Why do you think that there is a depression on the way?

Thanks for clarifying. Wrestling has done so much for my son, I really want to protect its image.

Are you saying that you obey your husband because you are cursed by God? If God made woman for man, it seems he intended to have woman obey man from the beginning. Why bring the curse part into it?

Your implication is that the boys who wrestle girls speak sexually about wrestling them. I don't believe that is what you mean, but it is implied in what you are saying. Could you please clarify and be specific if that is what you are saying. I have been a highschool wrestler and coach and been around highschool wrestling for a while. Although I would have expected to hear such comments, I have never heard a coment like that made by a boy wrestler about a girl wrestler unless, perhaps, he doesn't wrestle her. It seems like actually wrestling the girl allows her to earn the boys respect. Of course there are none wrestlers who don't respect the sport or the wrestlers and they say all kinds of things, but among the wrestlers, I would say the girls are respected as human beings.

The whole taliban thing is my fault. I brought it up because I couldn't think of the name of the particular burka that those ladies wear. I went way too far with my example and it obfuscated my argument rather than strengthened it. I apologize. It has been a good argument up to now; one that has made me think a lot about my own beliefs. Thanks everyone

Thank you for the criticism. I agree with you. I went a little overboard.:iagree:

I would like to make an observation. Piper seems to have two objections: sex: "If a jock from Northern Minnesota encircles her around the breasts and twists his leg around her thighs, trust me, he will dream about that tonight." teaching men not to respect women: "Men don’t fight against women." Based upon their attitudes toward karate and judo, those on this forum who object to women wrestling men seem to disagree with Piper's second point. They seem to feel that it is OK to force a boy to fight a girl in karate or Judo. It is OK to kick a girl in the chest or ribs, trip her and throw her to the ground, or pretend to punch her in the face. It is only the first part where those on the forum agree with Piper. IMO then, Piper and those speaking here against girls wrestling are ignorant about the sport of wrestling. (Sorry to use such a trigger word like "ignorant". I do not mean it in a derogatory way. There is nothing evil about being ignorant about something. We are all ignorant about many things.) There is nothing sexual about wrestling. Mrs.McGyver seems to be the only other person speaking who is intimately involved in wrestling and she seems to feel that it is not sexual. Even my friends who object to their sons wrestling girls don't pretend that their sons are turned on or get impure thoughts while wrestling girls. Their complaint has always been "I don't want my son to learn to beat up on women." (BTW: I sometimes find that complaint somewhat disrespectful to the women, especially in the case where she's going to toss their boy around the mat.) What if, as was once the case, there were too few girls in Karate for a girl to find a female karate partner? What if, then, the boys refused to do karate with the girls because they didn't want to learn to fight women or to have sexual fantasies about rubbing up against their bodies while scuffling? More than 30 years ago I taught karate, and this was the case. Would you agree then that women should stay out of karate? Perhaps self defense for women against men should be banned. Certainly it should be frowned upon. Certainly those women and their daughters who engage in it are somehow less pure and less perfect in the eyes of God than the rest of us. Another thing that is disrespectful to women and gives men impure thoughts and sexual fantasies is when men see a woman's face. It is positively shameful when women don't cover their face in public, don't you think? One person posted with pride that she didn't allow her daughter to show her navel in public. I think a woman's eyes are more provacative than her navel, hence the only appropriate dress for women is the full burka worn by the women of the Taliban. Obviously I am being fecetious, but I think it helps makes my point. Men, and especially boys, may and will become aroused by things that women do. This cannot be stopped. Please be careful when you advocate something that will effectively ban women from the sport of wrestling. Please be sure that know what you are talking about when you make unsubstantiated claims. When Piper says "Get real, dads. You know exactly what almost every healthy boy is thinking. If a jock from Northern Minnesota encircles her around the breasts and twists his leg around her thighs, trust me, he will dream about that tonight. Only in his dream she won’t have clothes on. And if he doesn’t dream it, half the boys in the crowd will. Wake up dads. You know this." he demonstrates his ignorance of the sport of wrestling. Surely he is aware of how little he understands wrestling. Yet, instead of investigating the matter, he is only too willing and eager to encourage one group of people to ostracize another. And still worse, he claims to be ostracizing them "for their own good". Finally, bbased upon this quote:"When the apostle of Jesus tells us to live with our wives “in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel†(1Peter 3:7), he dumps a truckload of wisdom that fathers should build into their sons.", Piper implies that God disapproves of a man competing with women at a wrestling tournament. Is that what 1Peter 3:7 was saying?

This is an important point. It's not horseplay, flirting, and sex. It's mean, tough, uncomfortable wrestling. :iagree:

Not quite true. The boy can and sometimes does forfeit the match. I have a close friend whose son forfeits rather than wrestles. As I said before, I agree that this is a problem. But the male has an option. The female does not. In this case, our choices are: to include the first party and, by doing so, provide the option to the second party to either be included or to exclude himself or to exclude the first party leaving her no option just because the second party doesn't like it. In the case of option 2, there seems to be no recourse to the second party. She's a girl, so it's just tough titties for her. She can't play. Honestly, it's a close one for me, but, as long as we aren't offending too many people, and the offense is small enough, I vote for the option where we treat both parties equally; option 2. Finally, the fact is that very few people at the tournaments seem to have a problem with a girl wrestling a boy. I suspect this is because these people know wrestling, and when you understand what the kids are going through on the mat, you realize that it is simply not sexual or personal. You don't think of your opponent as anything but an opponent. Also, they know these girls and love them. Come on! There is nothing sexy about wrestling, and everything about ballroom dancing is sex.:) I would never allow my son to practice serious ballroom dancing with a boy, would you? One last point: If I believed that many wrestlers or wrestling fans in the US found wrestling women to be highly offensive, I would change my opinion. I honestly don't think most wrestlers and fans find it to be that big of a deal.

I listed my problems with it earlier in this topic. I have the same problems with it as everyone else. It makes me feel uncomfortable. I would prefer that women didn't wrestle. However, because I realize that others think differently, I don't want the right to demand that women don't wrestle, because I don't want them to have the right to demand that my kids can't do something that is otherwise healthy and harmless. Why should you decide what sport others choose? Ballroom dancing? I respect you for being a prude. I hope my daughters are the same. But I don't want you to decide for them. p.s. Please understand this is just a friendly argument and I don't mean to offend anyone in anyway.

In Jiu-jitsu and judo (closely related), one opponent while on her back takes the other between her legs while he struggles to free himself by, among other techniques, forcing his knee up between her legs or driving his elbow into her inner thigh close to her groin, or just laying his weight on her and driving forward. This is far more of a problem for me than wrestling.

We disagree about this.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that you teach your daughters that it is ok. I believe the issue is whether you tolerate others who teach their daughters that it is ok.

No. No more than I am concerned that my son would injur a young man. Wrestling is far safer than soccer, football, or biking. In five years, my son has never been injured. Most injuries occur in practice when a larger kid wrestling someone else accidently rolls over a smaller kid. Also understand that in wrestling, you wrestle an opponent of similar size and age. BTW: Hurt and injury are two different things in wrestling. Hurt is an everyday, nearly every moment, occurance in wrestling. Some wreslters wear shirts that say "Pain is weakness leaving the body." This is one reason that wrestling builds character.

I just would like to add my opinion about the sexual nature of a boy wrestling a girl in the sport of wrestling: I don't believe that any boy finds this sexual: Imagine you are a boy in the following senario: You are dressed in an uncomfortable, skin-tight wrestling singlet pulled taught between your legs, revealing everything about your manhood to hundreds of spectators. You walk out alone to the center of a 28 ft circle. A similarly dressed opponent, of similar size faces you, intending to put you in extreme discomfort and to humiliate you before all these people. You may or may not notice that she is a girl. Her hair will likely be tucked under her headgear and she will be wearing an extra body suit beneath her singlet. Your coach is yelling out last minute instructions. You have 2 minutes or less to prove that you are more manly than your opponent. Is that sexual? I have seen hundreds of boy vs girl matches and I have never seen anything sexual.

Although wrestling girls is a real problem, I think they should be allowed to wrestle and treated with the same respect as any other opponent. My 10 yo son wrestles, and sometimes he has to wrestle girls. If he refuses, he loses automatically. If you wrestle, you know that losing is not an option. When my son, or any other good wrestler, wrestles a boy or girl, he is out to break their will by intimidating them, which includes inflicting pain. The moment that the match is over, win or lose, he shakes their hand, tells them "good match" and then shakes their coach's hand. He needs to have respect for his opponent as a human being regardless of the opponent's gender. There is no respect while the match is going on, and total respect once it is over. I don't see respect of women as an issue. BTW, Although strength is an advantage, the strongest wrestler often doesn't win. The wrestler with the strongest mind usually wins. That's why girls can sometimes compete. IMO the problems are the following: 1. It seems to me from my experience, that as the boys get older, the girls begin to get injured more easily. I don't know for sure if this is true, but it seems like it. 2. Some boys are squeemish about treating the girl as an opponent. That's probably something that they just need to learn to deal with. I mean, sometimes you have to wrestle guys with one leg or mentally handicapped wrestlers. 3. There are moves in wrestling that, when performed on girls, are just plain uncomfortable for the participants and spectators alike. I have seen fathers of girl wrestlers become irate over them. These fathers need to take their girls elsewhere. The reason that girls should be allowed to wrestle boys is because wrestling is such a great sport that it is unfair to say to another human being that they can't wrestle just because they are a girl. If you don't know someone who wrestles, you have no idea what I am talking about. There are rare occasions where girls are capable of wrestling competitively with boys. But there are those occasions. If there are an adequate number of girl wrestlers, then there should be men's and women's divisions. Usually when there are enough women, they have their own division. As wrestlers mature, more and more the women are separated from men because there are more women and the women just can't compete with the mature men. Anyway, it is a difficult problem. Many of my friends disagree with me, but I just have to think of my daughters and ask myself "Do I really want to tell them 'I know you could beat that guy, but your a girl so go play with your dolls.'" None of my girls wrestle, nor will I encourage them to do so. I am a chauvinist and I would be afraid they would be hurt. I also prefer to see them behave as stereotypical little ladies. But the girls that I know who wrestle are really wonderful ladies. I don't want to tell them that they can't that is so healthy for them just because it makes others uncomfortable.

It is very unlikely that you came within 20 feet of a wild mountain lion and he didn't see you. More likely he wasn't hungry and had already assessed that you weren't much of a threat. If he is hungry and he decides that you are food, you won't see him until he attacks. If you come upon one, quitely back away. (Oops, I just read the brochure from the website below and it says to make noise, look big, and throw rocks. I suggest you read the brochure rather than take my advice.) If you run, you may trigger him to attack. Don't let your kids or pets out at dawn, dusk, or night. Attacks on humans are very rare - 16 or so in 100 years. http://tchester.org/sgm/lists/lion_attacks_ca.html "This page is a complete list of all attacks that involve physical contact by mountain lions on people in California through 26 January 2007." http://www.dfg.ca.gov/news/issues/lion/lion_faq.html If I live in mountain lion habitat, how concerned should I be for my safety? Statistically speaking, a person is one thousand times more likely to be struck by lightning than attacked by a mountain lion. That said, mountain lions are wild animals and, like any wildlife, can be dangerous. People who live in mountain lion habitat can take precautions to reduce their risk of encountering a mountain lion. By deer-proofing the landscape, homeowners can avoid attracting a lion’s main food source. Removing dense vegetation from around the home and installing outdoor lighting will make it difficult for mountain lions to approach unseen. Are mountain lion attacks on humans common? Mountain lion attacks on humans are rare. There have been only 16 verified mountain lion attacks on humans in California since 1890, six of them fatal. The last documented attack occurred in January, 2007, in Humboldt County.

My son failed Kindergarten. By the end of first grade, the teacher assured me that he was doing great. He got all 1's on his report card, which, I guess, is like all A's. Anyway, before he started second grade, I tested him myself and found that, going into second grade, he couldn't read Hop on Pop, and he couldn't really add beyond 2 plus 2. Obviously, if this was acceptable to the public school, I needed to remove him. Now, after two years of home school, he excels. Many think he is a prodigy, but I know better. He has just had a solid two years of diligent study. Given the same training, any normal child would be where he is now. It's very hard work for me, but home schooling is for my kids.

I don't think this article applies to most home schoolers. The article takes issue with "rushing through the standard curriculum is not the best answer" This statement confuses finishing the standard curriculum at an early age with "rushing" through the standard curriculum. I, for one (and my assumption is like most with this problem), have not, in any sense, 'rushed' my son through any math. We have not skipped anything. On the contrary, we have done nearly every single problem in any book that we have chosen as our main source. We spend time applying concepts and relating them to things outside the book. We have studied and done problems from outside sources such as Euclids Elements and other historical sources. My son is not ahead because the math is too easy and we are trying to skip through until he is challenged; instead, my son is ahead because he is interested, and a hard worker and because we have moved carefully through the basics to ensure a deep understanding. Also notice this statement: "...the standard curriculum is not designed for the top students. This is even, if not especially, true for the core calculus curriculum found at most high schools, community colleges, and universities." I agree with this statement, but my son, and most likely yours, is home schooled in order to avoid a 'standard' curriculum. Our curriculum is customized for our own top student. "Rather than learning more and more tools, avid students are better off learning how to take tools they have and apply them to complex problems." I think that if you are home schooling, and not already teaching how to apply the learning, then you are missing the point. Given this, it is important to continue to learn more and more tools.

In my district we must be enrolled in the "Plublic Homeschooling" program in order to compete on a team. At the high school level, the Red tape involved is so time consuming as to be disruptive to the kids' learning. Instead, like most CA home schoolers, I have just registered my own private school. Also, the wrestling team in our district is simply not competitive enough for my son. Sadly, in wrestling, you need a practice partner of comparable ability or you cannot stay competitive. The better you get, the more difficult it is to find a partner and a program. I was hoping to find a private school with a good wrestling team and perhaps enroll in a class or two so that my son could wrestle. I just don't know if this is possible in CA. I have even thought about moving to Eastern PA or Blairstown NJ. Even such a move won't solve my problem with academics. BTW, I really appreciate your suggestions, however, I hope the answer is not for me is to slow his education so that he can sit in relatively slow paced high school classes. What I mean is that I believe that a high school calculus class, for instance, will take a year to teach him what he can probably learn in a few months at home with me. Also, if he learns calculus in 6th grade, it will allow him a far greater understanding of so many things he can then study in the next 6 years from 7th to 12th grade, just as science allows for a greater understanding of philosophy, history of politics, a foreign language of linguistics, and so on. If I wait until he is a senior in high school before he studies calculus, I will only be able to teach him science at a superficial level; without a superficial understanding of science, our exploration of philosophy will be little more than mental gymnastics practice. The chance for us to explore these topics together in a meaningful way will be lost. Instead, he will be introduced to these topics in college, where I can say from experience as a college student and as one who has taught College students that they can not and will not be addressed in the depth they require. In short, it is my opinion that broadening my son's curriculum would come at the price of depth of study. That is why I say that I believe it is sufficiently broad as it is and I do not think I could broaden it and still improve it. Instead, I think I need a wrestling team for my son where I can still home school him. Your comments have helped me come to this decision. I appreciate them.

I just saw Night at the Museum and thought it was very funny. My 10 yo, 6 yo, and 16 yo all liked it as well.

Both my kids (16 yo and 10 yo) are doing the Suchocki chemistry portion of Conceptual Integrated Science. It is a very good book thus far. Junior High to High School level I'd say. I sit and read the book to them sentence by sentence and we discuss it and do occasional experiments. My background is science. My plan is to follow up with Brown and Lemay (College Level - [the best in my opinion]) after he gets through bio and earth science at the same level (the rest of the book). Volunteering certainly sounds useful; however, I feel that the time required would slow down his academics substantially. It seems to me that he would get a greater return for his time investment if he first learned some basic principles of economics. I guess I look at it like the academics will lay the ground work for the more advanced stuff (advanced stuff being applied learning) like the business venture that your child is in. For instance, when I was a freshman in college I studied philosophy. I wrote a paper on the mind-body problem. In it I suggested that since light had no mass and still caused a reaction with the human body then an incorporeal spirit should be able to interact with a corporeal body as well. I spent a large amount of time and energy on that project. Without any real knowledge of science, I thought I had solved the mind body problem. Years later, after learning some science, I realized that my comparison demonstrated a complete ignorance of the science. Looking back, I feel like I really wasted my time. I also feel that the more time spent (in terms of years) contemplating the more theoretical science and math, the greater the understanding achieved. After getting straight A's in college science, I began teaching college science and learned from my students' questions that I really didn't have a good grasp on the topics. I soon learned that many college professors understood them no better than I. It took years before I felt like I really understood the basics. Thus I want to expose my son to such concepts as entropy, limits, etc... as early as possible and allow him to struggle with them under my guidance over a period of years. If he leaves for college having just been exposed to them, it is quite likely that his professors (Even at the top schools) will not require much more than a cursory understanding. So my dilemma remains. My son will need a good wrestling coach and team at the high school level, and I think he will be well beyond the academics of the high school.

Ok, I have to laugh: ------------ Quote from article: "My qualifications to teach English include a double major in English and education, two master’s degrees (education and journalism), a student teaching semester and multiple internship terms, real world experience as a writer, and years in the classroom dealing with different learning styles. So, first of all, homeschooling parent, you think you can teach English as well as me?" ------------ I believe the correct grammar is "As well as I" not "me". (Sorry if someone already pointed this out.)

Thank you

My understanding is as follows: It is not an allergy, but an intolerance. Proteins are chains of amino acids. In healthy humans, they are digested into amino acids before being absorbed in the intestines. Apparently, some autistic individuals do not digest gluten and cassein completely but absorb a resulting dipeptide (two amino acid link) directly in to the blood. This dipeptide resembles a certain neurotransmitter which then competes with the correct one and causes problems. I read this in a book by Karen Serrouzi (spelling). From my limited understanding, even in normal inidividuals, gliadinin (spelling?), an amino acid sequence found in wheat, is toxic. ------------ What can you eat?: There are many commercial products available now that are gluten and cassein free. There are also GFCF cook books. At first it takes some getting used to, and is really quite a pain, but after a while it is no big deal. The biggest problem is others feeding your child foods with gluten (candies, cake, ice cream). "Oh, please, a little bite won't hurt!" Wrong!!! Don't feed my kid!!!