We're a Lukeion family, too. My daughter is taking Amy's first-year Latin course, and we're very pleased. We went with Lukeion on their Family Tours to Italy in 2008 and to Greece last spring.

Well, I'll take a stab at this. I think there's some truth to what you say in the overall scheme of things. However, yesterday we were talking about a specific situation: a daughter who is pleasant and willing to learn, but who has many things going against her (a crazy schedule, internet in her bedroom, a mom who is focused on teaching a younger child and letting the daughter work alone and then calling the daughter "lazy" because she is falling behind, possible learning disabilities). There are a lot of concrete steps that can be taken to remedy a situation like that. Obviously, those are: -- Pare down the schedule and keep the girl at home more; -- Take the internet out of the girl's bedroom; -- Focus on the older child and pick up with the younger one later; -- Don't call a child who seems to be trying "lazy"; -- Check for ADD and possible hidden learning disabilities. -- Possibly one or two more that I've forgotten. The mom received all of the suggestions with gratitude, though sometimes reluctantly (understandable, since it often takes people a while to let ideas gel). Her reluctance was what spurred on the comment about "if your daughter fails, you fail." In this situation, that would be true. An eighth-grader who is trying but whose mom can't get her act together (no offense, Andrea, we've all been there) is not completely at fault. Some eighth-graders can rise above a haphazard situation, but not all can. It's the mom's responsibility to create an environment where learning can occur. It's the mom's responsibility to make sure the information is being understood. It's the mom's responsibility to keep monitoring the situation to make sure those things are happening. If they're not happening, she needs to make changes until they are. Posting about a bad situation on an internet chatroom and saying "I don't have any sympathy for my lazy daughter who won't get her work done" is telling the world that you're not willing to put in the hard, often thankless work necessary to make sure the daughter can learn. If the daughter does poorly in eighth grade, she will almost certainly do poorly in high school, and she's unlikely to get into a good college. She'll go through life embarrassed and frustrated. There are big consequences for neglecting a child educationally, and I think the posters yesterday pointed that out very well.

I think that dear man deserves a thank-you for all he does for your sister. Perhaps you could ask him what you could do to make his life easier? If he weren't around, so much of the burden would fall upon you.

It just makes things much, much harder for the man. It's unfair to him.

It's hard to see a situation clearly when you're in the middle of it. It's clear to most of the people who have responded that your daughter still needs supervision and support. I speak as someone who expected too much of my older child without giving him enough support. I *thought* I was managing my time in the best way I could, but I can see clearly now that I wasn't giving this child what he needed. He has gaps in his education that I could have prevented if I'd paid more attention to what he was trying to tell me and listened to advice from well-meaning outsiders. I will have to live the rest of my life with regrets concerning this child. Most of the parents I know who have children of various ages focus on their older ones until they graduate. I could never figure out why they would let their younger children go almost neglected, riding around in the back of the van, in favor of their older children. But over the years I've seen those older children graduate and be successful, and now the younger children are getting their turn. The parents actually have more to offer them because they're more experienced -- and have more time on their hands overall. It all evens out. So I gently suggest you give some of the attention you're giving to your middle child to your oldest one, at least for this year while she's at home. She'll only be homeschooling this year. You will save her untold embarrassment and frustration if you help her in every possible way -- no matter how much time it takes -- to master her schoolwork. Her schoolwork should take precedence before her "fun times," before her brother's schoolwork, and almost everything else. Stacy is right; if you haven't done every last thing you can possibly do to keep her from failing, you have failed her.

I would give her more attention. Ask her comprehension questions after every literature or history reading. Grade her math the moment she turns it in to you. Keep checking on her, and tell her if she can't get her work done quickly upstairs she'll stay downstairs where you can see her. I have a seventh-grader with ADD. She's very smart, and she does well in school, but my job all day long is to keep her moving along. She knows my attention is always on her, even if she's in another room. I don't go off and do other things that will cause me to neglect her. In literature, which really bores her, we read together and discuss the material right there on the spot. I quiz her every day in Latin. We talk about "standards" all the time. She is just starting to understand high standards and low standards, and she's under peer pressure to perform at a high standard. We have public-school neighborhood children who are in gifted classes and whose parents expect a lot out of them. (Praise the Lord!) Her homeschooled friends are working every bit as hard as she is, and most of them are in speech and debate, which is extremely demanding. She wants to be the best ballet student in her class, so she's constantly evaluating herself. I'm trying to instill a degree of perfectionism in her, because it isn't naturally there, and it's starting to kick in.

Well, this is just like Impish's post, where she's doing TOG slowly because she and her girls want to savor every bit of it. Loving schoolwork is to be commended! It's the moms who never get around to doing schoolwork that are being raked over the coals here. I wasn't kidding when I said that (many of) these moms can't stop socializing long enough to get some serious schoolwork done. At least, that's what I've seen -- moms who want to yak all day.

It's very possible that you could find some old grammar textbooks from 40 or more years ago and use them. The Rod & Staff books remind me very much of the public school texts I used when I was my daughter's age. We did diagramming and everything. You could probably type in "grammar textbook _____ grade" and try to buy the oldest one available (before 1970 or so). It would probably only cost a few dollars.

I've met families like that. I usually turn pale and round-eyed with genuine horror and bite my tongue hard. I can't hang around with people like that; I would feel as though I were watching a train wreck. Families like these are going to sabotage homeschooling for the rest of us. I think there are going to be many young adults who will rise up in anger against their parents who didn't educate them properly. And they will be justified in doing so. I actually wish there were a self-policing homeschool association (not government-run) to shame the moms who neglect their children's education. I've met too many moms who gush about their "wonderful family-centered learning" but who are modelling mediocrity, or worse. Their homes are dirty! Their children don't have anything to do a lot of the time! The moms can't stop socializing long enough to do some serious schoolwork! Their expectations are pitifully low, and they're too stubborn to see it! Ick, ick, and double ick!! Sorry to rant, but this is a subject that always gets me spun up. :001_smile:

Have you tried doing a search for some of your questions? It's amazing how often the same things get discussed over and over. A lot of moms just get tired of repeating themselves. I always press "Search" and then "Advanced Search." I can almost always find many existing posts on any topic I want to know about.

I would love to live in a smaller house. Ours is average-sized (two floors and a finished-off basement), but it feels huge to me. When we moved here ten years ago, I felt that I would never be able to buy enough furniture to fill it up. It wore me out just to clean it. Ten years on, I still dislike having this much space. We have rooms that never get used. We have *stuff* that we never use and have actually forgotten that we even have, but we keep it around because we have room for it and it would be wasteful to get rid of it. It's still not fun to clean all these rooms. I would trade a well-laid out small house for a larger house any day! The grass isn't always greener on the other side!

I had outpatient gallbladder surgery last Friday and was surprised at how strict -- almost paranoid -- the staff was about letting my son come back into my room on the surgical unit to pick me up. They insisted he wear a face mask and almost made him show an ID to prove he was 18. What's next, I wonder?

I would make chores a very regular part of his *every*day life. He must learn to get used to them. I'd make a chore chart at the beginning of every week and post it up (do this for every child). He can't argue with a chore chart.

I use the vocabulary book every single day to quiz my seventh-grader. It gives *all* the vocabulary words that Wheelock's has covered in every lesson (for example, when you turn to the Chapter 4 words, you also see all the words from Chapters 1, 2, and 3). We also play the audio CDs very frequently in the car. I already had the workbook for some strange reason, so I have her do the workbook material as well. These are all wonderful products that really help cement the material into the student's mind.

I often say "cutie-pies," even when I'm not talking about my own children. I'll say things like: "Let's get these cutie-pies lined up and ready to go into the next room."

Brinkseven, I enjoyed reading your story. I recognized my own daughter, who's now 12, in Dr. Thomas Sowell's books "Late-Talking Children" and "The Einstein Syndrome." She would only talk in two- or three-word utterances for many years, and most of the time she didn't talk at all. She didn't speak in sentences until long past her fifth birthday. However, I just knew...I just had a feeling...that nothing was wrong with her. I did take her to an auditory processing specialist clinic to be evaluated, and they said she was fine. I taught her to read before her fifth birthday (thinking that the world would make more sense to her if she could read), and she caught on instantly. It was only a few weeks before she could read the King James Bible. She has been diagnosed with ADD. She stutters when she's nervous. However, she's a classic example of one of Dr. Camarata's late-talking children: Her dad has degrees in electrical and computer engineering and was a nuclear engineer for the Navy. Her older brother was a very talented pianist at an early age (however, he opted to quit lessons at age 12) and a naturally gifted composer. He (her brother) has always been "into" computers and understands them thoroughly. Her uncle is a doctor. She is extremely good in math and logic and has an amazing memory. She's an all-around good student who is into ballet, knitting, crocheting, sewing, animals, and piano (which she hates but she's amazingly good at). (Just wanted to add: I'm making her sound extremely boring, but there's a whole other side to her. She's really funny -- like a comedian. Even when she was tiny, she would think of the craziest get-ups to wear, or the silliest little things to say that made the rest of us laugh ourselves sick. She acts like a ditzy blonde. I don't know if Dr. Camarata has any children like *that* in his practice.) I am so thankful that Dr. Sowell wrote his books. I think they have given relief to many, many moms who have perfectly wonderful children who just happen to talk late. I know there are some children who do have issues that need to be addressed, but other kids just develop on their own timetable, and they don't need to be pressured.

The Secret Sharer, by Joseph Conrad. Oh, wait! This may not be American after all. Never mind...but it's still a good story.

You do know what we mean on this board by "Dark Side," don't you? It means over-enthusiastic Reformed Theology thinking.

K12 is a high-quality curriculum, though its customer service is abysmal. I have used it off and on through the years, always dropping it when I felt I couldn't bear their convoluted ordering process any more. But the material itself is very, very good.

I've found Mrs. Moon to be the most sleep-inducing teacher in the whole BJU lineup. She's a very pleasant person, but she just doesn't bring a subject to life. A few months ago, a mom on this board recommended that I look into BJU's World History course for my seventh-grader. I watched the sample video of Mrs. Moon teaching the class and wasn't impressed at all. We went with K12's World History B instead. My middle-schooler really does need those "high-energy teachers" to keep her interested and moving along. Maybe Mrs. Moon is too calm or something? My daughter needs a fire lit under her, or in the absence of a fire, she needs my presence to keep her motivated through material that isn't intuitive for her (like history and literature). She works best under pressure, and a gentle soul like Mrs. Moon just can't keep her interest for more than few moments.

I don't see anything wrong with a very basic Statement of Faith for a basic Christian group. If groups want to get *more* specific than that, they should advertise themselves as "Dark Side Homeschool Moms" or "Megachurch Homeschoolers" to make it clear what kind of group they are. I wouldn't dream of trying to force my way into a homeschool group that clearly -- from its very title -- was intended for a specific subset. And I do agree with Priscilla, that a statement of expectations will go a long way toward keeping friction and hurt feelings down. However, the weeding-out process should be done as compassionately as possible, and with a view toward appreciating the good in other people, even if they're not exactly like you.

I bought the Miele Capricorn last month after years of dealing with vacuums that weren't getting the job done well. Within five minutes of vacuuming in our house, I knew I'd made the right decision. Our carpets hadn't looked so beautiful since they were new. The vacuum is quiet; I can carry on a conversation (give out homeschooling assignments) while I work. The air in the room actually smells better after I vacuum than before! I've gone on a vacuuming rampage and have been vacuuming mattresses, upholstery, curtains, and air vents all over the house. This vacuum is a joy to use! It's a costly vacuum, but my husband was in a gift-giving mood (he was about to be sent out of the country on business for a couple of months, and he wanted to make up for it). It may have been a gift for me, but the whole family is benefiting from the cleaner air in our house.

Hi, Heather -- I asked him, and he said there are no restrictions. He hasn't been doing any reviewing very recently -- I think the books they've been offering haven't been to his liking. There were several political books that he had a lot of fun reviewing during the presidential campaign.

Oh! I got to take a tour of Nero's Golden Palace a year and a half ago when we went to Rome! Our tour organizers from The Lukeion Project pulled some strings to get us in (it was very difficult to get tickets, and I think it's completely closed to tourists now). Touring the Golden Palace was like visiting a construction site. We had to put on hard hats. We were underground and lights were hanging up on scaffolding (the scaffolding was there because there were archeologists working). The rooms were very tall, and we could see remains of paint on some of the walls. The Golden Palace is right next to the Colesseum and Caracalla's Baths (in fact, I think at least part of it is under the Baths). We didn't see a revolving room, though. I hope the Golden Palace will eventually be completely excavated and opened to tourists.

My son does this. He has reviewed several books and really enjoys doing it. I'll ask him when he gets home from his college classes later today and get back to you.