Ours does, and we've done it every year since DD was an infant. We were at a different library then, but we participated. It was a fun way to steadily read to her, check out new books, and she collected a t-shirt each year. The past two years we've been in a different library system. DD gets a matchbox car/crayon box/small stuffy for reading 2, 4, 6, and 8 hours. Then at 10 hours she can pick a book. She loves it. She reads all the time anyway, but the tracking of hours helps motivate her to improve her stamina. I participate too (adults get a canvas bag at the half way point, and a book at the end). I like that the ultimate prize is a book. That seems appropriate to me. We also use a book-based reward for finishing up a curriculum here. I don't think that it undermines the intrinsic motivation to read; it's a fun game to play. It's also good for her to get kudos from not-me for her reading. She lights up when she gets to show her sheet to the librarian for a prize.

Your plan sounds really reasonable, and focused on what he prefers. DD is similar in her tolerance for activities---sort of hit or miss. One day she'll struggle to get through a page/maze/puzzle, others she'll work it for an hour. I'm curious as to the Virtues book you found---we are also secular, and it sounds interesting.

DD is about the same age as your child (turning 5 this Oct). For phonics we enjoyed Logic of English. It's a very active program, minimal worksheets in the first level. Math reasoning has also been pretty fun. I'd also point out that if your child has fm delays, you want to make sure you are not pushing other things too hard. DD is in SLP and OT (fine motor and gross motor), and I find that on particularly intense therapy days she's just not at her best for focusing on anything else. We also prioritize her therapy homework over school stuff at this point. For us, that means that planning is tricky. I can't say we will do 15 minutes of math/reading/whatever every day because some days she can't. On the other hand, some days she's up for 2 hours of math, so it all evens out in the end.

I took it for a bit in adulthood. For me, side effects were mild---some appetite problems, but that was easy to manage with structured meal time. I wasn't taking it for attention issues. It was an off-label OCD script, so the effects might be very different. I'd say I felt improvement within 2-3 days overall. It's hard to say how long it took to "kick in" because my OCD symptoms varied throught the day. It was more to STOP symptoms than to start focus. I also should note that I didn't stop it because it wasn't working. It still was, and it was great. I got pregnant, and decided the risks to the baby were too high. I hope it works for your teen. I know how hard it can be to find the right medication(s).

We went fairly quickly through A, but each kid is different. DD never got the handwriting thing down, but we moved on anyway because I didn't want to hold her reading back due to fine motor skills. Once we got to B, we varied a lot about how long things took. We did 6 lessons a week sometimes, 4 lessons a month others. It just varied based on how she was doing. Once you get to the end of B and beginning of C, the books start to focus more on comprehension as well as just reading/sounding out words. When we started practical stuff about following multi-step directions, we started with simple repeated tasks. The first we taught was food in the trash, plate in the sink, wipe down your seat. We repeated the directions at every meal to help her learn it. Then we started less frequent multi-step directions (ie before nap, clean, diaper, pick a story). We can now give a pretty lengthy list, and she'll follow it.

A lot of this sounds really age appropriate. We used/use similar resources. We just finished MBTP 4-5 and LOE C with my 4. I've also observed her (and other 4-5 year olds) at parent/child early childhood class. The teacher will ask the kids about how someone in the book feels or some recall question, and the kids come up with very random things. One class, all the kids were tired. So the answers for everything were some version of "he felt sleepy." At this age (for us) it's about learning how we come up with these sorts of answers. Sometimes I'll give DD an example of an answer, or answer one question myself first, and then ask her another. Both of these seem to help.

The best thing you can do is to be supportive of whatever she chooses to do. It's not her obligation to stop future attacks, and she's not wrong for not wanting to have to deal with the consequences to her for reporting. I'm so sorry this is happening.

Geography! Start with a place (country, city, state, river......), and the next person has to name a place startig with the last letter of the previous location. So if person 1 says California, person 2 could say Akron.....and it just continues until someone reuses a location or can't think of one.

I feel lucky that our local homeschool group has included us, despite DD's young age. Mostly the activities are social and mixed age. There's not really a space issue because we meet in parks or other large places for the kids to all run around, and they do. It's great for her to have social interaction during the day, it's great for me to have support (DD is 2E, so she needs various therapies, but at the same time functions academically like a 8 or 9 year old). Having other parents to ask about what resources work well for X or Y is super helpful, as well as help finding local connections to SLPs. I also think that these relationships have been huge in helping DH become more of a fan of hsing. Seeing DD have positive social interactions with lots of other kids makes him more comfortable with the idea. Socialization was the largest concern he had when we first started talking about this a few years back. We aren't Christian, so he was concerned that it would be too hard for us to find a group. I'd hate for other parents homeschooling preschool (particularly in an area where almost all littles go to pre-k) to be pushed out of homeschooling due to lonliness or trouble finding a group. I totally understand in a co-op context it can be hard to include littles, but for social things, I'd encourage folks to consider including anyone who considers him/herself to be a homeschooler.

One of the things that has been important for us is teaching DD that she does not have to consent to touch, by anyone, for any reason except for health. And she should ALWAYS feel free to communicate about anything that happens. Our family has had trouble adjusting to these rules. They find it disrespectful if DD won't hug them goodbye. She can't be rude, she must look at the person and say goodbye, but we are trying very hard for her to realize that she has control of her body, and she doesn't have to give that control to anyone else. The "no secrets" rule is also unpopular with the grandparents. We do not keep secrets in our house. She'll argue with grandparents if they tell her not to tell us something (ie they gave her ice cream for lunch). It also goes along with teaching her to tell, tell again. If something happens that makes her uncomfortable, we encourage her to tell an adult she trusts. If they don't help, she should keep telling trusted adults until someone can help her. The unfortunate consequences is that right now, the telling is mostly about how she didn't like how it felt when daddy brushed her hair. But we take her statements seriously, and acknowledge her feelings. That's been our approach. Fingers crossed it works.

DD(4) with speech delays has that issue. It can make it hard for me to tell what is mispronounciation v repeating a misheard word. For a while, she thought the word "train" was "chain" and was very surprised when she saw it in print. For us at least, the process of learning to read is helping her a lot with the misheard sounds/words. Not so much helping with the speech production issues, but can't win 'em all.

We don't do tradtional thank you notes---we typically just email them. It allows us to put more thought into our words, and really express gratitude in a way that is not natural (for us) in physical writing. DD and I both have some fine motor difficulties, and physically writing something is difficult and distracting. Grandparents typically get thank you call/skype for a gift (their preference)---they want to see her smile. We also have a "you can't use it until you've thanked the person for it" rule. That tends to get these things done quickly.

We have used Prodigy and Teach Your Monster to Read. DD likes both ok, but she's streaky in how often she wants to do them. So I probably wouldn't pay for a program, but those two have been fun to use.

We spread it out over 6-9 months or so, doing it about once a week. It was a lot of reading, but good reading, and started fun discussions. It was pretty engaging, some lessons more than others.

I used it with a pre-writer, scribing as needed. There weren't too many things that were inaccessible.

I participated in the IB program as a high schooler. I have nothing but good things to say about it. Math required not just understanding, but being able to clearly explain what you were doing. We wrote explanations/papers in math, and the process helped me learn how to communicate mathy-sciencey things clearly. Foreign language was immersive, and involved reading actual literature in the target language, something I would not be required to do again until upper level college courses. Science was also fantastic---11th grade was AP level, 12th grade was a trimester system where we studied 3 concepts at the lower level college level (we did neurobiology---complete with rats for experiments, anatomy/physiology, and evolution). I also liked that our school kept the same teachers for both years of the program, so you really got to know one another. I will admit that the program is intense, but it isn't busy work, or it certainly isn't designed to involve busy work. The exams weren't like the AP tests---multiple choice or just spitting back information. It was all analysis. Even the math exam was a complex problem that you worked for 3-4 hours, explaining each step of the way. I will agree that it's heavy on volume, but it's good volume. I started a 4 year university as a junior, and had enough credits at the start for a bio minor.

Ugh. That's really annoying. Pre-ACA, we were much worse off though. We didn't have access to COBRA for complicated reasons, and had to try to get insurance on the open market. DH and I got denied by everyone, for such things as "prior narcotics use" (me after a surgery---30 pills total prescribed), "asthma" (him, exercise induced, never requiring hospitalization). It was terrifying. At some point, more fixes will be needed for health care. But for nw, the fact that SOMEONE has to cover us, and that we can't be denied for silly preexisting conditions, has been life changing.

We were successful at 3 with Logic of English Foundations. It's very game heavy, movement centric, and easy to break into REALLY short lessons. It's very appropriate for the young set, highly colorful, and honestly, a lot of fun. I think the website has samples of the first few lessons if you want to try it out. The biggest thing I'd recommend is be ready to move at whatever speed your child wants. Sometimes we'd get through 10 lessons in a week, sometimes it was 2 in a month. And keep reading aloud. DD loves reading, is comfortably reading chapter books, but still loves to cuddle up and be read to.

I'm all about supporting other people's choices. But I can't get behind not liking pickles. They are objectively AMAZING.

Ugh, yes. And don't even get me started on all the gunk in Passover food. It's like having to pay double for processed terrible food.

Interestingly, some people who keep kosher won't eat food that doesn't appear Kosher. For example, since you don't mix milk and meat, I've known people who wouldn't put cheese on a veggie burger, because it wouldn't appear kosher. There's a ton of complicated rules, and each family has somewhat different practices. My family kept a 1 hour rule---you couldn't have milk within 1 hour of eating meat. My in-laws have a 3 hour rule. We go with the 3 hour rule. There's also rules about fish---even though fish can be eaten during a meal with either milk or meat, many families eat fish on a separate plate from either milk or meat. But yeah, kosher pickles, kosher hot dogs, and kosher salt all refer to a style of food, and the actual products may or may not be kosher.

I have a personal rule of zero booze for me and driving within about 24 hours. Why? 1) I'm a not-confident/strong driver in the best of circumstances. If anything ever happens, I don't want to wonder what if I didn't drink..... 2) drinking and driving (like heavy drinking) was socially acceptable where we came from. There were a lot of accidents, a lot of unneeded injury/death. I see it as a waste. For "family" rules, DH/I feel that 1-2 drinks over several hours, for an experienced driver, is ok. Otherwise, we don't get in the car, we don't let our kids in the car. We are really open about our anti-drinking/driving policy. Friends know we would MUCH rather just host them overnight than worry about how they get home safely. Some will take us up on that (which feels odd in our 30s, but we are really happy to host).

It's useful to report adverse events so the CDC can properly track them, and make adjustments to the data sheets if needed. They like more information rather than less. Report the reaction here: https://vaers.hhs.gov/index It also helps other people to potentially plan vaccinations. If I know a particular shot has a lot of reports of related fatigue, that will impact when I choose to get it. Similarly, for kid vaccines, I can schedule apts for times of day to minimize the likely (but minor) adverse effects. Sorry it was uncomfortable though. My parents always have a lot of pain associated with TDAP.

We did testing for DD at 3 because she suddenly withdrew from the world. She only would talk to myself or my husband, and completely shut down for other people. We did an initial eval with a psychiatrist who did a full work-up on her, and recommended additional SLP and OT testing. IQ scores at 3 are not reliable, but it gave us an idea that she was certainly advanced. We won't know exactly where she falls on the curve unless we retest at an older age, which we may or may not do depending on circumstances. Understanding the giftedness helped us understand some of her social/emotional difficulties, and help her to work on those. We accepted that other 3 yr olds (now 4 yr olds) are not necessarily the best playmates for her, and have allowed her to expand her friend circle to include much older kids. We've started to run into issues that her friends are hitting puberty, and she clearly isn't. But she's better able to handle and interact with a variety of ages now, and is much more open than she had been initially. There are some developmental delays that seem to be related to the giftedness (as far as the doctors can tell). Because she never babbled, just went straight from crying/yelling to using words, she has a speech delay. Not language---she can understand and use complex phrasing. But the actual production of speech and movement of the mouth is tricky for her. She has sensory issues (which also hurts the speech) and she can't tell what her body is doing unless she can see it. She struggles to put on shoes once the foot goes into the shoe and you have to wiggle it. She struggles to put on a shirt because she can't coordinate her body while the shirt is over her face. And there are a number of other sensory/dyspraxia things. It's been useful for us to have that testing---it's helped us to explain her difficulties to others, and to find resources where she can thrive. She gets SLP and OT services through the district. Both sides of the coin are isolating--the gifted and the special needs. You can't really talk about a 4 yr old being gifted without eye rolls, even though it completely impacts how she interacts with the world. You can't really play word/math games with your child in public, because it seems like bragging somehow. DD's favorite game right now is to take a word, and try to make other words out of the letters in it. And a game where you try to make any 2 numbers equal any other 2 numbers, just by adding symbols (ie 28=15 would be absolute value of 2-8 equals 1+6). It's a fun game, but people get judgy about 4 year olds talking about absolute value. The special needs is also isolating--people chalk it up to behavioral issues or parenting. Ugh. But we'd be just as isolated feeling without the testing. Overall we are glad we did the testing.

DD4 just showed today that she has no clue how one would use a landline style phone. There was some toy she was playing with at OT where she was supposed to hit certain buttons---it then told her to pick up the phone. Instead of picking up the handset, she picked up the entire toy and for the life of her couldn't figure out where she was going wrong. Embarassing. I was always so focused on making sure she knew my phone number/her address in case she needed the information, it never occured to me that she wouldn't understand the basic operation of a phone.