Celery yelled at me that he didn't like my attitude, because I made him redo his grammar. There was an example, and he completely ignored the sample and did it all wrong. And by all, I just mean 4 sentences, hardly a ton of work. Sigh.

Also, could you buy a camping stove? Seems easier than the candlelight thing.

If it's 40F, I'm pretty sure it's safe to open the fridge as much as you want. Not the freezer, of course, but the fridge shouldn't be an issue.

They probably would've been able to clean up their house once or twice a year to get it at least within the lower bounds of acceptable, and kids' sizes don't mean jack. Some kids are going to be short - someone has to be in the 1st percentile, someone in the 2nd percentile, etc. So, yeah, my 10yo has been consistently at the 5th percentile, and the WIC people were consistently shocked that he's not anemic because he's so pale, but being short and pale does not make someone abused... but hey, let's throw additional scrutiny on families just because they have short genes and pale-white genes etc and they happen to have special needs.

Reading comprehension, y'all. I told you why I'm not finding a new teacher atm. So stop telling me what to do. It's this, or no violin until next year, and while I agree no violin might be better than bad habits, I don't need a 7yo to be mad at me over an EC, since he's not going to understand why he's have to do without for several months. It's not like he's likely to make a career out of it. Maybe I shouldn't have said anything on this thread... my point was that a teacher isn't necessarily better than a cellist who has self-taught violin. ETA: sorry I overreacted... just feeling frustrated, but looking for a new teacher is just really not in the cards for the remainder of the year.

You'd probably do no worse than Broccoli's violin teacher. :banghead: (I played violin for 10 years as a kid, but then hadn't played in 13 years or so, plus, Broccoli can be hard to teach, so, I figured I'd pay someone at a music school... (biggest music school in the area), where he started in November... not amused, Broccoli's bow hold, posture, etc are all wrong though he can play some simples songs, scales, arpeggios now, but like I said, kid is hard to teach, and it's not a hill I'm willing to die on, but he will be getting a different teacher next year (I tried correcting his grip, posture, etc, but the kid just starts flailing and falling to the ground, so, meh... I need his teacher to insist on good grip, posture, etc, because I get to play the bad guy in all academic subjects already.... outsourcing this for a reason)... In case anyone is wondering why I'm not switching teachers right now, it's because he has violin at the same time as Celery has guitar, and I don't care to have to show up to music lessons two times a week instead of one time, and I do think there are some interesting parts about his teacher's approach, but :banghead: on the grip/posture)

Plain hairclips (who cares what they look like, especially at home where no other kids see them), headbands (like a sports headband or w/e), gel (not a fan), um, stuff like that. Oh, and Broccoli has bangs, sorta.

Nor ever too soon to forget that I already said that in post 2254, and you liked that post. :leaving:

I'd still be excited. Actually, I think I read half that book, and it's pretty boring - more Linear Algebra poorly explained than manga, iirc (it's been a while).

I snuck Chinese on family vacation once, because I didn't want my mom commenting on it.

I think the concern is that some government officials might draw the line at much more milder stuff than 3 feet of animal feces or locking the kids in the basement. When we got a CPS visit (they concluded we were great parents and the caller's claim was unfounded), DW got told that she shouldn't keep her cayenne pepper on her desk (she always ate at her desk, but they were concerned one of the kids could get hold of it, which, ftr, never happened), and we were very thankful they never actually walked through our entire house like they're technically supposed to on every call regardless of what the call is about, because it was a fixer upper (and there were parts of the house the kids never went into anyway, but, technically, we could've gotten in trouble for leaving tools out and having exposed wiring etc upstairs, even though the kids never went there ... this was when Broccoli was a newborn, and Celery was a 3yo attending public school, so way before we started homeschooling). Basically, my experiences with CPS have been positive (those guys were nice, and for the first 4 years we lived in WNY our neighbor in the duplex with lived in was a CPS officer as well), but, I just don't feel a need to give them access to nitpick w/e they want, especially since in any occupation there are non-nice people, people who like to powertrip, people who dislike homeschoolers, people who discriminate against w/e group of people you might happen to belong to, etc. Now, I'm definitely not someone who would shoot before letting the govt into my home (see above... we had a fairly amicable CPS visit), but, to let them in just because we homeschool, no other reason? No, not unless *everybody* has to let the govt in just because.

Honestly though, I think what needs to be fixed there is that they consider someone truant for too many excused absences. Of course, you could also just write the law with an exemption for truancy due to excused absences. Either way, I do think that people who pull their kid out to homeschool because of too many unexcused absences should receive some more scrutiny from the state than the average homeschooler (and I'm not saying that it has to be something crazy overreaching - just that it seems reasonable to want maybe quarterly portfolios for the first 1-2 years or so instead of annual).

Are there religions that have a ban on seeing doctors? I mean, I know there are some that have issues with certain medical treatments, but this would be seeing a doctor without any treatment. And even for medical treatment I thought that courts sometimes overrule parents' religious objections in cases where the kid has a really high survival chance with treatment and almost certain death without. Maybe we should start a religion in which your own home is your temple and no people from other religions can enter that holy place. :lol:

That's fine. I was just surprised no one else responded to that comment, especially since I hadn't seen that idea floated in any of the other threads yet (though I could easily have missed some of those threads). There have been so many jobs I haven't applied to because I have no clue who to get a letter of recommendation from that I have a visceral reaction to the concept of a letter of recommendation (though I completely get how they make sense from an employer's pov). Basically, the words "letter of recommendation" make me panic, even at times that I actually do have people I could ask, because it just brings back memories of feeling stuck and broke and poor with no way out.

Absolutely. Hey, did any of you see MD's proposed homeschooling bill thread out in the sea? Someone mentioned that she'd be okay with requiring people to submit a few letters of recommendation when filing to homeschool (not part of the proposed bill), and somehow I'm the only person so far to say no to that idea... kind of surprised. Would y'all be willing to submit a few letters of recommendation along with your letter of intent (also, no idea if she meant annually - here LOIs are annual, but I think in some states they're a one-time thing)?

ABSOLUTELY NOT. I mean, in reality, I'm sure you could find some other homeschoolers to write a recommendation letter for you even if they barely know you at all, or pay some other unscrupulous person, so, I doubt it would really prevent anyone from homeschooling, but no, just no. Also, no to entering my home. ETA: when Celery was little we did let the early intervention people come into our home to test him and then the speech therapist to give him therapy, but I can't get on board with requiring people to let someone in their home in order to homeschool (I get that with this bill, you could just claim to do most of your homeschooling at the library and meet there or w/e... last year my youngest did most of his homeschooling at the local public school while we were there for my oldest's therapies... that would've been fun).

Reminds me of that study in which teachers were told some random average kids in their class were gifted, and then those kids would end up with better test scores etc, even though they really were just as average as the other kids. Which is of course rather unfair to the other kids, but, preconceptions matter.

Or maybe we just managed to make them think we're completely delusional. Who knows? Oh well. His teachers would consistently comment on how smart he was and stuff, so, maybe not?

I agree, but we just didn't know how they would've reacted. I figured it probably wouldn't hurt to let the school know that yes, we have high hopes for our kid, so they better work hard to help make those come true.

Yep... it was like "well, if he ever learns to speak in sentences, MIT would be nice". :lol:

College Confidential, I think. I'm not sure of the answer to OP's question, other than that I only got 2 semesters (12 hours, because I was going part time at that time) of financial aid because the first several years I wasn't eligible because I was foreign, and then when I was eligible and applied I was almost at the excessive hours number. But, that was all post-high school. No idea what happens wrt DE.

No kidding. He finally didn't need diapers anymore at 4 years 4 months. The other kid at 3.5yo, iirc. But, at least we won't have to put that on the college application. :lol: Pooya!

I blame the public school system that made us answer the "what university do you want your entering preschooler to attend" question. I get that the intent is to make parents think of their kids as going to college some day, or to see whether parents have given up yet on their almost-nonverbal just-turned-3yo... we had to write down like 10 universities, so I wrote down something along the lines of MIT, Caltech, Harvard, Stanford, any university I'd attended myself (decent state schools), some Dutch universities, something along those lines. It was quite silly.

Yes, I was being a bit silly. That said, my point was that if they want to go to MIT or something (anything tippy top), that'll have to come from them, and that would likely require participating in the college admissions arms race... not *necessarily* a lot of APs and/or DEs, but it would require doing something extraordinary and a lot of hard work (APs and DEs being two options for hard work, though "something extraordinary" like some cool research or something would probably be better than piling on infinite APs and DEs).

And, we'll first have to survive middle school. :svengo: