My oldest is 7.5yo. And his strengths are more in math than in language arts. Thanks for the suggestions so far. :)

What books would fall in this category? In my library, this category doesn't exist. They have 3 books that fit "child development -- juvenile fiction", but they're about regular kids. In another thread, I mentioned that I like Life of Fred because he's such an asynchronously developing kid (albeit completely silly and over-the-top). What other books have asynchronously developing protagonists?

I love how Fred is such an asynchronously developing kid. Obviously not a real one - it's over the top. But it's okay to be great at math, worse at drawing than your doll is, and to not have enough world experience (due to age) to fall for swindlers selling you broken heaters etc. Not enough books feature asynchronously developing kids.

My avatar is probably about 6 years old. When I joined it asked if I wanted to use my facebook pic. Seemed like the easiest solution, but I haven't touched facebook in forever. I can't really tell my age from my avatar (someone correct me if I'm wrong)... I'm probably 24 in that picture; I'm 30 now. My hair is much longer at the moment, but who cares? My main issue with my avatar is that I don't have a kid that young anymore (and that's my oldest I'm holding). But I hate taking pictures, and I think an avatar picture (or painting/drawing/etc) is better than nothing. I do recognize others' avatars faster than their names.

I would do that, except the library doesn't have them. They do have Cricket, Spider, Ladybug, and I think Babybug though. Here you can check out the most recent issue, but whenever I looked they had them right there. My 2nd grader brings Scholastic News home from school. It's basically 2 sheets of letter-sized paper printed double-sided... not what I'd consider a 'magazine'. Not sure what I'd call it.

Have you asked CP what he thinks (explaining that you have limited space to pack)? I don't have Fractions, nor Decimals and Percents. I have Apples-Jelly Beans, and Beginning Algebra and Advanced Algebra. I like Fred. But if you don't think the elementary books were worth it, I don't think that's going to change much for the rest.

Yeah, Calliope looked more appealing than DIG, but I noticed before I subscribed to anything that they'd discontinued Calliope (and I figured it was because of the overlap with DIG). My kids aren't quite old enough for Calliope/DIG yet though (oldest is 7.5yo). I did subscribe to Muse myself, so we can all sit down with a magazine (I subscribed youngest to Click), plus that way we can have a little stack of Muses to judge when oldest is getting into that level of reading (at which point I'll ask him which of their magazines for 9-14yos he's most interested in). I really wish there was some weekly magazine for kids. When I was a kid, there was the weekly Donald Duck, which had a good number of pages and practically no ads. It still exists, but it's in Dutch, and would cost 200-something euros for a year subscription, because mailing a magazine across the Atlantic every week is not cheap. My mom has bound some old ones into books though, and will bring those over when the kids are older and getting better at Dutch (my oldest is old enough for Donald Duck, but not in Dutch). I talked her into bringing me some copies of a Dutch kindergarten magazine and a Dutch 1st grade magazine to help the kids practice Dutch, so I should be getting those on Sunday when she comes to visit for late spring break. Woohoo! I know the magazine industry has been suffering due to the internet, but still... younger kids have little patience to wait a month for the next copy of a magazine.

Gah! I just subscribed my son a few weeks ago to AppleSeeds... got our first issue today... and it says they decided to combine AppleSeeds and ASK into one magazine. Not what I asked for (pun intended). Oh well.

Please tell me when this lesson kicks in... my 7.5yo has plenty of experience having collisions, but hasn't learned to avoid them yet (except when crossing the street, when he's super worried about cars that are ten blocks away). My thought on daring without thinking is that an overly cautious kid is not going to fall 20ft down a tree, because they won't be up that tree to begin with. It's a balancing act, really. Too cautious is not good, because you don't learn what you can and can't do, but too daring puts you in situations you shouldn't be in.

Or historically, before mandatory schooling, people wouldn't ever have homeschooled, because there was no mandatory school age. Here mandatory schooling starts in 1st grade. But pretty much *everybody* puts their kids in full-time kindergarten the year before that. People look weird if you don't put your kid in preK the year before that even. I've been asked so many times what school my 4yo is in (for preK). So I answer that I'm "homeschooling" him. It shows the different intent. I'm not keeping him home because I think he's not ready for preK, or because I can't stand the thought of him not being with me at all times (I love sending him to sleepovers at the Y etc). And I do do academic stuff with him, and he's in homeschool swim&gym so he knows other homeschooled kids. I feel a little silly at times saying I'm homeschooling my 4yo, but sometimes it's easier to have a label than to not have a label.

Skeptical me says: You won't know what works and what doesn't if you don't have an experimental group and a control group, both of which need to be big enough to give you statistically valid results. And even then, you only know what works or doesn't, on average. And none of us tend to have the average kid. What works for one kid may or may not work for another kid. For example... most kids don't need special instruction to learn to speak. They tend to combine words by the time they're 2. My oldest didn't. His speech development was stagnant from about 16mo to abut 34mo. He started making progress from about 34mo onward. That happened to coincide with us buying a TV and always having the subtitles on when we watched TV. Maybe that made a difference. Maybe his brain just happened to mature at that same time. Who knows. He started public school at 36mo. His speech development continued. Would it have continued without public school? Maybe. Maybe faster, maybe slower, maybe at the same rate. He doesn't have an identical twin, so I have no clue. Even if I'd kept him at home the entire time I wouldn't know to what degree any progress or lack thereof is due to brain development vs my teaching. I know that without me teaching him multiplication in K, he likely wouldn't have learned it. But that doesn't mean I can guarantee that I can get (almost) every other kindergartner to learn multiplication. A related thought I had, somewhat related to the parenting analogy earlier: My maternal grandmother once told my mom that my mom had a bigger struggle with her two kids (my brother and I) than she'd had with her seven (my mom and her 6 siblings). As in, the two of us had more problems than her seven had had (she was not criticizing my mom, just saying that some kids/situations are harder than others). I agree with some PP that I would put more stock in the advice of someone who has successfully done something than someone who is just theorizing... but being a veteran doesn't mean you know all the answers... it just means you figured out what worked for your kids in your situation.

I agree. However, that's easier said than done. The OP mentioned deep breathing, iirc. When I first tried deep breathing, it made my anxiety worse (while doing the breathing). I felt I was doing it wrong, etc. I only learned how to do deep breathing in a helpful way years later. And even now it's only sometimes useful, and other times it does little. CBT also took years to work at all (I started CBT as an adult, but it took years before I could use it in an anxiety situation outside of therapy at all), and there are still times it doesn't work well enough. That's why I have medications. I don't know the OP's son, so I don't know if he needs meds, but there are kids that age who are on anxiety meds. It can also be hard to find a good therapist - you might have to try several before finding one who's effective (same thing with meds... different people react differently to them).

I think that's a pretty literal interpretation of "common sense". However, I have no idea how the OP meant it. That's why I added my interpretation of it. If we're talking about your interpretation, then it's pretty obvious common sense alone can't teach you when to use a comma. IME, common sense tends to include some sort of real world experience though, and not just logic. Not sure about the language structure. How would you learn about language structure if not by exposure or by learning the rules (which would be in a grammar book)?

I'm not disagreeing with that - I was just saying that not all newbies are new in the same way. For the parenting comparison, there are people who call their pediatrician every 5 minutes because their baby's poop looks a different color or w/e, when if they'd read a baby book they'd know that poop changes depending on how old the baby is, whether the baby is formula-fed or breastfed, has started eating new foods, etc. That doesn't mean that having read every parenting book in the library turns you into a veteran parent if you don't have kids. It does mean that you might find yourself telling a friend with an older baby (who's freaking out because her other friend's kid is talking in sentences at 12mo) that it's perfectly normal for a 12mo to say only a few words, etc. That you're both a newbie, but not a completely clueless newbie. Does that make sense?

I think there are various different aspects of newbie-ness. Some people always believed in the school system, and then something went wrong, and they're suddenly homeschooling their however-old child without having any familiarity with homeschooling whatsoever. Those would be as newbie as can be. Then on the other hand there are people who were homeschooled themselves, all their friends homeschool(ed), they know all the jargon and different approaches, and they've grown children who they've homeschooled to (or even through) college. Those would obviously not be newbies. The point I'm trying to make is, there are a few different things in which you can measure newbie-ness. You can be an expert on homeschooling jargon, education philosophies, and homeschool styles, without even having kids. You can have lots of experience teaching your kids (and other people's kids) by afterschooling them or tutoring, so that when you switch to homeschooling you have a head start to someone who has never tried to teach anyone anything. And someone who has done the "school-at-home" approach to homeschooling for K-12 with their kids has an entirely different homeschool experience than someone who has tried a few different homeschooling approaches, even if their oldest is only 12 (or w/e). In years the former has more experience, but the latter may have more to offer in advice because they've experienced more, despite the shorter time frame. I was talking to my sons' taekwondo instructor (4th dan) a few weeks ago, btw, and he said he considers everybody who doesn't have a black belt to be a newbie. I'm a newbie (if anyone considers me to be homeschooling at all yet, since my oldest is in school and my youngest is 4 and would be in preK this year according to the district). I was on an unschooling email list when my oldest was a baby (heck, before he was born even), and my wife joined that list later (I left it after a little while because I just didn't quite fit in), and we got a lot of flack for putting my oldest in school when he was 3 (kid had some major developmental delays, we were below the poverty line, and I was pregnant, nauseous and exhausted all the time). They said something like "and this is why we don't consider it homeschooling/unschooling until mandatory school age - because people say they will, but then ditch their kids in the school system as soon as possible". I get that. On the other hand, I do feel like we used school as a tool, rather than as the default option, whereas most people seem to be oblivious that homeschooling really *is* an option for themselves. I try to do what's best for my kids though, rather than use "homeschooling/unschooling is best in every situation for every kid" as a dogma. I almost filed an IHIP for my oldest last summer, but then a lot happened and it looked very likely we'd be moving to The Netherlands (which is not homeschool-friendly), so I didn't (plus, the kid actually likes public school). I'm planning on filing an IHIP this year for my oldest. I'll be a newbie as far as actually teaching him at home full time. I won't be new to the idea of homeschooling. I won't be new to teaching him things at home (we went through a phonics program in the past, and I taught him multiplication, and coordinate systems, etc). I'll be new to sending an IHIP to the school district, but homeschoolers in some other states don't have to tell their school district anything, so I don't see "having submitted an IHIP" as a rite of passage. Not sure that made any sense to anyone.

English is a living language, which means that grammar (and spelling) rules continue to be subject to change. Having some rules makes communication easier. Some of the other rules though are not really helping anyone. I really don't care if my commas are correct. People understand me the vast majority of the time, and when they don't, their lack of understanding doesn't tend to be caused by excessive, misplaced, or missing commas. For the record, I'm not sure how the question in the poll is supposed to be read. Is it: "Only common sense (and nothing else) can teach you when to use a comma" or "At least for some people, common sense is sufficient for learning when to use a comma, although there might be other methods for learning when to use a comma as well, such as studying grammar guides"? I'm inclined to think the second example is what was meant, though I'm not sure. And there weren't even any commas to get confused about! I think common sense (as in "the instinct after a lot of exposure to good literature"), is sufficient to teach some/most people when to use a comma in the vast majority of their writing, though likely not to grammar nazi perfection.

Well, yeah. Sometimes bad luck just happens. I fell off a chair with a 10 or so inch high seat when I was 3 and broke my arm. But odds are that the majority of bad accidents happen to kids doing risky things. I think most 3yos wouldn't be able to break their arm falling 10 inches even if they tried to.

Signatures don't have to be in cursive, nor be legible (nor does it have to be your full name... mine is my middle initial and my last name). Mine is not in cursive (but certainly not print either), nor is it legible. I'm not sure how to describe it. Kind of like a triangle wave... I haven't had anybody complain about it. I have had people complain about my previous signature (before I got married), which was first initial, middle initial, and last name, in cursive (with a little bit of flair). That one was legible, and the people complaining were saying it had to be my full name. I just told them that wasn't true, and they backed off. Americans are weird (never had a complaint about my signature in The Netherlands).

4yo yesterday said: "I'm a crack runner!'. Which he was... he was running over the cracks in the sidewalk.

"Be careful what you wish for, as you just may get it" is a saying I've heard before and I think would be very applicable here. Unless of course you're hoping to see the inside of the ER multiple times a year for broken limbs and concussions etc. Martial arts are not going to teach him to dare without thinking (or at least they shouldn't). That said, they can improve self-confidence, do work on various motor skills, etc. A trial lesson wouldn't hurt - you would be able to see how things go, see if he likes it, etc. My youngest started in taekwondo when he was almost 3.5yo. I think the instructors matter more than the exact sport/martial art.

Yep... having one of those days too. Our landlord is considering selling (I found out last night). Realtor will come to look at this place tomorrow. Blegh. And then there's other stuff. It seems like it's always the something, sometimes before the first problem has been resolved.

Sorry I disappeared... I realized I was running late for something, and then my entire day was pretty busy. I think maybe it's got something to do with how she wants to take our kids to church whenever we're visiting. She doesn't bring up god all the time when talking to us, but it's not rare either. So, I guess it's kind of the combination of her judging us for not taking the kids to church while at the same time making comments like that. I can sort of understand people who take religion seriously. I have trouble understanding people who take religion seriously and want others to do the same thing while being sacrilegious (whether she was or wasn't being sacrilegious... that's one reason I was curious how others perceived this). It irks me. Not too dissimilar from how I feel about hypocrites. Plus, of course, all the added fun of MIL issues (I usually actually get along with her better than my wife does... which is not well at all).

Nope, not upset about her not mentioning the belts. I mentioned it just to make clear that those two sentences were her entire reply. Although it would have been thoughtful if she'd said something about the belts. Even if you're clueless about martial arts it doesn't seem like it'd be rocket science to say "congratulations" or something. My oldest has been doing martial arts for almost 2 years. She knows that, and this is not the first belt test. But w/e. My main reason for posting was that I was curious how other people (especially religious people) would view the "THE CUTEST boys in all of God's creation" comment. Like I said, it seems to me like it would be a little offensive to god, like she feels she has the right to judge some parts of his creation as being better than other parts of his creation. As to how religious she is, she goes to church every Sunday and prays before meals. I guess about the same as how I was raised until my parents dropped the religion thing when I was about 11. And yes, I'm literal. To a fault.

LOL. I'd tell her "well, maybe he'll decide to transition and become a really pretty girl some day". But then and again, my MIL would have the sense to not make that kind of comment, since her only son is now her only daughter. I can see how that kind of comment would bug you though. It sounds like she was maybe trying to get you to have more kids and give her a granddaughter?

I get that. I guess part of what I wanted to say (and ended up not typing out because it was getting too late) was that maybe you need to cut down on the number of things you'd want her to struggle with. Don't even ask her to try to do her car seat. Just do it for her for now. As for the other things, just pick a couple you want her to work on (that you're *sure* she would be able to master if she'd just try), and work on those while you do the rest for her. Then, once she masters those, work on a couple of the other ones. Etc. For example, let's say you want her to work on her pants. Step one: make sure they're really easy. So, loose-fitting jogging pants kind of pants only. Step two: break it down into smaller parts. Maybe pull them up to her hips at first and let her finish pulling them up to her waist. When she gets better at it, let her pull them up from lower and lower. Step three: patience... lots of patience, along with some cheerleading if it seems helpful. Step four: praise her for her effort, even if the result isn't quite the desired result. If she spends a minute wrestling with her pants, praise her for trying, even if they ended up around her ankles rather than around her waist, and remind her that with practice, she'll get better. If she gets to the point where she puts her pants on backwards, just smile and praise her for her effort and success (I wouldn't even point it out they're backwards, nor fix it... it's okay for little kids to wear pants etc backwards all over town). If my little perfectionist was upset about backwards pants, I might even wear my pants backwards for a day just to show him it's okay. :)