So, that's my husband, and we are basically opposites in this department. I understand it. For him, at least, I am saddened that it is not just the cultural aspect of having been comforted with the words "Don't cry" (which is normal) but the fact of being beaten as a child. For someone who was, I think, a very sensitive child, having to shut off his own expressions of extreme pain (emotional and physical) make it distressing for him to see others showing those emotions (especially his dear children-- he often has to just walk away). I don't think this is uncommon in people who have suffered various forms of abuse that go way beyond the smattering of spankings I received as a child: it is awfully hard to give what one has never received, and denies needing. Now, I'm definitely not saying this is true of strictly rational types who simply think differently, and approach the world pragmatically. This is often a necessary and helpful approach to take. However, my personal approach is that feelings are not problems to be solved, but simply (oft fleeting) emotional states to be acknowledged, part of the complex gift of being human. Sometimes they are a sign that something needs fixing, but they can also be stubbornly irrational. Ultimately, I believe in regular catharsis, which-- thankfully for my marriage!-- one can also get through hilarity.

I'm married to someone who would never buy me jewelry. Well, if he did, I'd probably assume he was having an affair because it's so out of character. But 25th anniversary deserves something more than a hug, I think. My husband doesn't respond well to tears or sadness or disappointment (thanks a lot, dysfunctional upbringing), so I can relate with not really knowing how to react in the moment. But he would want me to feel happy, and I bet your husband does too, even if he acted like a bit of a clod on this occasion. Buy yourself the jewelry; it is from him, if he were more emotionally astute.

These are good tips, but I would like to add that for some kids, it's extremely unhelpful to attach a consequence to this kind of behavior because they cannot control it. It controls them. For my 7 year old, offering rewards or consequences for settling down over a perceived injustice is like trying to attach consequences to whether or not she can run a marathon. Not gonna happen. So trust your gut on whether your child is making a choice or genuinely needs some kind of help in learning to deal with this. (Same goes for sending a seven year old to her room for this behavior. The reason is because otherwise the rest of us might go crazy/hurt her, NOT because it's a useful coping strategy. The worst thing I can do when I'm perseverating is to go off by myself.) This is not to say I have better answers. Empathy, listening, hugs, talking, and willingness to keep asking questions to root out anxieties related to the incident at hand do seem to do the trick here, but also require an extraordinary amount of patience that I personally am not always capable of (and I try to admit that in a calm manner before it becomes evident to everyone otherwise). I do like the idea of reframing this as Tsuga mentioned above: in the long run, a person can turn this tendency into a strength when properly channeled, and I think it's good to talk to a kid about that (at a calm moment) and try to come up with strategies for engaging with it more productively.

Well, I wonder if in this quest to rid homeschooling of its bad elements we would also void it of what makes it joyful, inspired, and child-centered. Because many homeschoolers believe part of "making the choice to pursue further development as an adult without undue burden" involves deep engagement with learning. Rather than nudging our children down a linear path based upon the idea that there are certain things that must be learned by certain cut-offs, we answer their questions on the fly and go off on rabbit trails and try not to do the kind of fear-based instruction that makes kids hate school. We want to teach them to become confident and passionate lifelong learners. We pay attention when we feel like the educational demands we are placing on them are getting in the way of their development as mentally and emotionally healthy people. Like you, I think the answers to this question also resides in our communities. (I'm thinking too about resources like The Homeschool Alliance-- resources that recognize homeschooling parents as people who deserve support and information about learning and the science of teaching.) But speaking of the Alliance, I should also note that by your definition, a person like Julie Bogart would likely meet the standards of educational neglect. (Listen to her latest podcast if you're unsure.)

Done. There are just 3 scenarios, right? I'm a speed-reader, but the actual survey was pretty quick.

Perhaps one of the reasons this discussion is difficult, and judging and trying to assess the work of classroom teachers and schools is also difficult, is that the work of those who are tasked with guiding children's education is inseparable from a child's work of learning. Part of learning to be a good teacher (or a good parent) involves the freedom to experiment and learn without being continually evaluated on the basis of your students' (or kids' progress). Having seen the mistaken direction public schools have taken in the well-intentioned goal of making education equitable, one worries that sometimes we hurt kids when we set universal expectations about what and how children should be learning and take the responsibility for assessing, guiding, and teaching them away from the people who work with them directly on a daily basis. I don't mean we should do nothing, but rather that the something we do to address this problem shouldn't be to emulate the mistakes of the system, where good people get judged and punished if they don't deliver certain results, and kids suffer from the good intentions of adults whose priorities, while not cruel, are somehow divorced from the actual experience of being a human child with unique genetic capabilities and limitations and a will.

To which I would add that it is going to be difficult to ever demonstrate true educational neglect, so we'd be better off debating the kinds of neglect (and abuse) that truly destroy us when we hear these stories. We have all kinds of judgments and opinions about people who don't share certain kinds of knowledge with their kids, but ultimately educational neglect is going to be very, very hard to pin down absent other forms of neglect. Or abuse. I want to use that term, too, because maybe the problem is that "neglect" sounds more benign, so we're more comfortable lobbing it at the unschoolers? I also am a little surprised at some of the discussion of "truancy" on this thread. Schools are truly awful places for some kids. I haven't read my John Holt in a long time, but I know for me part of reforming schools-- REALLY making them better-- would involve changing our ideas about truancy. Just because a kid is showing up doesn't mean he's learning. As a homeschooler, I think we should be at least a little more willing to entertain the idea that there are (at least) two sides to the stories of kids getting pulled out of school on a whim, or just not showing up. (Some parents are negligent. Some are abusive. But let's not let the system off the hook.) As for testing, I would merely note that when my third grader takes standardized tests, she makes it clear to me that it is not her testing. It is her robotic alter ego. The robot does swimmingly on the standardized tests, landing in the top percentiles, but those scores that I send into the school system in no way demonstrate the kind of flexible and creative thinking that I believe are really going to help my kids succeed in the future. Having administered these tests now, I really feel they are a horrible measure of learning. I'd rather see one math problem with its solution worked out explained to me well than a whole page of bubbles. I have not found the information provided to me, a homeschooler, the least bit valuable.

I am relatively new to these forums, but am beginning to understand how some of these discussions can have a bit of an et tu, Brute? feel. Nobody can do All The Things. We all neglect different things, if we're going to think of it that way. Or we all attend to different things, and prioritize different things at different times, if we can discard the negative judgments. My husband, an engineer, never had a single class in school in the arts. No music. No drawing. And no sports. Total neglect of the artistic and physical self. On the flip side, my (school) science and math education were relatively poor. Neglect of the sciences. Neither of us ever were offered courses in woodworking, or taught how to change the oil in a car, or to cook a meal in school. Should schools teach these things? Should homeschools? Different priorities, from each other and from public schools, do not equal neglect. My kids are not in public schools here because I felt like the current educational system is neglecting the questions about children's development-- their moral, social, spiritual (I'm agnostic!), emotional, and, yes, educational-- needs that must be asked by anyone to whom we entrust our kids for a huge chunk of their lives. We might come to different conclusions. But we must at least talk about, struggle with reflect upon the hard questions-- what does it mean to be successful? to lead a good and meaningful life? to be well-educated? to be a child? to grow and become a mature adult?-- before we can really educate our kids. (And yes, I am absolutely influenced by the talk posted above and by SWB's latest book. That is a discussion I find interesting. The neglect thing I have become a little more skeptical of now that I hear people's definitions of neglect, which seem to water down something that is, in fact, criminal in all senses of the word.)

I find with my 8 year old, handwriting, spelling, grammar, and the ability to put thoughts down on paper are not yet integrated skills. We have to focus on each thing individually. When she writes for pleasure, her writing is barely legible but fills pages. I think for a sentence of copywork, one can expect neat handwriting and proper punctuation and spelling. But for original writing at this age, those should not be expectations if the goal is to encourage the development of original thoughts and the ability to join them into sentences (rather than the particular skills of spelling, penmanship, or mechanics).

Most of our read alouds for my kids those age have been picture books, but it sounds like you're looking for a list of chapter books? My favorite books for little kids are (at least for now) anthologies or fairy tales and folk tales from around the world. For so many reasons, one of which is they will help give a child a deeper understanding and appreciation of many of the other books on this list. Plus, it's nice to be able to wrap up a story in one sitting with little kids. One anthology that's gotten a lot of mileage for us is The Random House Book of Bedtime Stories. We've also enjoyed the Lion Storyteller books by Bob Hartman and Andrew Lang's fairy books. Of course we also have fun with more contemporary books, like many mentioned above-- we've read through all the Ramona books, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the Great Glass Elevator sequel were huge hits at that age, and they also love listening to The Boxcar Children audiobooks (because there are some books I just don't want to read myself). Variety is good!

I've seen no cases of educational or social neglect among the homeschoolers in my (relatively affluent, well-educated) community. Really, if anything's being neglected, it's parental self-care as parents devote so much energy and sacrifice their own time and interests to doing what is best for their children. However, your rant doesn't sound crazy to me. You care about kids! For what may seem like a slight digression but will hopefully make sense-- I found that as soon as I realized my kids and I had no interest in public schools, I stopped taking part in conversations bashing public schools. I simply am not well-informed enough to speak knowledgeably about the problems of our local schools or potential solutions, although I'm passionate about education in general. I've opted out. And if I were now part of a community that I saw as having serious educational and social deficiencies, I'd want to talk about that and work on that. I'm not, though, so (as with the public schools) I feel anything I will say is just ill-informed. But I know this is an important conversation in some homeschool communities, and perhaps one reason some of us respond defensively is for the same reason someone with a successful child in a great public school might respond defensively if we say, "Isn't it horrible that so many kids are graduating from high school without being able to identify the Pacific Ocean on a map? And aren't all those stories about teachers molesting their students horrible?" I actually don't know if any of this makes sense, but I think if there's any place to voice your concerns about what's happening in a specific place among a certain group of people, it's that place and that group of people. And maybe we're the people, but since we're on this particular forum, it is not a place where a lot of people who even live in the vicinity of educational or social neglect hang out. (I think. It seems.)

Will he eat if you're holding him in your lap and cuddling him and giving him some warm milk? What if he gets to drink from a mug like mommy? Does he like straws? Will he eat food that dances up to him and begs him, whatever he does, not to eat it? Will he eat if as soon as he wakes up, you snuggle in bed next to him and both nibble on a few animal crackers? Two of my kids were like this. Both girls. Both very sensitive to low blood sugar. One thing I had to do was to ensure that they always ate good meals before falling asleep, with a good balance of protein/fat/carbs. So we instituted bedtime snacks, and pre-nap snacks, and just kept trying things to make it work. Let them smear their own peanut butter on toast, or squirt honey into their own warm milk, because that made them more willing to eat. I would read to them or (what they preferred) tell a silly story while they ate (preferably with puppets and singing). If it helps, they are older now, eat without me having to pull out the puppets, and only occasionally wake up on the wrong side of bed, at which point I order them to "EAT SOMETHING" in a most unpleasant manner, and they scream, "I'm not hungry!" with similar unpleasantness and burst into tears, and then are much better after eating.

Not only this, but it infuriates me that poor people, and especially African Americans, who have a rich tradition of midwifery based upon necessity (and with whom modern ob/gyn has a sordid history), apparently now are the ones who are benefiting least from this kind of integrated care. And it makes me sad that less than 5% of CNMs are African American (although I realize that not all midwives are CNMs, these are the ones that are performing births in the hospitals where I've delivered babies, and who are transforming care there).

Well, you know what, maybe they will end up being graphic novelists. My college roommate's thesis was a graphic novel (although not Pokemon). It is a valid and increasingly popular literary and art form, and it is possible that children who are familiar with it from a young age are gaining valuable knowledge and experience that those of us who are more comfortable with, say, Paddle-to-the-Sea, cannot impart. Now, while I don't require reading, I am on a constant stealth mission to find new favorites, using our library's various databases and recommendations, as well as our friendly reference librarian...I've found, "Try to read the first chapter and see if you like this," is a lot more effective than requiring reading.

I think this is probably what they're looking for. Not lines made with a ruler, but the conceptual understanding that 1/7 is smaller than 1/6, and therefore approximately where each tick will be on a number line in relation to each other. I assume this is why they call the fraction 4/6 and not 2/3. They are looking for understanding of what each jump on the number line will mean if you're starting with sixths vs. sevenths. First, I would ask my third grader how she would divide a line into sixths without a ruler. I'd have her make a good long line. That will make the difference more apparent.Then I'd say, "Okay, so where will 1/7 be on the line?" Make sure she gets that it's pretty close to 1/6, but smaller. Now, what about 2/7? Where is it going to be in relation to 2/6? Bigger or smaller? Now, how about 3/7? What is happening? Is each seventh going to be equally close to each sixth? Oops, what happens if you do that? Cool, now you see what you need to do differently next time! Let's draw another line." I think once you start pulling out a ruler and trying to measure precisely, and figure out exactly how you can put precise sixths and sevenths on a line, that's when this problem becomes confusing. Being able to free-hand a line approximately divided into sixths, though, and to know that 1/7 is just a little smaller than 1/6, but then the difference between 2/7 and 2/6 is going to be a little greater, and forth-- I think these are the skills the problem asks for kids to demonstrate. And yes, it does require thinking and very likely a little frustration as a kid realizes, okay, these were not sevenths because my last line is still not in the right place...but actually a pretty neat problem!

I'm sorry. I hope she leaves you alone again and you can go back to NOT hearing from her.

True, although when I visit our family cemetery, I can't help being grateful that I bore my children in the 21st century. And that they were born in the 21st century. Junk food and all.

Sounds fine. I consider myself helicopterish and so I usually have windows open on the side of the house where my kids are playing, and I like putting things that make noise on their bikes so I can hear them. As long as they know to look for signs of cars backing up and to pay attention to their surroundings, and actually do this, it seems safer to me than the kids I see in my neighborhood crossing streets while texting with earbuds in.

Yes.

I think playing an instrument and reading are great ones if you are already getting exercise and quiet time to yourself! One of the things I've found is that I just have to adjust my attitude about what it means to do any of these things-- yes, I'm trying to learn to play the piano, but it might mean having a toddler come and bang on the keys. I find yoga and meditation relaxing, but they might happen with kids climbing on me. What makes the activity stressful or refreshing is less about the kids and more about my attitude toward their desire to participate. And I love sunshine and nature, but some days I'm so in my head with thoughts and worries that even being alone and surrounded by beauty and moving doesn't bring me to a happy place. But the activities (like playing an instrument or rock climbing) that require intense focus and concentration often help me achieve a greater state of contentment.

That is a challenging concept! Like others, I'm not sure that a change of curriculum is what you need. Can you talk about the ways you've tried to approach the subtraction algorithm so far? Does she have a firm understanding of place value? Maybe we can help you get over this hump. Stick around and feel free to go into detail as many of us LOVE talking about teaching and learning math. Kids who are behind in math can catch up, but moving a kid ahead despite not understanding key concepts is really a huge waste of time-- theirs and yours. If your child doesn't fully understand place value and regrouping, that's going to really hinder her ability to progress in general. It's why when we hit a wall like this my urge is always to look back and see what we've missed rather than anxiously look ahead to what we're not getting to. A rock solid foundation will help her progress faster later on. Sure, if you need a break and she's extremely frustrated, work on single-digit multiplication for a change, and come back to this, but the levels of math as tied to specific ages and grades are artificial and worth ignoring a little in favor of attending to your child's learning.

I used the word "encourage," not "require," for many reasons. We all have learned that this isn't really going to be a treat for Scarlett's kid. (Except maybe her XH? We don't know. We don't have his side of the story.) All I can do is give my own perspective based upon my life experience as a person who understands that many aspects of travel can be absolutely miserable, albeit temporarily. I don't think it's horrible or dysfunctional for Scarlett to try to work out with her son exactly what he didn't like about his previous experiences and what he did enjoy to try to create a trip that he would find palatable. And I also can see why they would both find the aspect of being beholden to XH (for this trip, for college costs) uncomfortable. I think we're all struggling a little because we are rooting for Scarlett's son in a situation where we have only a partial picture, and ultimately we're relying on his mom to use her instincts to use the thoughts she finds helpful and toss those that miss the mark.

Well, I would encourage my child to travel. To take a trip. The thing is, if you allow your hatred of travel (or fear?) to hold you back when you're 18, it just becomes worse and worse. Now, if he suffers from serious travel-related anxiety, maybe his father is not the person to walk him through it. Maybe a very short trip is better with his dad. But I wouldn't let a kid this age not travel because he prefers to be home or doesn't like it. Traveling can be uncomfortable and unpleasant. It can take us out of our comfort zone. These are, I think, important things for a young person to be able to do. But pleasure is not the only point of travel. It would worry me that he is sick over this. If it's a father issue, that is one thing. But I wouldn't let him off the hook from leaving his comfort zone, because 18 is too young to be so entrenched in one's routine and habits that one doesn't want to spend a few days away from home.

One other thing I hate about the stupidity of random clickbait nutrition: yes, juice in excess is bad, but I'm sorry, when people acting like they know something about nutrition stare at me in horror and ask, "You drink ORANGE JUICE???? You give your kids bananas????? Haven't you heard...." Orange juice is probably not the thing standing between most people and excess visceral fat. Heredity plays a part, being a woman past a certain age plays a part, and frankly our society's treatment of the female body strikes me as one more way it focuses on bodies existing for pleasure rather than nurturing and giving life. And while I have a pretty flat stomach, certain other parts of my female anatomy have been spaghettified in a way that would make my body far from the ideal. I will say that sit-ups likely will not lead to flatter abs, although exercises designed to promote better posture might help your belly look flatter. Developing muscles underneath areas of fat don't lead to extra fat loss in those areas, nor to the appearance of less fat. I'm an apple, too, and I'll never have much of a waist, no matter how much I limit my OJ intake.

He should not try to make his application a sales pitch or a confessional but rather something he will feel proud of, even if he's "rejected." Which is really the wrong word. Mismatched. As someone who attended an Ivy, I will strongly try to steer my own children away from them. I once took part in a discussion with one of the university administrators about things that could be done to improve the undergraduate experience. When he heard my suggestions (inspired by my experiences attending summer classes at other, less prestigious colleges), he laughed and said, "But see, we don't have to do that. We're _____. People will want to come here anyway." Now, I don't mean to say that's the attitude at every Ivy, but it kind of summed up my experience there. Do the schools your child is interested in guarantee actual contact with professors, or do students vie to compete for a limited number of spaces in seminars? How much teaching and grading is done by TAs? Is undergraduate teaching and interaction a priority? Do the students seem happy and intellectually curious? Do they have mentors on the faculty? I think the main thing for him to know if he does decide to apply is that he probably won't get in, but it will be very hard to turn them down if he does. Very hard. But if he isn't trying to sell himself, that may make him stand out in a good way!