I would probably call if I was going to be 15 minutes or more late, in most instances.

Frankly, it's kind of odd to me that this situation would make a parent "furious." My daughter is nearly 10 and so far, I've always stayed at any party she's ever been invited to. Most parents I know at this stage do. We don't expect to be fed, and we wouldn't just help ourselves to food. If, on the other hand, the hosting mom insisted we help ourselves, that there was plenty there, then we'd eat. Otherwise it's a given that it's only the kids being fed at a kid's party. If it were somehow worded or insinuated that parents were not welcome to stay, I'd feel kind of uncomfortable with that. If you don't feel right not feeding them, it can't be much more than a few extra people, you could probably come up with something very simple and inexpensive. But you're not obligated to. I don't think you should make the parents feel unwelcome about hanging around with their children, though!

Well, 4th grade, we averaged about 3 hours a day. I expect 5th to be about the same. So therefore I expect that 6th would be maybe 4 hours a day? 7 would be way too long for us.

LOL. Care to share? I'd love to know what he had to say about that, specifically!

I PM'd you. :)

Maybe it's just me, but your pediatrician seems to SERIOUSLY overstep his boundaries. I'd be pissed if anyone, including my pediatrician, felt the need to negatively comment on or judge my PARENTING choices at every visit. And that IS what he's addressing- your parenting choices. Which are entirely separate from your children's health and medical issues. THAT'S his job. Making sure they are physically healthy. Attachment parenting? Homeschooling? Those are not his business, his concern, his job, etc- and they are certainly not "abnormal" things. He sounds like an idiot, to me. And not someone I'd personally want to continue seeing. ETA: Hm well maybe there are other issues at hand here, after reading the other comments and the line about CPS so maybe I should not have said anything, this was a more general reply to doctors like him making comments like those!

She's so creative! By the way, I love (in the Intro) when she goes... "My mom and me thought...." and then corrects herself and goes "My mom and *I* thought...." I also loved: "I like to cook....even though I can't really cook....I like microwaving...food...." LOL. I'm totally not making fun of her, by the way, I think those couple of lines were adorable! Overall, she came across as really well-spoken and confident, and I think she has a great idea with this, and it's awesome that she's taking the initiative and following through on it! The one after the intro, where she interacts with her younger sisters is sweet, and I think she had a good idea with bringing in a homeschooled friend who ended up going to private school to compare the two in the last one... I hope that in future ones she shows more DOING (in her daily homeschooled life) as opposed to just talking, to mix things up and make it more interesting. (I know she did talk about that in her intro).

Well, does she have ANY ideas of her own? If she can come up with even a couple of lines or ideas, people might be able to help tweak/improve them. Rather than entirely writing it for her?

For my oldest daughter's 16th birthday, we hired a limo to take her and a few of her girlfriends to the bowling alley. They bowled, then we came back home in the limo and proceeded to have a sleepover with the girls. There were like four or five girls plus my daughter. She really loved it, and they all got a huge kick out of the limo, which I thought would make the day more special, especially since we weren't doing any sort of big, or traditional "sweet 16" party. Oh...I almost forgot. I also had a friend who is way better with this sort of thing than I am come over before we left for bowling and style the girl's hair and do their makeup for them. It was a fun night! (And before we ever did hair, makeup, and left in the limo, we had the immediate family over too and we had pizza for dinner and birthday cake. Then the family went home and the teen styling and bowling and sleepover commenced). These girls, including my daughter, were all mild special needs teens but I don't see why any teen, especially one who enjoys bowling to begin with, wouldn't enjoy something like this, unless they've already been making noises about something special they really wanted to do. Then they might just be disappointed if they are "surprised" with something that is far from what they had in mind. But you know your daughter!

We did typing in fourth grade. It went pretty well but I wouldn't say it was totally mastered or retained. We'll probably go over it again this year for fifth. We've never done music lessons but if you call around and ask the studios/teachers, they could probably tell you a good starting age.

For first grade, we'd do just read alouds. I wouldn't require any independent reading (though if he wanted to do so and was able to I'd certainly encourage him to do it for fun whenever he wanted to). For third grade, I let my daughter pick any books she wanted at our regular library trips and read them for fun, but if I noticed that she wasn't doing much reading (particularly in the summer) I'd encourage her to read at least a chapter at some point in the day or before bed, or I'd give her silly "reading challenges" (I read about them in a magazine) where I'd tell her to spend X number of minutes reading aloud to a pet, or reading under a table, or moving up one step to the top of our staircase and then back down for each page read, and she'd get some sort of minor "prize" for completing the "challenge." For fourth grade (which was our first full year officially homeschooling), we did Oak Meadow, which assigned a specific book every three weeks- but we always read those assigned books aloud together, reading to each other. She continued to read independently, books of her own choosing, just for fun, and I'd continue to encourage that. I expect fifth grade will be about the same.

You could just say something like "Hugs" or "Thanks for the reminder not to take our loved ones for granted," or "thinking of you" or something like that. I'm sure she doesn't expect all of her friends to respond at all, really.

I will probably be in the minority, but.... everything. LOL. For now, anyway. So far that's only meant keeping what my daughter did for the 2-3 months of third grade she was homeschooled for (since she went to public school for most of that year), and all of what she did for 4th grade, last year. The thing is with K-4 especially for my kids, they're doing Oak Meadow which has them doing all work in "Main Lesson Books," which end up being pretty creative and artistic, and I know I want to keep all of those for the memories and to show them when they are older and so on. Once they get older and aren't doing the Main Lesson Book thing anymore, then perhaps I won't keep all academic stuff.... but who knows, I'll have to play it by ear. For now, when they finish a school year, I pack everything up into a box, label it with the grade, and store it in my closet or some such.

I don't know what either of those mean.

Originally, I THOUGHT it would be a good idea to start with the least favorite thing first, because I was of the mindset that getting that out of the way first would make the rest of the day more pleasant. So last year in the beginning of the year, I would insist on her starting her daily journal first- which tended to take her the longest and was the one thing she didn't really like doing. As it turned out, starting the day by making a kid do something they didn't really enjoy doing just set a bad tone to the beginning of our day, which I definitely didn't want. I wanted each morning to start with a pleasant attitude and a child who was looking forward to doing school. So we started beginning our day with an enjoyable activity- reading aloud together. After that, I started showing my daughter the list of things I wanted to get done that day, and letting HER pick what she wanted to do first/the order she wanted to do things in. This made her feel like she had more freedom/independence/choices or whatever, which made her happy, and a happy, willing kid makes for a less stressed-out mom, and it's worked pretty well for us ever since!

I could never be that scheduled. And don't think I'd want to be lol. (Not knocking it for those of you it DOES work for)! Personally, I could never schedule everything down to the hour like that though. I like being flexible, seeing what works for us on a given day, being willing and able to drop things or change things around if something fun, or something necessary, or something unexpected or whatever comes up. I have certain subjects I plan to do on certain days. But we kind of get to it at whatever time we get to it, depending on what else is going on that day. If we have no other plans, we'll probably get our work done in the morning. If we have a field trip (and our homeschool group offers plenty of those), we go have fun, and get to curriculum stuff later. Sometimes we get all the work done at once, other times we just need a break or want to spend more time doing something like reading a good book or enjoying the outdoors or whatever, so we break it up. I often try to let my daughter pick the order in which she does things, because that gives her more opportunity to exert her own independence and to make her own choices, and it makes things more fun for her. It worked for us all of last year, for fourth grade, and I'm hoping and assuming it will work fine for us this year, for fifth grade, too, even with adding a Kindergartener into the mix. I think if I tried to make some sort of very organized or strict schedule, I'd just end up feeling pressured and stressed out and feeling like I didn't do what I was "supposed" to do if (when) I don't find myself willing or able to follow it. We're definitely more of a fly by the seat of your pants kind of family, but somehow, we get things done and it works for us! I'm actually not anywhere near as disorganized as I must sound based on this post haha.

I don't need to "test" or "grade" my children to know that they are learning. It is okay to drop everything and get out there in the great outdoors, to go on a fun field trip, to spend some time just being together as a family, to continue reading a good book, to basically just live life on life's terms. Schoolwork isn't going anywhere. And my kids learn from everything, anyway. Questions and conversation are a good thing. Telling a child to just "be quiet and get your work done already" is not such a good thing. Things that a child has an interest in will probably be retained. Things that I'm just forcing a child to memorize probably won't be. Not for long, anyway. Make everything as fun, creative and/or hands on as possible!

hahaha! It was the sign painter's fault, obviously, but the school will never live that one down!

My daughter is going to be 10 in under two weeks, and I still read aloud to her regularly and don't foresee stopping anytime soon! :)

Seriously? I never heard of such a thing. Didn't you tell your eye doctor that this "movie" is frightening for your kids and that you did not want them watching it, and that he needs to come up with a different way of examining their eyes? Or better yet, look for a different eye doctor. That is so weird!!! As for the OP, did you write an email? You definitely should write one and complain! I agree that's definitely inappropriate for a family amusement park, especially the kiddie section. I would not have been happy with that, either! I would not have left the park as one person said. But I probably would have stopped at the customer service area or whatever afterward to complain (plus I'd still email or write a letter when I got home).

Probably not, if the 3 boys are already committed to be there four days from now. I'd just make it as fun for the few boys as possible. There's no guarantee that rescheduling will allow more of the boys to come, but it might be pretty annoying for the parents who already said they'd bring their kids, and disappointing to the kids who expect to show up a few days from now, to have things canceled on them pretty last minute.

Oh my gosh I'm 37 and that stuff happens to me ALL.THE.TIME. I go in a room, and forget why I went in there. I'll think of something when I'm in the shower and think "Oh, I have to do that/write that down when I get out"- and by the time I get out, I've forgotten what I was thinking of. I can't stand it! lol.

Hm. Well. When I was 25, I got together with this guy I had previously known but hadn't seen in at least a year. This time, we just sort of got together. At the time, he had a very low paying/unskilled job (which he ended up getting fired from not long after). He was a high school dropout without so much as a GED, let alone a college education. He was basically homeless because he'd just moved back from Florida (to NY, where I lived at the time) spontaneously without a set plan and spent a couple nights in his truck and a couple with a friend before I ran into him- at a bar I was visiting with a couple of friends. He was certainly broke. I brought him back to sleep at my house (well, my mother's house, but I was living there at the time) that night- and he never left. He spent four months there sleeping in the extra bedroom downstairs. We'd have conjugal visits after my daughter from a previous marriage was asleep. My mother was adamant he not sleep upstairs with me, with my daughter across the hall- I didn't think it was her business, but she said it was her house... ...so, we decided we were going to get our own apartment together. You'd probably be tearing your hair out if I was your daughter, huh? LOL. My mother was really concerned about me and my daughter moving in with this guy. To the extent that she called HIS mother late at night to express her worries and to tell her that she didn't think we should be doing this. I was like, are you kidding me? We are adults! We are moving out so we won't be under your roof. Deal with it! (His mother felt the same way). Anyway. To make a long story short, we did move in together. He did get a reasonably good job. We got married. We had a kid together. We moved to PA. He started his own business, which is doing well enough for me to be a stay-at-home, homeschooling mom. We had another kid together. We recently celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary.... He's a good guy who doesn't go out and party, is affectionate, treats me well, provides for his family, and has helped out my mother and brother plenty of times in various ways, financial and otherwise. My mother loves him, and he's my brother's best friend. Sometimes you really can't judge a book by its cover. Your daughter is old enough to make her own choices. And she WILL make them. Maybe you can TRY to respect her choice and to really get to know this guy and give him a chance before judging him.

I highly doubt it! But you never know what you'd REALLY do unless and until you actually WERE in a situation that called for it, I suppose.

At 8, she wanted me to sit with her for everything (it was also our first year homeschooling). At 9, she still liked me to but was willing to do some independent work while I was back and forth doing other things. I'm hoping this fall, at 10, she'll be even more willing to work independently, as I'm going to start my little one on K this year.