If you are like me and thought “but wait, that’s just a picture of a manatee!” you need to see the cutest dugong vs. manatee explainer ever: https://blogs.oregonstate.edu/gemmlab/2021/09/27/let-me-introduce-you-to-dugongs/ There are hand drawn illustrations!

They seem like great kids. Thanks for sharing!

I found the 2 quart plastic pitcher we never use (the cheap kind you would use to make Kool-Aid) and have been refilling my mug with it. Is it hip and sexy? Nope. But it works! I agree that a giant cup with all the water is just awkward.

I’m not saying it works perfectly, but it’s better than no honors classes at all. There are ways to differentiate input, for example, at my high school regular students read the abridged Les Miserables and honors students were supposed to read the unabridged. (Never actually finished that one…) Both my high school and my current local high school primarily serve an affluent, well educated community, so the regular classes aren’t really remedial. As a student I was frustrated by the honors options, because I wanted an honors classroom experience. As an adult I realize how segregated my high school would have been with tracking. I understand why they did what they did. (We did have separate classes for honors math, and they were 100% white.)

What would you guys recommend if you just needed a drink a lot of water at your desk? Not for hot beverages, so insulation not really necessary, and I won’t be driving around with it, but stable and well made is important. Suggestions? (I’m supposed to drink about 3 liters a day, and anything that can make it easier…)

The public high school around the corner from us dropped honors classes a few years ago. They’ve recently added back “honors option” were everyone is in the same classroom, but you can earn honors credit by doing additional assignments. That’s how it worked at my high school when I was a teenager. (We were a Title 1 school with very affluent white kids, and low-income black kids. Separate honors classes would 100% have segregated the classes by race.) It’s a reasonable compromise. Taking away honors altogether is just punitive for advanced kids. Forget the extra GPA points, avoiding boredom is a real issue.

As an Episcopalian, Easter is hard for me at our RC church. Just got back from a lovely Easter Vigil, but wow I miss Jesus Christ is Risen Today. I may have thrown in a “Christ is Risen, Hallelujah, Hallelujah!” and “The Lord is Risen Indeed!” under my breath during the recessional… (Why don’t we do the Paschal greeting at our church? Who knows?)

Ugh. As a liberal progressive mom who sees the value of a classical education and is actively working to give that to my kids, this is so frustrating. I hate the idea that the Western Civ “belongs” to one side of the political debate. If you want to broaden the appeal of a classical education, this so isn’t helping!

I have a nine year old gifted Autistic daughter in private school. It’s our parish school and not specifically a gifted school, but the parents are mostly highly educated professionals and I think that produces a reasonable peer group for her. She’s clearly not the only Autistic girl there, but she may be the only one with a diagnosis. (I’m Autistic, and I fought hard to get her a diagnosis too.) We could afford $20,000 a year, it’s what we paid for preschool. I really don’t think you need to spend that much for elementary school. Our current tuition is half that. Being at a parochial school rather than a public school gives us a well organized, functional K-8 experience. I think that kind of stability, calm and structure is important for an Autistic kid. Academics? I doubt there is a classroom out there that would really meet her needs. I’d rather have a solid, good enough classroom without a lot of homework to give her time after school for all kinds of self directed reading and exploration. So far it seems to work. I wouldn’t take on the financial and commuting costs for the gifted school. If you are looking for school based options I would consider closer, more affordable options, even if they aren’t specifically gifted. I’m also suspect your daughter is Autistic. Mine didn’t get diagnosed the first time, but everyone sees it now. Keep it in mind, and if you do seek evaluations again in the future, try to find someone with experience specifically with girls.

Yeah, that’s not how that works. But better to vent here than try to have your sister see the light. The urge to see the best in your parents can be strong.

It’s one of fifty states, but one in eight US residents lives in CA. It seems fair for CA topics to play a large role in these threads.

I’m so sorry. I have a nine year old and I’m just heartbroken at the idea of losing three nine year olds. Any kid death is tragic but nine is just such a great age as they start to blossom into big kids. What a loss.

To be fair, he does have very nice hands…

You have to remember that most Kdramas are filming as the show is being broadcast and aren’t pre-produced. Even if the ending isn’t straight up awful, it’s very common for a show to run out of steam by the end. The team seems to run out of energy/money/ideas/mojo before the end and a show with eight amazing first episodes can finish with eight only okay episodes. Happens all the time.

I haven’t yet. I’m saving it. I adored Lee Sun-kyun in Coffee Prince. That voice!

The same writer just came out with My Liberation Notes, also on Netflix. Captivating portrait of a family. It’s very, very realistic, sometimes dark but also funny and hopeful.

I really enjoyed Her Private Life on Netflix. The male lead is just beyond gorgeous; he and the female lead have a really joyful romantic chemistry together. The fan girl plot initially put me off, but it ended up being interesting. Hospital Playlist is just great television.

I don’t think I can hear the difference between North and South Korean yet, although I haven’t tried lately. My Korean sister-in-law says that Hyun Bin’s North Korean accent was particularly sexy, so I hope to be able to appreciate that someday! There is a funny scene in the first episode of Hospital Playlist, where a pair of provincial students meet a pair of students from Seoul at medical school orientation. Both pairs react to each other’s accents. The Seoul students: “I don’t understand what they are saying. Are they Japanese?!?” The provincial students: “Wow, they speak so clearly! It’s like listening to the radio!”

It’s definitely hard. I just crossed 500 hours of KDrama. At this point with French I didn’t catch everything, but I could easily follow the plot without subtitles. With Korean I’m just starting to occasionally understand whole sentences…. You have to learn (almost) every word of Korean from scratch, while French and English share *so much* vocabulary.

I don’t do dubbed, but I’m learning Korean. When I was actively learning French I would sometimes watch American shows dubbed in French just to keep my French exposure up. You do get more used to dubbing, but it’s always a bit strange. If you don’t hate subtitles I would stick with them.

Come back anytime you need recommendations. I’ve got lots. (It’s Okay Not to Be Okay is amazing and also on Netflix.)

I would assume soy allergy for now. An allergist can always do a controlled in-office soy challenge when the baby is older. We did this with peanuts when my baby was around a year old.

Our pediatrician gave us a list of supplements that have been studied as being beneficial for Autism. I don’t remember the names, but they are all from specialist labs and are like “take 5 pills 3x a day” and cost hundreds per month. Even the pediatrician said they may be overkill for my successfully mainstreamed Autistic kid. I want to try a methylated vitamin, because methylated B-vitamins have been hugely beneficial for my anxiety. The pediatrician recommended just trying it instead of testing her methylation status. Worth a shot, right?

Interesting! Worth a try!

Any recommendations? My kids don’t actually like the Smarty Pants gummys, that would be the most obvious option. I’m trying to find a more affordable methylated option before we go to the fancy Autism vitamins, which maybe more than we actually need. (Affordable is relative, I’m willing to spend money on good vitamins, but the fancy Autism vitamins are super expensive.)