - it's easy to assume that being overweight makes one more tired or that it's the lower amount of calories being eaten or the many other reasons people often overlook this but I know several people who had great weight and health difficulties who ended up eventually being diagnosed with sleep disorders who managed much better once things were put into place to help that. There is a link between high blood pressure and some sleep disorders but there isn't a lot of solid evidence as to why yet. Ensuring good quality rest can be vital as a start to health programs.

I'm not impressed and really kinda confused by the apology - this book, with that wording and image, has been around since 2013 so this isn't some mistake with the newest print but something many people agreed on repeatedly and ignored previous complaints on. It's a pretty meh puberty book in general - trying a bit too hard to be ~cool~ and my eldest didn't like it - but I've yet to find any overarching resource on this topic that I really like or recommend without caveats. It's hard just to find something that's even up to date on what I feel is important body knowledge for young people to know, it feels like they're all drawing on '90s information with slightly more modern lingo and occasional name drops. Out of them, these are some of the better ones but I still feel a constant need to correct and add to them. Personally, I find it interesting to compare it to the equivalent section in the girls' book - which for some reason does not contain the image of disembodied breasts that is in the boys' version -- or any images in this section. From Growing Up for Girls: "What are breasts for? They can seem a bit annoying at first, but breasts are designed primarily for feeding babies, and many people think they look nice too. They are also sensitive to being touched. Breasts are mostly made of fat which protects the milk making pat inside them. A woman's breasts can't start making milk until she's pregnant. When a baby feeds, the milk come out of holes (too small to see) in the nipples." So, if it's to make puberty seem attractive, that's not really what's going on in the girls' book from what I can see. I mean, personally, at the early stages of puberty - and these books are commonly recommended when kids are about to go up to secondary so 10-12 year olds - at that age other people looking at me like that made me quite uncomfortable and certainly did not need the reminder that others liked looking at them - the messages for that are everywhere. I don't think kids of either sex at that age need that included in what the definition of what breasts are for and what role they play in either evolutionary role of partner selection or their current role culturally means very little to me compared to recognizing how the message that they are for others to look at causes issues particularly at the age group it's aimed to educate. I don't think the evidence for either is strong enough that that needs to be included in a children's book when so much else is left out or that they included those lines which seem to be pretty throw away to acknowledge theories of the evolutionary development of breasts.

I agree with the others though if he plays at a shop, they may have books to rent during games until he can save up for them/future gift giving occasions. I play 5th edition weekly at a board game shop and don't own any of the books (yet - I have many other RP systems as I've run RP groups from my house for many years but not D&D as I really disliked the earlier editions), but some of the others have books that we pass around or borrow from the shop. I would both check what edition and what the group expects. Most RPing groups do not expect every member to have books, or much of anything in my experience. I don't when I run, I often have players who bring nothing. A good game shop shouldn't be pressuring sales but I do know a few that certainly target parents so getting guidance from your son and his group if getting in touch with the person running is an option may be a good idea. As said, basic basics are pencils, preferably multiple polysets of dice already mentioned by OneStep (I carry 3 sets at least...and keep a massive box of them at home), I really recommend a project notebook (the kind with dividers that have pockets) to keep notes and character sheets and write up ideas. It saves sheets getting crumpled and things getting lost even if he writes up nothing for a while (and it's good to have paper for secret messages). Miniatures are a different ball park and all the systems are quite different & I'm not familiar with that one - though a good container to carry them in is one basic that is often overlooked.

Doctors, not particularly but I only tend to get one when I need one asap. When I had a lot more appointments occasionally one would slip through no matter the calendars and whatnot. Dentists, sometimes - we've had a whole issue of them canceling at the last minute and moving our appointments around on us that it became a mess for a time. We're still working on dealing with this, hopefully by finding a better one soon.

I moved quite a bit as a kid, but mostly grew up in urban areas in southern Ohio. I wouldn't say any US war "resonates" with me through the War of American Independence and the US Civil War were both taught a lot, I personally felt the world wars were the ones most glossed over but really don't think of any of them much. There were certainly Confederate flags - many from those without much of a connection to former Confederate states. I know there were KKK rallies in the city I was living in in the early '00s, a lot of adults used the expression "I'm free, White, and over 21" to express frustration at being or feel like they were being told not to do something. I felt a lot that cities were far more of a hotbed of it than rural areas but there are likely a lot of factors to it. Even though the Civil War was covered a lot and I thought in-depth at various schools, it wasn't until well into adulthood I learned that Lee, Davis, and many other the other big Confederate names pretty much refused to have much to do with it after losing the war (Lee apparently said the flags shouldn't be flown again, refused to allow anyone wearing the uniform there) and that the revival of the Confederate flag as a "Southern heritage" symbol and most of the 'memorials' was around the 1950s-'60s as a backlash against civil rights activists. I always had a very different mental image but the more I read on it, the more I find their current portrayal to be, like many historical figures, twisted to fit.

I do like Nina :hurray: I took ages to decide mine as well - went in to 3 out of 4 births still with quite long lists (and that's with each child having 3 given names...). I use behindthename to keep a name list though it's mainly for story writing now. The ones I think kinda match with the others (so not Nova or Nikifor) that I haven't spotted on the other lists are: Naira Nerissa Nita Noble...which likely would not work with Frank (for us this was a second name option as all of ours follow my family tradition of 'localish name, religious/virtue name, honouring name, surname with occasional extra names added particularly when misbehaving). I do know a little Franklin who is named after his grandfather who everyone called Frank but whose legal name was Francis. The boy calls himself Frank now too... :lol: