My 10 yr. old ds is REALLY struggling with anxiety/stress. I would understand if they were huge stressors, but it's seemingly small things that he stresses about. I really don't want to put him on prescription meds, if I can avoid it. I'm sure there are others out there that have dealt with anxiety in their children. What would you recommend?

I want to post to one of my facebook groups, but don't want my "friends" to see it. Will it automatically pop up on my wall? Thanks!

Yay! They're coming home tomorrow!

I've been calling them every day or two since they've been gone. They should be home sometime this weekend though. That'll help. Then one more week until we start school (shhhh!).

Ok, maybe I care a little, but I MISS MY BOYS! They're two states away with their dad (my ex-h). They've been gone for about a week and a half. Missing them sooo much! The house is just so quiet with just the girls and I (my dh works out of town every week). Thanks for listening to me whine. I am just having a hard night.

Thanks everyone! We will go with wide ruled and see how it goes.

I have wide ruled notebook paper, but I'm not sure if I'm expecting too much by thinking she'll will be able to use this without problems? Is there anything "special" you use, or have used for your 2nd grader, or should I just go with the wide ruled stuff?

He's almost 5 feet tall and weighs somewhere around 95 lb.

Thank you ladies. I'm just having a hard time because my van keeps having problems and is costing WAY more than I'd hoped. I'm trying hard to do this party on a budget and I felt like my "friend" was saying I wouldn't be doing it right if I didn't have a cake. As to other people offering to help, so far no one has offered. I wish they would, believe me. I like the idea about the frosted brownies and writing Congratulations or whatever on it. Thanks! My dh and I were talking about just feeding our extended families that are coming (not that many are coming) the chicken and hot dogs at lunchtime. Then for the party, have the brownies, lemonaid, coffee and maybe some pretzels. Any other ideas would be helpful.

My step-son is graduating this month. He lives with us, but will be leaving for the Army at the end of next month. I've never thrown a large party before and I'm at a loss. As with many graduation parties, we don't know how many people are going to show up, so that makes it hard to know how much food to make, you know? Also, I had planned on making brownies as the "dessert", but my friend, who has graduted two kids seems to think that I need a graduation cake too. Do I??? I mean, I know it's up to us, but do most people have a cake too? We're on a pretty tight budget. I've already gotten about 15 lbs of chicken for shredded chicken sandwiches, about 32 hot dogs, six boxes of brownie mix, and 18 qts. of strawberry lemonaid, plus coffee. Oh! I am going to buy chips too. My very rough guesstimate is that we'll have between 75-150 people? I would hate not to have enough food, but I'd hate to have tons left over too. Help! Please!

We are dealing with the same thing here, except step son is going into the military. His girl is way needy/clingy/immature 18 year old. We're hoping it chills when he leaves for training.

My dd is going into 2nd grade next year. She has done McRuffy Math since Kindergarten. Last year, she kept telling me that it was too easy. I would like to give her a little challenge, but not frustrate her. My boys do CLE for math, but I think it's too much review for her. I'm really not interested in MUS, we've tried that before with the boys and I don't think it'd be a good fit with my dd. Maybe Singapore math? I've looked at Saxon too and I don't think that would be good either. Ideas? Am I missing something that might fit better? I really don't want a bunch of busy work. She would get incredibly bored with it. Thanks so much!

Thanks for the replies. He's an older dog and typically, we don't have problems with him. We also have a Rottweiler (female) whom I have never seen mark. She has had accidents in the house though (more our fault than hers). Thanks again.

We have a Cocker Spaniel, he's been fixed for years, but every so often, he will "mark". I don't mind it outside, but in the house it grosses me out. He doesn't do it all the time. So, is this something MOST male dogs do? If it is, I won't consider another male dog again ;).

We are coming up on the end of our 5th (!) year of home education. For some reason, I had it in the back of my head that we needed to keep a portfolio, but when I just went to check the law, I'm thinking we don't. How do you interpret this?

Thanks for the suggestions everyone. For now, we're not doing any formal writing. More unschooly ;). Next year, I hope to have more structure with his writing. In the meantime, I will look into dictation (is that where I say a sentance outloud and he writes it??). I've looked at the WWE samples and I think he might buck it if I tried. For LA next year, I plan to do Intermediate Language Lessons, keeping it simple across the board. If he feels too stressed out, it's WAY to hard to teach him. I think CM ideals (with a touch of unschoolish stuff thrown in) next year will do him a lot of good.

You're absolutely right! I don't get that time. I try to escape on the computer, but it's just not what I really need. Maybe I should be utilizing the teen-ager down the road to come for a few hours/week and sit with the kids so I can go get a coffee, read, and chill. Thanks for the reminder :). Nan! I do appreciate your words and enthusiasum (sp?). It's good to get a second opinion on my rough draft up there :grouphug:. Any YES with the LA...I really took time to check out MFW suggestions for middle school/high school LA. Even if my ds12 didn't do anymore grammar until high school, he would be ok, because they start at the ground floor and go up again. It's review, review, review, some new stuff, a little more new stuff, review, etc. But, I fully plan on him having some grammar before high school, no worries there. I love it when my kids are learning something by reading and they can't control their excitement about it and HAVE to share what they're learning with me. It's really cool! Big hugs to you! Yes, it is easier said than done, isn't it :crying:? Like I mentioned above, the best I could possibly do is utilize the 16 yr. old hser down the road. Even if for an hour or two once/week. It can be hard to plan anything when a house is being sold though, but YES vitual importance to keep my own sanity :laugh:.

No, unfortuately sensory things are just another distraction to him. I think that I will have to resign myself (for now) to the fact that I will have to stick close by to re-direct him. Life of Fred is a good idea...I actually think he'd enjoy the stories (from what I've seen of them). Thanks for posting! Yeah, you know, I wasn't even thinking of all of that as a whole until I started this thread. Then, it slowly started coming together and I had an ah-ha moment. Yes, moving would solve the commute problem. This is the second time in three years that we've been in this situation, but then I was only hsing two kids (1st and 3rd grade then. Plus I had a three year old). This time around, I have a 12 year old (6th), 10 year old (4th), 6 year old (1st), and a toddler. Whew, just typing that made me tired. Thanks for the reassurance . It really is helpful! Yeah, I am pretty much changing things up with what our days look like. At least for the rest of the year, then, next fall I will re-evaluate. Pretty sure we'll be doing a variation of unschooling. I have a hard time letting go, but man, something HAS to give (or I might go nuts). I had no idea that drinking lots of water helps with the hormone issues. Thanks for your words of wisdom and encouragement. Like I told OhElizabeth, I wasn't seeing the whole picture until I started "talking" stuff through on this thread. Isn't it amazing how that happens? Yes, I've heard of the 9s trick, but I guess I never paid too much attention . It makes a lot of sense (and is neat too)! Thanks so much for the hugs. Even though they're on a computer screen, it's good to know that people "get it" :willy_nilly:<----- this is me lol. I'm a visual person. I would LOVE to be able to "see" your lesson plans. Is there anyway you could scan and send something to me? It sounds really interesting :). ____________________________________ Ok, I'm starting to form a rough plan in my head (with the help of you ladies :hurray: ). I'm going to sit the kids down and let them know what's up first of all. I mean, they know that we're moving and all, but let them know my rough plan. The rough draft? Keep in mind this is only going to be until summer break, and then we'll re-evaluate, depending on what our lives look like then. So, hmmm... Math for sure, everyday M-F. My ds12 will keep going with CLE 500 lightunit series. My ds10 will do modified CLE 400 lightunit series with Math Rider on the computer as a supplement to cement multiplication facts. Dd6 will continue with McRuffy 1st grade (she's doing awesome with it). I'm trying to talk myself into letting LA go for that period. I mean, there are plenty of curricula out there that condenses stuff, right? So, if I pick it up later (a different curricula, not CLE), it wouldn't be that big of a set back? Right?? Science, my kids love, so that won't be that hard to get them to just read the textbook. As they're reading, they ALWAYS tell me what they're learning, they just can't help it :coolgleamA:. History, we're doing MFW, so we'll just do the reading portion that the TM assigns (it's not a lot) and skip the rest. Again, they almost always talk about what they learned. Music...well, no brainer there. Two of my kids take piano (one of these also takes Sax), and my aspie takes violin. They practice daily, so what's better than that :w00t: . Cursive.(my aspie), let go for now. My dd will continue with copywork because at the first grade level, she needs it. My 1st grader will continue reading to me daily, because, well, see above :tongue_smilie:. Languages, they've have apps on the Kindle, so it'll be totally a want to thing. They play chess against each-other on the computer off/on all day. Yeah, not stopping that one :thumbup1: My kids learn so much on their own free time, just by reading. We have a lot of "cool" informative books around the house and I can't believe how much they learn from them. Well, that's my rough plan. Am I missing something huge here? ETA: I already feel so much better with the above plan. Is it still stressful with the whole house selling/dh gone all week thing? YES! But, with cutting back on the "hard-core" academic rigor, it is...freeing :hat: ...

Ok, now I'm going to say this meanly because I'm being too crass to say it nicely. You're not thinking like a dyslexic yet. It was totally obvious from your post *you're* not the dyslexic parent where the genes came from. But that's no excuse. See here's how it works. She has another way of getting to where she's going, and YOU have to figure out how to get her there. When SHE feels dumb, it's because YOU screwed up. Your method left her without the tools, and now she feels dumb. YOUR method jumped her too many steps at once, and now she's frustrated. She's trying, but she's only the kid. You have to give her the tools. I know that's mean, but it's the truth. My kid thought she was dumb too, right about that age. And it wasn't because of her scores (which were actually pretty good). It was because she couldn't do what she wanted to do. When you have an extremely bright but extremely challenged child, you have to teach HARDER. It's not ENOUGH to give them AAS and do it straight. That's for regular kids. Your kid, if she weren't dyslexic, would be spelling at the level she conceptualizes and speaks. Have you thought about that? What does she *want* to say? If that's at a 7th grade spelling level, then you need to get her a spelling program that allows her to jump conceptually TO THAT LEVEL. Until then, she feels dumb. That's what it means to be 2E. Sigh. You'll get there. I've been there myself, so I can say all that. I had to change a lot. Change what you're doing. Get more efficient materials that you can compact and use to get her to a higher level more quickly. The stuff may need more work to *stick* but just the ability to conceptualize there will help. If you do SWR and get her through to a higher level of spelling (the level where she is conceptually), you'll have a way to TALK through those words and tackle the inevitable lack of retention. Now on the math facts, give her a chart and move on. Why are you doing drill and expecting it to stick? Have you had her evaluated for ADD? Did she get a full neuropsych eval or just for dyslexia? She could also have processing speed issues. She may never get to be as fast as her sister. My dd has slowly, over the long-haul, learned her facts. On a good day she knows them. Add in a little distraction or something being off, and they're gone. It doesn't matter. She can fly circles around most kids with problem-solving, and she enjoys Math Olympiad, Art of Problem Solving, etc. You don't teach them to their weakness. You can hammer those facts with that software till she hates math, and I promise you they still won't stick. Tomorrow she'll still get some wrong. But if you do them IN CONTEXT, in interesting word problems, in something CHALLENGING that makes her THINK, you'll get more retention. You've got to be in it for the long-haul, no quick fixes. 2E students are very hard to teach. I get a pit in my stomach every day and I spend a lot of time trying to think about how to keep her challenged at her peak for her abilities but still keep that continual drip, drip to work on skills and necessities. I spend a lot of time trying to find resources that break everything down till it remediates her issues. In the early years that meant SWR. For some people that means Barton. Now it means I'm doing a lot of research on writing (essays, that sort of thing). It just never ends. Where this is going ISN'T going to look like what you see on the boards. You're only seeing the tip of the iceberg, I guarantee you. My dd has strengths that blow my mind, and weaknesses that blow my mind. And the path we're taking isn't some formula I read in WTM, even though the steps there are helpful to me. She's just too different. You want to find ways to embrace what she does well (because it's there) and soften the blow and smooth over what she doesn't. Otherwise you're going to be fighting this perpetual battle of her being bad and not living up. No amount of remediation turns these kids into NORMAL. She is going to be totally different from your 2nd child (and everyone on the board) till the day she dies. Different? I guess I'm speaking really vaguely here. I don't even have time to go into it all, but you'll see as she gets older. ADD/ADHD kids are often VSL, at least according to Freed in "Right-Brained Child in a Left-Brained World." So think about that. What you're calling spacey and lazy could actually be a VSL dyslexic, someone who organizes information totally different from you, thinks in pictures (but has trouble visually processing), has switched over to auditory (which may also have problems), and just fundamentally sees the world a different way. Even though dd and I are both big picture people, we are SO different. To her everything needs a story. Math needs a story, history is stories, people have stories. She reads her Bible (and history for that matter) but studying people and their lines. I read from cover to cover, because I'm an orderly person. These kids relate information in a totally different way. Hooray for old posts that still speak volumes. Thanks for posting this...I SO need it lately. My ds10 is an aspie and I get so frustrated with the seat work (mostly math/LA...forget a writing curriuculum). OhE was just talking me through some stuff in another post of mine, but this was just as good and needed to hear (if not more so).

I wanted to add...it doesn't help in the slightest that I'm pretty darn sure that I'm going through pre-menopause. In fact, I'm almost certain. My mother was completely through it by the time she was a year older than I am now (she was 36 when she was completely done). So, the hormones can and are nuts. I go from crying to angry to laughing with-in an hour ;).

Great! Yeah, the boys were going on forums regarding their interests were there are mostly adults and I'm ok with it (in general), but I feel like I can't keep up with everything going on in those kinds of forums. With a place for kids, it's a lot easier :). Yes, with the internet, you just never know. My mom never had to worry about stuff like that. Heck, I didn't even get a pager until I was a Junior or Senior in HS. When I was my ds' age, I was able to roam all over our very small town pretty safely.

Yay! He will be pleased. I need to have ds post pics of his and his sister's piggies too! Totally ok. Just so you know, I moderate both my boys' forums to make sure things are staying PG and to make sure no creepy adults are hanging around :mellow:.

Before I reply to the thoughtful posts...I had a realization today. Do you know what it was? Of course not lol. Ok...we're putting our house on the market in the next two weeks. My dh leaves Mondays by noon, is gone working 2.5 hours away all week, and then comes home Friday mornings, goes to sleep by 9 am and isn't up until early evening (he's sleeping b/c he works overnights). This has been happening for almost a year. I admit, I am totally stressed out with putting the house on the market. I'm purging lots of stuff, trying to maintain the house, and homeschooling (oh and driving kids and cooking and disiplining...). I'm very stressed with thinking about how I need to keep the house picked up b/c, if I let it get out of hand, it will take hours and hours to straighten up when we have a house showing. I don't have hours and hours, I have a TODDLER ;). Yes, the kids can and DO help (alot), but they don't do the job that "I" would do, you know? So, I may just do the very, very basics for awhile, get lots of good books to "strew" and relax on that stuff more. It's just my thought for the day. School went really well today. I had ds12 in the basement (where there are NO distractions) doing his math. He had it done really quickly and got the majority of it right. I only had to remind him to stay on task a few times. Ds10 (my aspie)...well, I had him start the morning with Math Rider (a computer program...love it!) memorizing 4s and 6s for multiplication. After that, I crossed out a lot of him work in CLE, except for the new concept and about four division problems. Then I sat with him while he did it (and helped where he needed it). I then gave him his LA test for lightunit 409. He got a 78 on it (which included spelling). Every week we have a short day where we only do math/la, today was it! We talked it over and decided to move it to Mondays though, because we ALL struggle with Mondays at our house. So, the boys ended up chatting on their pet forums that THEY created themselves, playing outside, reading, doing chores, playing instruments and other stuff that I can't think of atm. Whew...I did have a long discussion with them (esp. the oldest boy) about how we need to get up, do our chores, have breakfast and start the day. We'll start with history/music because we do it together, then go to the core subjects and see what happens. Idk though, we may just leave history for the 7 weeks that we have left too, considering the whole selling the house thing. I have more thoughts, hopefully I will get them out while relplying below... The NT kiddos are my ds12, dd6, (and I pretty sure my toddler is too). None of my kids want to go to PS and it would be a last resort for me. I sooo wish my mom was closer. I'm lucky to see her 3 times a year...she would totally help me. I will check out Winston and keep the highlighting thing in mind for WWS. Thanks so much for your insight! We are dropping IEW immediately, btw. My ds12 was sooo happy. I have WWS1 and CW2 otw and he's chopping at the bit to start CW2. I'm really considering schooling year round. Like 6 weeks on, 1 week off (we fun structure) and a month or so off in the summer. Idk what I will do right now. Your plan sounds totally reasonable though! No, not a set start/end time. I have been sending my oldest to be earlier, so he gets up earlier and gets a move on his day (without being cranky). Time will tell. You're on to something with the start/end time though. It makes since, I'd just have to tweek it for our family :). I appreciate ALL of your insight. You have taken so much time sharing your thoughts. Thank you. YES, I do need to treat bad attitudes in a non-personal way. I am so sensitive to everything that it's a struggle, especially at this time of year...yuck. Yes, months off for a break is always a pleasant idea, isn't it? Honestly, it's the math/writing/science that I'm fearful of letting go. My boys are mathophobic. And to get into Uni, you obviously need to know math/science/writing, or else you're spending MORE time/money taking remedial classes at college. I totally see what your saying with learning leading to other things, I'm just too uptight to let go fully. Oh yes, I just had a long speel with my ds12 about the above plus more. We also talked about life goals and how we can achieve them...working hard to get the basics down is a huge part. Good attitudes, diligence and more. Sorry, I am tired lol. Yes...yes...yes! I totally see what you're saying it is a cycle. Now it's up to me to break it. The biggest thing, I think is getting my ds12 into a spot where he's not playing with the toddler, talking to his brother, bugging his sister, trying to do school in his room with all of his STUFF around him. Basement, or my room. That's where I've let him know he will be from now on, unless he has a problem, or we're doing group work. Also, sitting with my ds10 (aspie) is HUGE. It helps him to stay ON TRACK so much better. He was soooo proud of himself b/c he got most of his 6 times tables right today on Math Rider. It's a huge step. I can see where I haven't been consistant, being tough were I need to be (and tougher than I need to be on other things that DON'T MATTER). Thank you so much! Thanks again Nan. Oh my gosh...you made a lightbulb go off in my head with the above statements. Yes...they're making progress. Slow or quick, doesn't matter as much as moving forward. Yeah, I'm working on not worrying about what others' think. That in and of itself is a process lol. Thank you for your encouagement :thumbup:. It really helped!

Thanks so much! He's just my ds' age...he'll like that. The only other members are ds and his little sister, dd...poor kid.

Well, my oldest ds12 really wanted me to post promoting his guinea pig forum for kids. So, if anyone has kids with piggies that would like to talk to other kids about them, this is the forum for you: http://thepiggyplace.freeforums.org/portal.php Check it out! My oldest saw how his younger brothers forum took off, so he now wants to get more traffic too! Thanks so much!