dangermom
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Posts posted by dangermom
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A holiday, in American-speak, is a day set aside for a certain celebration, like Thanksgiving or Christmas or whatever. Ideally you would get the day off--St. Patrick's Day is only sort of a holiday. "The holidays" just refers from everything from Thanksgiving through New Year's. I think in most of the US if you called your two-week vacation a holiday people would not know what you meant.
A lot of those words are not ones I think of as specifically British--wonky or roundabout or twit. We refer to my 9yo's eye with Duane's syndrome as her wonky eye, and there are roundabouts here in town (I've never heard the term traffic circle) though everyone thinks they are unnecessary and possibly pretentious.
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I think the idea is going to backfire on him and have the opposite result. The parents who already help their kids with homework are thinking "Cool, now we'll have time to do extra study at home!" Those kids will still get more practice with skills and help with studying. The kids whose parents are not able to do that, who should be given homework that they can do on their own for practice in solidifying skills, won't get that practice.
There are certainly arguments to be made over the value of homework, but making sure that no one gets support at home is not one of them. You can't legislate ambitious parents out of trying to get their kids prepared for life.
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I know, I just nearly cry when I hear people in the grocery complain about the price of milk. I completely sympathize with them, but I can tell they don't understand that dairy farmers are *not making money*, especially here in California, where we have the unique situation of a governmentally controlled milk price that is not related at all to the actual cost of milk production. :ohmy:
I'm sorry. I know the farmers are not profiting from high prices! Everything is going up, it's inflation. And the supply of gasoline is not meeting demand.
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Oh yeah. We had a rough few years there anyway with some unemployment, but now it's been a while, and the salary just doesn't go as far. I was in a fabric store yesterday and realized that I used to buy a certain (sensible) amount without even worrying about it. Now, I see a few things I want to make into Christmas presents and I worry and fuss about the cost. I do it about everything all the time, and I say no nearly all the time, and I don't even know how to pay for things we need to do (like house repairs etc.).
Gas, food, and clothing prices have all gone up, so the money doesn't go as far.
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I do this too. My 9yo daughter practically has a phobia of reading new and unknown books. So we read out loud and she gets hooked. In her case, I think it's partly that her visual issue makes reading harder work than it is for the rest of us. She likes reading but she wants to be sure it's worth it! And she just doesn't like the unknown anyway.
IMO reading aloud is a great strategy. Audiobooks too! Reading aloud is a good in itself, and I've come to the conclusion that we all ought to be reading aloud to our kids much more, and for far longer, than we do. People usually figure than once a kid can read well, read-alouds should stop, but I now disagree with that.
I think it's much better to get him hooked through a read-aloud strategy than to just make him read every book. I'd bet that as he matures and realizes that an unknown book is a fun unknown rather than a potentially unpleasant slog, he'll be more willing to pick up a new book.
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It seems like whenever Americans feel like we might be sliding--in international power or in the economy, things like that--we decide that more science is the answer.
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You should probably thoroughly check the trash if you can't find it soon. My little girl once threw away her lovey (a flannel bunny which she still has now at 12) and managed to get it really hidden in there...
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I have an Amazon wishlist. Well, I have 4: for school, sewing, to get through the library, and ones I'd like to own. It's really easy.
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We also got great results after 3 months or so of VT. No more headaches, and she reads so much more willingly!
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It went surprisingly well today. I think she really made an effort. She is very ready for bed now! What a relief.
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Oh, I get you. :grouphug: Some people don't get it until they see it happen, and that's exactly what you want to avoid. It's very easy for them to get whiny and resentful, because they don't understand what's at stake, and don't really want to--they will minimize, call you paranoid, and bring up some random person somebody knew once whose kid didn't really have allergies, so you must be just like that.
(Personally I've had my paranoia drummed into me by the school of hard knocks, and I think it's an entirely appropriate response to the situation. Paranoia keeps my kid alive!)
Anyway. I like abolishing snack time. It's like asking asking Texans to give up guns ;) but it can be done: "We will no longer be providing snacks for the kids; it takes too much time and energy away from our real purpose. Please make sure they eat a full dinner before they come, and we won't need to!"
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But there's one thing--ONE thing--that can be a special moment for the dad and help him feel like he has a unique contribution to make, something he can do for his child that is just his. There's ONE event in which HIS friends can stand up and show support for him in front of his wife, in front of his community. His wife gets the community's attention and support for months. He gets the community's attention and support for two minutes. He gets to do ONE special, unique thing for his baby.
Even if we "let" him keep the baby blessing, having a baby in the church is an event that is STILL skewed toward the women. If we really want things to be "equal" we should be looking for MORE ways to get the men involved, not taking away the one thing they've got.
I do really agree with this.
Otherwise I am enjoying this discussion but don't have much time to post, so keep it up everybody!
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Well, I woke her up and she explained that she hadn't been able to sleep. She has indeed suffered from insomnia on and off since she was about 8, so fine. But, I explained to her for about the billionth time, if you're trying to read yourself to sleep, you pick Kipling's History of England or something, not your newest exciting fantasy book.
She has agreed to make her best effort at a good day's work and to try not to make the rest of us suffer. I hope it works, because today we're doing our weekly 2-hour science lab with a boy who comes to do it with us, and this week there is cake involved. Cake always helps, right? (The authors of Friendly Chemistry, aimed at young teens and up, know their audience. Also I really like this curriculum.) I have to go draw a periodic table on it in lines of frosting.
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OK, I'm going in; it's wakeup time. Wish me luck. :gnorsi:
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I have a delightful 12yo girl, who is somewhat easily upset. Every so often she'll stay up too late reading, and last night when we went to bed we caught her still up at 11.30 pm. :glare: Disaster looms in my day, so I need your thoughts.
What I want to do, what I usually do, is to get her up at the usual time and tell her that she chose to stay up late, but that doesn't mean she gets to slack off on a school day, so suck it up and deal. This invariably ends in disaster. By lunchtime at the latest, she will be a crying mess, unable to handle the slightest difficulty, and if writing any sort of paragraph or essay is on the to-do list, I will be very tempted to put her on a bus to Peru.
What do I do with this kid?? How do I get her to either go to sleep at a decent hour or not inflict her tiredness on the rest of us poor innocents?
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There are some, sure. We have people who go along with the program so as to make family happy or something. I don't think the numbers are terribly high, because being a Mormon is hard work! It's an awful lot of effort to put in for something you don't believe in.
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Oh, wow! And, look...the Lord's timetable was really fast this time! :D That is wonderful news.
Also, you'll be really fairly close to ME. :001_smile:
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You know, that hypothesis would explain a lot. About how I'm doing this year, anyway. I guess technically it's our 8th year but K wasn't exactly work.
I am, in fact, kind of tired. I can't afford to have the kids in a zillion extracurriculars but I want some time to myself! I'm starting to think that maybe 8th grade in a PS isn't a bad idea (yeah. It's a bad idea).
I need a vacation.
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She did say she wouldn't let him not graduate. I just wish she wouldn't have to say that. There is nothing worse than feeling like you have to make your husband do things.
Yeah, and then there's also the part where it's MUCH easier to 'make' a guy do something if you can say "We'll get married after you do thus-and-such!" You can't really change a person, and you really can't make a person change after the wedding.
But here's hoping! :grouphug:
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I absolutely understand that you're not thrilled, but it's time to bite your tongue and smile, smile, smile!! Don't betray for one second that your feelings are not pure joy. You'll be laying the foundation for hard times to come.
:grouphug: Yeah, I understand that you feel like you're looking at a disaster in the making.
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We've been gone all weekend, but I thought I'd pop in and say that my niece got baptized yesterday and it was just lovely. What a great meeting. :) It was actually the largest baptism meeting I've ever been to, because they were doing 4 kids at once, which we don't really do up here. But regardless of size, the spirit there was wonderful.
Also we visited my brother's workplace, which is one of the Lawrence Labs full of classified military-industrial-complex-type stuff. World's biggest laser! World's biggest supercomputer! Like that. I really liked the laser. I think the kids liked my brother's lunchtime dojo the best.
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My girls surprised me with their innocent little crushes--I didn't really do that, but they do!
The younger one is particularly susceptible. She's been picking out boys to marry since she was about 4, and is partial to blond boys with blue eyes who like Star Wars. She currently has an enormous crush on Legolas from LOTR and has done since the second she saw him on the screen.
It's entirely innocent on her part and she thinks that she will just have neat adventures with them. It's easy to see that she doesn't even want to know anything about more than that yet.
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My two girls are very different--it's funny. :001_smile: The older one has always been very curious, and asked lots of questions about birth and babies etc. from an early age, which I answered. When I asked her if she wanted to know how babies got started (she was just 8), she said "Yes! That is one of the big questions of my life!" :lol:
Younger sister is now 9 and does not want to hear it. At all. She only wants to think about ninjas and Legos. Pretty soon we are going to sit her down and make her listen.
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I had the world's strongest barrier or something. It took a while. Painful but fun also.
Britishisms used in American English
in General Education Discussion Board
Posted
You know, you're right--New York apartments were often called flats in the books I read. Especially if it was a "cold-water flat." (Which, for Brits, would be a dinky little apartment with no hot water laid on, probably only one sink, and no bathtub or maybe a tub in the kitchen next to the sink.)