We redshirted our kid, on the advice of our Montessori school. In hindsight, it was probably a mistake. She'd be done with high school this year if we hadn't, and she is *so* ready to be done with high school.
Keeping an 18 year old in high school for another year when she's ready to move on to college is sheer torture.
At least in the 70s, she would have been able to buy beer for her classmates.
I turned 5 in July and went to Kindergarten that fall. Look how I turned out.
Halfway through kindergarten, I got skipped into first grade for the rest of the year. For years, I thought it was because of my dazzling, irrepressible intellect, but when I reflected on it as an adult, it really seemed unlikely for my parents to be particularly dazzled by me. Finally I asked my parents about it. They told me that my grandmother was convinced that I was a genius, and she was nagging them to death about it, and so they moved me ahead just to shut her up. That made way, way more sense. She could nag you about something for decades on end.
"This story was brought to you by the society to reinforce stereotypes."
Is there some kind of new movement to delay schooling? I never heard of making kids be 5.1 years old before starting school.
I severely regret not redshirting my son. It is pretty much my biggest parenting error. He has add and diagnosis of add is something like 1/2 as great for kids that were redshirted. He is really fucking up in school.
Mermaid tails are super dangerous. Big drowning danger as they are fairly difficult to maneuver in.
Mobes, I assume it's to game the testing system. Easier to have kids kindergarten-ready if you don't have the youngest slice start kindergarten until the next year. That won't work long-term but it can get them a bump in Selah's year.
8: Yeah, she's not actually getting one. I would die of stress before she had a chance to risk drowning.
We were unable to get our December-born daughter, who is now 11, into the class for kids born earlier that year. She is hilariously tall for her age and she towers over all of her classmates. She breezes through classes.
At least so far she's a good sport about it, and we were able to get her into a very challenging public school. She does seem to get the advantages that purportedly accrue to kids who are red-shirted -- she's confident, and the fact that she's not a great athlete hasn't kept her out of sports. But I'd still bump her up a grade if we could.
Keeping an 18 year old in high school for another year when she's ready to move on to college is sheer torture.
We tortured my stepdaughter for 3 years until they told us we had to let her graduate.
She hated it and wasn't learning anything, but it least it put off the problem of what she would do next. Four years later and we still haven't figured that one out.
Sorry, that was completely irrelevant, but I guess I had the need to whine.
Further to 9 and 10, probably Lee will get her one, but since Lee can't swim she'll never use it in a pool. There's a zero-depth splash park down the street from Lee's apartment and she could sit in a puddle there and have it not be my problem, just like her extra princess dresses and all high heels that have to stay at Lee's.
I am I the only one deeply disappointed to find that Selah &c won't be appearing as extras on Star Trek?
I don't think she's aware of Star Trek but she lied to me about today being pajama day (and I've missed pajama days in the past by not knowing, so it was plausible) so that she could go to daycare in Spider-Man gear. I didn't realize she also planned to climb on the ceiling, but her teacher gets to deal with that and I don't have to.
(Actually it's not even her regular teacher, who's on vacation in "Muddle Beach," Selah informed me on the way in. I sort of want to save that as a euphemism for something, probably where certain coworkers seem to live.)
My parents always seemed to regret not redshirting me. November birthday, December 21st cutoff. Maybe I wouldn't have been such a crap student if they had.
There's a Philip Larkin quote that works here, but I don't want to encourage people to read poetry.
My sister and I were anti-redshirted (blueshirted?) I think just because my mom was sick of us. We both turned out fine, at least as far as school went.
O, born in February, is the oldest kid in his "start the schoolyear at age 4" preschool class. The rest of them start turning 5 in May. He will be the only one going to kindergarten next year. The rest will start kindergarten at age 6, in some cases having been 6 for several months. This seems batshit insane to me.
Anyway, if Selah knows how to climb on ceilings she's definitely ready for the world.
I did talk to Mara's eventual preschool teacher (and hairstyle inspiration) yesterday and said that I'd like them to prep her with the assumption she'll start K after one year, which sounded reasonable to the teacher. They move classes when their birthdays happen as long as they're mature enough to do so, so there's always a certain amount of cycling between classrooms as one kid moves into a class or another moves out.
She's been trying all year to lie to the principal about her age and get into kindergarten,
This sounds like exactly what my little sister would have done in a similar situation. And now she's a minister, so there you go.
"I'n five! Can I go to kindergarten tomorrow please please please?" He adores her. And he'd probably let her into kindergarten if it meant not losing me on school council and PTA with no one to replace me, but I'm looking forward to that break.
(Okay, one other secret reason is that if she waits as long as the state wants her to, she'll never be in the same school Mara is. Nia and Mara will be in the same building for the next three years and after that Nia will be able to walk to school even in bad weather because it's right around the corner and even if we move we'll stay in the neighborhood. Selah would have three years at the primary school and then overlap her third grade and Mara's sixth at the intermediate, which would be nice in terms of getting them there. And then she'd start high school Mara's senior year, which means Mara never would get to be in high school without a sister of some sort there, but oh well.)
I was the youngest in my year at school. Not due to conscious choices, but that's just when my birthday falls.
xelA is going to be more or less bang in the middle, almost exactly equidistant between the oldest and youngest pupils in his year. He's fairly big, and fairly confident, so I guess that won't be an issue anyway. Nursery say that he is very good in small groups, but a bit shy in larger groups, though.
He'll be 4.5 when he starts school.
Tatsu was born in September, Hitsuji in August, three years apart. In Japan that meant they were three academic years apart too, but in the UK the cutoff is September 1, so now Tatsu is the oldest in his year and Hitsuji the youngest in his. For Tatsu that worked out well - he's still the smallest boy in his year despite being the oldest, and it gave him time to catch up on writing English. It was hard for Hitsuji, though, more so as they start school a year earlier in England so he effectively had to jump from Grade 3 to Grade 5. I would totally have redshirted him at that point if I could, but the school authorities wouldn't consider it without a special needs diagnosis or similar.
I was one day past the cutoff, which was Dec. 1, so late already compared to now. My parents started me early, and it was fine. I wondered sometimes why I couldn't skip a grade, even. I wasn't unusually big or small and had good enough social skills for a smartypants kid. I had to have an assessment by a child psychologist before I could be enrolled. I did hate getting my license/turning 21 after everyone else, but that was pretty minor.
My sister was three days part the cutoff, then Oct. 1. My parents did not start her early, because her social skills sucked. It turned out that it wasn't necessarily age-related (a mutual friend recently remarked how very awkward she is), and she had no friends until high school anyway, plus she was bored.
So +1 for starting her when she is ready.
31.last: But tomorrow's not a school day! (She's not actually ready. Just don't tell her that.)
My bday is late Nov., and either the cutoff was Dec 1 or Nov 1 but they had just switched it, so parents had a choice, but anyway my mom always said that sending me to K at 4.75 was a necessity--I wouldn't leave her alone, I guess. Anyway, in other school systems the cutoff had always been earlier, so I was consistently among the youngest in my classes. I'd have gone mad academically with any further delay, and I don't think the social stuff mattered--I was consistently a socially awkward dork until now10th grade or so, so it's not as if waiting one more year would have fixed anything (other than 9th grade, I suppose).
We had slight misgivings about starting the Bastille Day Boy at 5, mostly because outdoor play-oriented Waldorf was a 10X better fit for him than academic-oriented public, but he was obviously intellectually ready (although not an enthusiastic reader), and it seemed unlikely that a switch would flip a year later to make him less dreamy. Which, indeed, it didn't.
I was a year young throughout school after skipping second grade, and while grade school was kind of awful because of the skipping, being a year young wasn't any kind of problem. (That is, I was socially isolated due to having been designated as a weirdo, but youth wasn't the problem.)
If she's in the same year from the beginning, I bet it'll be fine for her.
I don't know the enrollment form even has a box for "I want my child to be the weirdo," let alone why any parents check it.
On the time train my oldest son is 9/7 so I will be 18 after starting college and both of him will be 19 beforehand. That is really weird for me to contemplate.
Ah, as it turns out, I avoided ydnew's sister's fate.
Incidentally, my friends gave me shit when I was dating My Greatest Regret, because I was a 3rd year and she a first, but she was actually less than 14 months younger than me. Indeed, BOGF was a year behind in school, but only 7 months younger, while my HS GF was 8 months older, yet in the same school year.
There is a hell of a lot of redshirting in NYC -- or, NYC middleclass white people. Not the school the kids are actually going to, where their classmates seem to have generally started on time, but Newt's rec league soccer is in one-year age groups, and we had a weird moment last fall when most of the team failed to show one day, and I realized that it was because they were all a year behind Newt in school and were taking the SHSAT.
We more or less bludgeoned the school and Rilee into starting 1st grade though she's a few months younger than the cutoff. She's academically fine, but probably wasn't ready in terms of maturity. Montessori wasn't quite right for her, either, as she'd just do the same basic thing (pink tower!) day after day after day after day... Now she's got trouble staying on task and dealing with the disappointment of not getting to do exactly as she likes all the time.
We kept Noser on the regular track, as he's about mid-pack age-wise. However, he is a bright little bastard, but they're really reluctant to just let him work to his level. His 1st grade teacher couldn't really support his needs with her other classroom demands, and his 2nd grade teacher seems to have not understood where he was--at all (largely down to poor penmanship and spelling I think). She figured it out eventually, but good lord.
Don't know. Redshirting, skipping, etc, all seems like it should be more discretionary. But! I'm not sure my discretion was the right discretion.
Nia is 9 in third grade with a summer birthday (repeated first) and so will be 18 for all of her senior year. Mara is 8 in second, so she'll turn 18 in November of her senior year. I was 17 at graduation after skipping fifth and so it all seems weird and old to me, but I also know not to generalize from myself. If Selah starts at five she'll be 18 for her whole senior year. Being 19 her whole senior year seems ridiculous, even if others will be in the same boat. By 19, I'd already had a post-rape nervous breakdown and dropped out of college and attempted suicide and started back at school again closer to home and gotten into an abusive marriage and okay maybe keeping her in high school and under my roof does sound a preferable.
Redshirting, skipping, etc, all seems like it should be more discretionary.
This I agree with completely. There should be enough hurdles that A. parents don't jerk the kid around thoughtlessly*, and B. they have to/get to sit down with an expert who can talk them through their reasoning. But I'd say anything that wouldn't result in the kid being youngest/oldest in the class by, say, 6 months or more should be pretty much up to the parents (again, with hurdles). You want to put your 7-y.o. in 5th grade, OK, you're going to have to prove your case. But the idea that a kid born a week after the cutoff gets no choice is nuts.
*eg, this year they read an article about redshirting, but next year it's about getting them through school early for a gap year at 18. Not real examples, but I have def. known parents who would try to make dramatic changes based on fleeting enthusiasms.
okay maybe keeping her in high school and under my roof does sound a preferable.
Helicopter parent.
One issue I wonder about with the redshirting stuff is that it seems to work differently for girls and boys. My girl has always been the tallest girl in her class (even now, when she's one of the youngest) and it is ... not awesome. Not really an issue or a problem now but in preschool and kindergarten it definitely was, since teachers seemed to react much more strongly to any behavioral thing with her than with physically smaller girls (that's not special pleading, they also had plenty of totally legitimate stuff to react to). Whatever the causes or reasons I do think there are reasons to be differentially worried about girls and boys on these issues.
Anyhow, our story is that she has an October birthday, and switched mid-kindergarten from a private school that has a September 1 cutoff, to a public school with a December 1 cutoff. So she moved up to first grade mid-kindergarten, not by virtue of being a genius but just because of the school move. That was really great for her and she responded way better to the first grade class, and had clearly been bored in kindergarten. Then she moved again to a different private school with a September 1 cutoff, but they (quite rightly) didn't want to move her down a grade, so now she's the youngest in her class. Academically and in terms of sitting in class it's been fine, and she's physically big, but you can see some emotional/social differences with the older kids, and, interestingly, she hangs out om the playground mainly with the other "young" girl in her class and a bunch of kids in the grade below. In conclusion, who the hell knows what to do.
I feel 100% unqualified to intervene in any way in J's school progression. (Fortunately she has a March birthday so redshirting/blueshirting is not even on the table. She's in Montessori K this year and will be in public 1st grade in the fall. Fine.) I can't tell if I'll even be able to tell what will qualify as letting her work to her level or what; what would constitute the right kind of support for her personal mix of enthusiasm/anxiety/etc.; whether she's advanced, standard, or backward at any given thing; and so on. YAY this part of parenting is definitely something I am super great at for sure.
He has add and diagnosis of add is something like 1/2 as great for kids that were redshirted.
Yeah, I wonder how malleable this is. I clearly have ADD, started kindergarten a few days before my 5th birthday, started college a few weeks after my 17th birthday (got out of HS in 3 years), and had all kinds of academic problems, but... I guess they were better academic problems to have than some; I wasn't an underachiever by general population standards. My sister, whose birthday is near mine but in Sept, was redshirted and started college right before turning 19. There's no evidence that she has ADD. She did even worse in college than I did because, among other things, she was overconfident, burned out on school, and completely unwilling to admit that anything was ever wrong. We came from opposite sides to the same pathology. I'm not sure how much you can control academic success with mechanisms like this for any individual, regardless of what statistics tell you. How old is your son now, Lemmy?
46.1: Yeah, I definitely worry about having black girls who are among the tallest in their class, all of them, but that's not something I can control. Except maybe a little with this.
I am Heebie. I switched to first grade midway through kindergarden, but it was my mom who was the nagger. Worked out fine, though I was also shy and awkward. I did get to meet the superaccelerated students who finished high school at age 10. They did not seem so fine, though it looks like they've both turned out pretty well now.
I am with 47! The Calabat and (new arrival)...uh, let's go with Pebbles are both spring birthdays, so it's not an issue. But man, I'd be going nuts if the Calabat were a September birthday. This year in the 2-year-old school his teachers continually had to remind themselves that he wasn't one of the already-turned-3s, and they moved him up to the 3-4 year old evaluation standards halfway through the year (the perils of having a verbally precocious child.) I think if he'd turned three a week after the cutoff I would have agonized over whether to move him up.
Congrats on the new arrival, Cala!
That was mostly how I felt all through grade school. I had a moderate freakout when Sally wasn't a remarkably precocious reader (that is, not precocious at all -- she learned sort of right on an ordinary schedule, getting fluent about it in first grade.)
So I was kind of spinning though is everything okay? should I be doing anything? should I not be overreacting? and then I did pretty much nothing and everything seems to have worked out fine. Was that the right thing to do? Maybe? Did I just get lucky? How would I know?
47: She's probably awesome. Did I say probably? She's awesome. Good job, rfts!
48
My boy is a freshman in high school. He is bright but not bright enough to make up for his bad habits/ADD.
son (late December) and I (October) started college at 17. Not a good idea in either case. First grandchild, still a secret, will be early December. which way to I nag? When should I start nagging?
Best wishes, NotAllowed. I hope the grandchild part goes well. I'm not sure how/if nagging ever does, not that I've let that stop me.
Always best to start nagging later.
And then it's always too late.
We need to know ethnicity to answer a question about nagging.
56: Oof, that's even younger than I was. Anything in particular you're inclined to nag about?
My dad went to college at 15 to get away from his mom. He figured out that if he took summer school, he didn't have to go home. So he was done by 18. At 18, his other choice was Vietnam, so he went straight to grad school and finished at 21. I don't recommend that, although he did meet my mom.
He always thought my sister and I were remarkably behind, running out of time.
61.2: It seems to me it was his own fault -- he apparently wasn't sufficiently impossible to live with.
But maybe I've got this all wrong.
You propose the other strategy? He stayed home and tried to drive his mom out? It wasn't quite that, but for several years while he was young, he and his seven years older sister were living and going to school in Westport while their parents taught in NYC. Their parents only came home on weekends. When they got local jobs, however, it fell apart.
My grandma, his mom, was poison, so my dad probably played his hand right.
On my own kids, it could not be more of a none issue. None of them show any reason whatsoever to be moved ahead or behind. Their birthdays are in November and April.
Hawaii got a Student of the Month thing for exhibiting this month's virtue: confidence.
64.2: Which is what, a participation prize? The awards that count are in the vice category.
There is a man who dresses up as a knight, and he gives you a medal, and your parents come to watch. You also get to take a photo with the knight and hug your parents and sit on stage.
63: Sorry, I guess I was entirely unclear.
I was responding to him feeling that you and your sister were "remarkably behind" because you didn't leave home for college at 15. If he really wanted to help you progress more quickly to adulthood and independence he should have been as impossible to live with as his mother.
But then I could also ask "what's the rush?"
In the immortal words of John Cougar Mellencamp, "'Growing up leads to growing old and then to dying. And dying to me don't sound like all that much fun"
I was so sad that my kids' school stopped giving out virtue awards (awards determined by vote of the student body)! It was adorable and kind of insane -- this child is the one whose classmates believe best exemplifies the spirit of Justice. (As I'm sure I've said before, Sally won "Prudence" one year, and we sang Dear Prudence at her for months.)
How does he know? (Unless I missed the news)
66: For reals? My childhood was so deprived.
My dad has a trophy reading "Least Coordinated Skier, 1957." Which would be on topic here except he was 28 when he got it.
Such bullshit. You should have to slay a dragon or enemy soldier, or, being Texas, at least a problem armadillo.
70: He's not claiming to know -- he just doesn't think it sounds like fun.
Right, but I missed out a guacamole for many, many years on that same type of reasoning and I was horribly wrong.
68: Heh. I entirely missed that joke. Now that it is explained (which I oppose on principle), yes, you're right. He wasn't impossible at all and his children straight dawdled through school a year at a time. I keep urging him to come live with us now.
It's hosted by these guys. I think our local Knights Templar or something puts it on.
75: That's a powerful argument, Moby, but still I'm hoping to be allowed to wait a while.
Admittedly, I am very presumptuously assuming that Hawaii didn't get the prize for confidently slaughtering an armadillo before the adoring eyes of her grateful classmates.
80: The Journal of Theology and Drupes is asking for revisions on my paper.
What's so weird about this?
At the elementary school level, we teach Compassion, Confidence, Citizenship, Discipline, Honesty, Friendliness, Perseverance, Respect, Responsibility, Service, Tolerance, and Trustworthiness. At the middle school level, we teach Courage, Defense, Faith, Franchise, Humility, Justice, Largesse, Loyalty, Nobility and Prowess.
I don't see any weird virtues whatsoever at the middle school level.
It's not the virtues I find weird. It's the mix of corporatism and fantasy.
83: Franchise? Is that about being a franchisor or a franchisee?
85: Or is it about voting or giving others the right to vote?
Oh man this is so awesome. I want this at an adult level, some knight can come into the law firm and present crowns to the person who has shown the most largesse, nobility, or prowess.
"We are the Consultants of the Round Table."
"Defense" is a nice one, too. Defense of good things or bad things?
77 is amazing:
Description: The Student Orientation is an exciting annual event that officially commences each new EAFK year on campus. The purpose of this Orientation is to introduce EAFK to new students and motivate returning students in grand style. There are three different versions of the Student Orientation to choose from:
A. Indoor Basic - features one knight in armor
Cost: $500 per school
B. Indoor Premium - features multiple knights in armor and swashbuckling theatrical action onstage
Cost: $1,500 per school
C. Outdoor Tournament - professional stunt show with multiple knights on horseback (Restrictions apply)
Cost: $2,500-$3,500 per school, depending on location
Here is my character education LANCE IN YOUR FACE
87: Better yet, actual knights errant on the courthouse steps: "I challenge you, IP lawyer, to a duel."
(Restrictions apply)
If horse-mounted shock troops are outlawed, only outlaws will have virtues.
At the beginning, Keith the Knight led them on reciting the four-way test, which they all have memorized.
He also gave a super terrible speech about discipline and courage. (It was a double-month because of Spring Break.) It was about setting your alarm and getting out of bed even when you don't want to, because you know you have to. To kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd graders.
I just got back from my first science fair as a parent. It was weirdly like a poster session at an academic conference except the posters were higher quality (genuine foam board) and the presenters were dressed more neatly.
The logical extension of the program is stocks for the vice awards.
Indoor Basic:
One stock, no projectiles.
Indoor premium:
Three stocks, tomatoes (fresh).
Outdoor:
Up to five stocks, tomatoes (rotten), overnight exposure.
95:
Is it the TRUTH?1 is notably inconsistent with 2-4.
Is it FAIR to all concerned?
Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS?
Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?
Our kindergarten-readiness program graduation included the school superintendent talking about how his mother used physical discipline with him as did he with his own kids and he thinks it's a good idea. I need to pigeonhole my friends on the board to pass along a WTF about this soon. But no knights.
I would try to get her in if she's ready.
My parents believe that elementary/middle school are solely for socialization, so they refused to let us skip grades so that we would learn better social skills. My brother and I were december birthdays with a sept 1 cut-off, so older but not the oldest, and my sister with a late july birthday was near the youngest in her class. My sister and I ended up only one year apart academically, which wasn't always great for sister relations. Despite being nerdy, eccentric, and high-strung, I have been reasonably popular since kindergarten and was on the homecoming court senior year of HS, so I suppose the intense emphasis on social skills paid off.
My college bf was red shirted by his wealthy East Coast parents because his older brother had repeated kindergarten, and the older brother wanted to preserve the chronological age gap in school grades so that kids wouldn't know he'd failed kindergarten.
Starting in middle school I hated my mother and was desperately unhappy, so I almost went to college at 14 to avoid living at home (it was some college program for nerdy girls who wanted to skip HS). We also kept getting promotional mail from WASPy East Coast boarding schools, and I threatened to apply to one and go if they gave me a full ride. (No way my mother would have paid a dime for one of those places). I went so far as to getting LoRs from my 7th grade teachers and filling out the application, but I never actually submitted it.
Going to college at 14 strikes me as insane, bot OTOH I feel like I would have wasted less of my life (and maybe had a successful college career) if something like that had been available to me (such things don't happen in Mossyheimat).
We always thought my grandfather ran away at age 12 to go to high school and then college on his own, which seemed super impressive, but was actually just part of all the lies.
The one with a secret family? Impressive in its own way. Also running away at 12 and making it is legitimately awe-inspiring.
They should try this knight stuff in high school for abstinence education.
"True Love Waits (until marriage, which waits until after a rescue from a dragon)."
My college bf was red shirted by his wealthy East Coast parents because his older brother had repeated kindergarten, and the older brother wanted to preserve the chronological age gap in school grades so that kids wouldn't know he'd failed kindergarten.
Somehow this got me thinking about a hypothetical presidential candidate who has this terrible secret that he's taken extreme measures to hide for all his life. One intrepid reporter investigates relentlessly and discovers the truth.
He confronts the candidate on national TV, "Donald Trump, you failed kindergarten!".
And the candidate breaks down in tears.
104: That's the one! He lied about living at home during prep school, and then going to a local college, and staying close with his loving, supportive family until his death 50 years later.
I'm pretty sure anybody that good at concealing probably has a whole different secret family somewhere. You should look around.
106
The brother was weirdly sensitive about failing kindergarten for a very successful dude in his late 20s (he was getting a PhD in applied math from a good school at the time). I figured it would be sort of a joke by then, but it was still a little hush hush.
108
Trump already has 3 families in the open, so god knows how many he could have in secret.
||
Glued to my FB feed, which is full of updates from people in Kyushu feeling very scared and seasick from non-stop earthquakes. One thread started off "Whaa, that was a big one," went through a few "Are you OK?" messages back and forth, then broke off into "fuck" "double fuck" "fucking cluster fucking fuck fuck" as another quake hit. Looks like there's a lot of damage across a pretty wide area.
|>
109: Not sure why I would have any insight into this, but it seems like the kind of thing you might never completely get over.
Are you north of the shakes yourself?
I'm so sorry, Ume; it sounds terrible. Any emergency-relief charities you'd recommend for this one, or just the usual big names?
109 If I were the brother left behind on his behalf I would have been so pissed off. And I would have never let him forget that he failed kindergarten on that account.
112: I'm frequently astonished to find myself remembering certain tiny childhood shames. Nothing like failing a grade, just stupid things I'm sure no-one else remembers.
I'm in England now, so safe from all but political earthquakes. I don't know immediately of any emergency-relief groups down south; the ones I have direct contact with are all Tokyo or Kansai-based. If I do get any information on charities from people on the ground, I'll pass that on here.
In my opinion, if your 3-year-old is doing basic math, there's a high chance that you're the sort of parent who is invested in them being ahead of the class and are pushing them forward to make formal accomplishments that aren't necessarily backed by real understanding. Mathematical procedures at 3 isn't normal, and some of the best-performing school systems actively shy away from introducing children to basic things like math and reading until they are well-developed. There's no virtue to speed in child learning, engagement and understanding are key.
In Finland, they're already doing differentiation by the age of 4.
119: If heebie went to Finland she would be a preschool teacher.
That should have probably come from "Opinionated Grandmother" but I've never done one of those before.
What if my 3 year-old grandson asks me to teach him Calculus? I should say no?
118; I was being a little flippant in saying that because I think lost of the people rip know me won't think I'm pushing, but the best way to keep her occupied while I'm doing intensive basic math at the dinner table every night with her older sister who needs support while trying to catch up is to let her have her own pennies or pebbles to count and play with. She can count to herself and make groupings but not do independent math in any meaningful way I know of, nor, as you say, would I want her to. It's not that she's way ahead but merely that she's not behind that makes me think five-year-old kindergarten is right for her.
This one kid graduated college at age 11 then went to middle school:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adragon_De_Mello
he was working at the home depot for a while
Over-credentiallism is a huge problem these days.
I went to university at 16. Which wasn't due to accelerated anything, it just used to be theoretically possible to do that in Scotland if your birthday fell at the right time (between mid October and late Feb) and you acquired enough exam 'points'* early enough. I think that's much rarer now as university entrance standards are higher, and it'd be much harder to acquire enough UCAS points without doing 6 years of high school. Although quickly checking the Glasgow uni website, my 1988 exam total would have been enough, theoretically, for admission now.
I dropped out after a year, and then had to do a YTS.** Which sucked. Going back at 20 was much more successful.
* https://www.ucas.com/ucas/undergraduate/getting-started/entry-requirements/tariff/tariff-tables
** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youth_Training_Scheme***
*** less than £30 a week for a full-time job.
Speaking of science fairs, I learned that if you want to make a battery out of a lemon, you should roll the lemon around to squish it like you were going to juice it.
I don't have time to catch up to the whole thread, but one of my daughters was two weeks over the kindergarten cut off date. We petitioned, etc., but they wouldn't yield, so she went to a Montessori school for kindergarten and then started first grade with the other kids. I can say without any hesitation that it was the right thing to do for her; she would have been bored out of her mind if she had started kindergarten a year later, and probably bored for the rest of her academic career. Obviously I don't know Selah, but she sounds like my daughter was, and is ready for kindergarten, so my recommendation is to bend heaven and earth to make it happen. (Can you afford a Montessori or other private kindergarten if they won't give in, for example?)
Back in the Stone Age, when I was that age, the cut off was the end of December, which was good for me as an October kid.
(Apologies if the parts of the thread I haven't gotten to indicate my advice is overtaken by events.)
Basically all educational schemes are cults, or cults that have been captured by profiteers. This is especially true of Montessori, etc. I say this as someone whose two kids accumulated four years of Montessori schooling (and whose two kids got at least 50% of our money's worth).
The Kitchen Table Math people selling a line of dining room furniture was a bit much.
128: I was just about to say I wouldn't want to send her to the Montessori kindergarten because it's all white kids and they wouldn't let her in since she didn't do preschool, but of course they would because one black kid = diversity. The public school principal is completely behind admitting her and so are the kindergarten teachers at the primary school who know her. It's in the principal's best interests that they get me back as an involved parent before the intermediate school can get its claws into me, so I think they'd do basically anything I want but I haven't pushed hard to test that. I'll still have to get it past the school board, but since more than half have asked me to run to join them I suspect I'll have pull there. Woo privilege!
A kid starting kindergarten ten days early has to be okayed by the school board?!
Basically. As long as there are spaces for more kindergartners, she can be admitted. Developmentally appropriate measures, which may include state-approved screening instruments, shall be used to determine a student's level of developmental, academic and social readiness.
Based on staff recommendations, the Superintendent shall recommend to the Board whether to grant the request. Then they're allowed to charge me tuition, but I'm not sure if they have to.
Oh, they're just doing their job. The state mandates that every school board have a policy about how to accept parent/guardian petitions for early admission.
The petty tyrants in the legislature, then.
Also, they can charge tuition for this? In a public school?
Sure, they can charge tuition for any child who isn't legally mandated to be in the school so students who don't live in the district could have to pay $4000 per year to attend, although as far as I know the only people who do this are teachers who want their children to attend and I've always assumed they make arrangements that don't require tuition payment. The state says If a school district charges tuition for an underage student to attend kindergarten, the amount of tuition must be the same as the tuition charged to a student who meets the age requirement I don't know if that means the same amount as a tuition-paying student or if it means the same as a hypothetical student from down the block who's 10 days older.
My (homeschooled) brothers who played on our public school's soccer team had to get permission from the school board. Apparently the rest of the meeting was confirming suspensions for students who brought weapons to school.
140.1. If they weren't enrolled at the school that doesn't seem unreasonable, and fairly enlightened if permission was given. 140.2. seems like a good reason not to enroll them there.
"Did you bring enough for everyone?"
114: If anyone does want to donate to a worthwhile grassroots organization providing relief after the Kumamoto earthquake, my friends at S/econd H/arvest Japan are sending down supplies.
Thanks for the update, Ume.
It's not yet 10 am and I've done two loads of laundry and am sitting on the front steps watching Selah ride her tricycle up and down the sidewalk while I assemble a set of drawers from Ikea for Nia. It's a beautiful day and it feels a bit like checking off one of the spaces on competent-single-parenting bingo.
Well done Thorn. Sunday is Monday here and I'm back from work this past hour. Doing laundry myself and making myself some kaya toast.
This morning something peed on my shoulder. It was very weird. I just noticed this golden liquid on my blazer as I was waiting in the parking lot for my ride to work. What the hell could it be?
Yay for competent single parenting!
Earthquakes in Japan, Ecuador, and now Tonga - the ring of fire is just too damn active this week. if I were living anywhere along the Pacific coast of North America I'd be checking that my earthquake kit was up to date, just in case.
the ring of fire is just too damn active this week
Then surgery. I can only do so much.
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I'm hanging out with my sister and her kids, filling out her OKCupid profile together. It's a blast, especially when the sex questions come up and her 12 year old flips out.
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144: that's way beyond competent, Thorn! You are Superparent!
I think the best thing I ever did for my wife was hiring our handyman to put together the IKEA cabinet, when she was out of town.
151: She's having a blast being dramatic and over the top. She's a great kid.
You know who else never put together an IKEA cabinet?
I never got around to doing an OKCupid profile. How explicit are the sex questions (so I can gauge the level of awkwardness)?
How explicit are the sex questions (so I can gauge the level of awkwardness)?
Some of them are very explicit, some of them are not explicit, some of them appear to be misclassified.
Yeah, there's a wide range of explicitness. You can also choose to not answer any individual question or hide your answers. But if you're just going through questions as togolosh's sister appears to be, you don't know what the next one is going to be, and it could be quite explicit. Awkwardness level: high.
Speaking of OKC, I've been increasingly frustrated with it lately and have been considering trying Tinder. Anyone here have any experience with it?
I'd think as an Alaskan you'd know all about it. That's the stuff the guy in To Build A Fire didn't have the sense to carry around, right?
I had a bad date with a woman I met through the tinder offshoot/competitor bumble.
A friend of mine met her current beau through "Coffee Meets Bagel", which has an annoying name.
161: And look what happened to him! I need to be prepared.
I thought he got a fire built but forgot not to build it under a pine tree full of snow.
Regarding the explicitness of OKC questions, it's not just that some of them are very explicit, some of them are very explicit while also being very particular about, for instance, acts.
An awful lot of the questions come from perspectives it's hard to get one's head around; there's one asking if you think less than a year would be too soon to have sex with someone. A lot of the questions (in general) are really, really badly written, too, with options for answering that fail to divide the space of possible answers in any remotely sensible way.
Admittedly, I misrepresented the details of the story for effect.
I liked the dog in that one. Not hanging around for any nonsense.
They should hire me to read the questions, then track down their original authors and explain to them why the questions are asinine.
An awful lot of the questions come from perspectives it's hard to get one's head around; there's one asking if you think less than a year would be too soon to have sex with someone.
Questions like that are probably useful for screening, wouldn't you think? Where one of the answers seems almost impossibly unlikely, having it pop up would tell you a lot.
Go superThorn!
And LB is right, it's more important that teo maintain a trusting relationship with his dogs.
The sex questions come up at random between others that can be either completely serious or completely off-the-wall. There's a list of one person's answers here, which gives you some idea of the variety, though these are grouped into categories.
A lot of the questions (in general) are really, really badly written, too, with options for answering that fail to divide the space of possible answers in any remotely sensible way.
Yeah, and this is because most of them are written by users fo the site. At least at one point, if you answered a certain number of questions you got to write one; I'm not sure if that's still the case. I never wrote any myself.
Questions like that are probably useful for screening, wouldn't you think? Where one of the answers seems almost impossibly unlikely, having it pop up would tell you a lot.
Yes, but I think neb's point is that the questions are coming from a really, really wide range of background assumptions and expectations, which makes some of them so irrelevant as to not even be useful for screening.
At some point in the past I had the ability to create new questions, but I don't anymore; too bad, because I wanted to make the following question:
Q: How clever is this?
A1: Too clever by half.
A2: Clever, but not as clever as it thinks it is.
A3: Not clever
A4: Just clever enough
(Or something like that, I hadn't gotten the answers completely sorted. Getting some bleaching w/r/t "clever" now, too.)
The questions are rarely not awful. I've quit for the moment and am not on any other site, mostly because it doesn't seem to be worth paying for a babysitter to go meet some stranger. Once my life is more stable or if it never gets better and I just give up, I'll try again.
It's 4:45 and I'm ready for bed. One child sick and thus resting and not needing much, very nearly two more IKEA pieces made and plenty of chores done but a whole house's worth to do. The new cat's kittens (only two! so with plenty of lobbying to keep them) should arrive in the next several days. This is just regular life and feels functional rather than super, though I know from experience that I could do worse.
I'd have liked the question in 174 and gone with the second answer but accepted one, two, or four from prospective matches.
That could be a question.
"You are worth paying for a babysitter because...."
A1: Just look at these/this.
A2: Babysitting isn't that expensive if you exploit illegal labor.
A3: I'm a good listener.
A4: If you don't enjoy our date, I'll reimburse you."
I think "do you like assembling IKEA furniture?" would make a good question. (If nothing else, it would let the people who hate to be able to hook up with those who do like it.)
I'd have joined MobyCupid even without a sample, but now I'm definitely sold.
178: It would be worth it to screen out the people who can't hold their own and want to mooch. Never again!
I don't exactly love putting together Ikea furniture but I feel a sense of accomplishment from having done it. Especially from having been right about which items will fit into the oddly shaped smallish spaces in my apartment.
My shoulders and feet are still tired today from what I put together on Saturday. Only two wine racks repurposed as extra shelves in the top of my airing cupboard*, but I had to assemble them around/behind some pipes so partly at full reach of my arms and all while up on the balls of my feet on top of a step stool. While I was figuring out how to fit them I kept losing hold of the then only loosely fitted together pieces which would fall back and hit me in the face. At long last however I can take out some fucking sheets** without taking out everything on top of them and getting the singles and doubles mixed up again and having to unfold everything yet again to check.
*not what I actually call it
** alas not literally so
I'd have [...] gone with the second answer but accepted one, two, or four from prospective matches.
Me too!
160: It's how I met the woman I'm currently dating. As the age range gets higher the number of people looking for just a hookup goes down.
Right. Because you either need to go out (and pay for a babysitter) or bring a stranger into the house where you have kids (and risk bad movie of the week stuff).
I guess you could just hook up with the babysitter if you want to try to be like Ben Affleck.
And everybody always said Matt Damon was the smart one.
Didn't Damon marry a friend's nanny? That seems a bit awkward, if not tacky.
Unless they ran away from the park leaving the baby behind or something, it seems fine.
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You should message me if
You like hand-written letters.
Smart, quirky and Jew-ish.
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Pretty sure that's as clear a sign as I'm going to get.
Waiting for a burning bush seems inappropriate.
That's the emoticon I invented not long ago for when you're so surprised you vomit an exclamation point, by the way.
I thought it was a necktie knocked sideways.
Waiting for a burning bush seems inappropriate.
That part comes afterward.
183: Thanks, that's helpful. I think I might still be in the "just looking for a hookup" demographic myself, though.
I'm going to start a service for people who want to spend only their last moments together: icefloer
197: Swipe away! It's quite fun and there's a decent chance of getting laid. Just make sure you use a cool shot of you as your primary one, since it's mostly based on looks initially.
184: Obviously one pressing reason to hurry Selah through school is that it means in 15 years I can be free to do whatever I want with my life rather than 16.
I hear rolling pants is a popular thing.
Oh god I did that for the first time last week. Officially ancient!
Do not go quietly into that good night. Capri pants.
Go gentle, and I'd certainly wear them before shorts. Perhaps at some point I'll be mature enough to manage shorts as a matter of course.
Death before dishonor. Capri pants before shorts.
Didn't Damon marry a friend's nanny? That seems a bit awkward, if not tacky.
If they love each other, why the fuck shouldn't they? Good lord...
Let's be a little practical. "Love" isn't as easy to measure as social status and both are harder to measure than wealth.
In the face of overwhelming odds, I was left with only one option: I had to social mobility the shit out of it.
206: Nope, he married a bartender he met while shooting a film.
I can't believe I know that.