Splurge or Save Thursday: Rebecca Gold Hoop Earrings

Late in the day, but does anyone have suggestions for read aloud books for a 4-year-old ? We’ve done Zoey and Sassafras and all the Heidi Heckelbeck books available at the library (ugh). Then we did Charlotte’s Web and the Wild Robot books – the latter mostly held her interest but were maybe a bit too advanced. Would love new ideas.

When did 100th day of school become such A Thing? I don’t remember it from my childhood at all, but seems like every parent I know has to do something for it. Anyway it’s upon us now (Midwest, we started school at the very beginning of August). My 5 year old’s teacher has instructed them to wear an item with 100 of something on it. She suggested buttons. WTF? Who has time to sew 100 buttons on a shirt? Ugh. Any brilliant ideas that weren’t too time-consuming? My husband said we should just buy our kid a bunch of stickers and have her put them on a shirt but I feel like they won’t stay.

I posted a few times about my 2nd grader with ?ADHD and our upcoming neuropsych eval. Backstory is that we had been having Major Life Impacting Problems with her behavior from basically birth-1st grade, were at the point where we were considering medication or other interventions, her teacher encouraged us to explore this- she wasn’t struggling academically but she was essentially getting all the accommodations the kid in class with ADHD got despite nothing in her file. She was even to the point where when we had our spring conference, her teacher told us, “She’s meeting grade level for reading. She really could be much more advanced, but she got silly during the testing and I wasn’t’ able to measure after X point, she didn’t want to continue, not that she couldn’t….but X is definitely above grade level so I have no concerns about her reading.” We got referrals and made an appointment (6 month wait list) for a neuropsych eval and then basically the day she started 2nd grade she had MAJOR changes and we have been much, much better ever since. She gets up early on weekdays to give herself time to get ready, packs her own lunch and snack so make sure it’s what she likes, and is the only one of our 3 kids to regularly make the bus on time (or early). Unless she gets distracted…in which case all bets are off but she made her own personal checklist to stop this from happening. This was the kid who was late at least weekly last year and who had to be driven because she couldn’t/wouldn’t get up and ready on time.

Well, we had the first meeting yesterday, which was a parent intake meeting with us and the doctor. I felt so strange–like some overanxious parent trying to convince him my very normal kid was “not normal enough.” If this meeting were last spring, I’d have a laundry list of concerns. But when we met yesterday so much of it was “well it used to be that_________” Thing is, we strongly believe that the core underlying issues of inattention, emotional dysregulation etc are there–we just don’t know anymore how much of it she will grow out of, or need some coaching/tools/supports to get through life successfully and happily (this being the most important). We don’t know if she just had an emotional growth spurt + a teacher that she respects and a good set of classmates this year, or if this is her true new normal. We don’t want her to hit upper elem or middle school when she needs to be a “self starter” or keep track of assignments/homework and be completely overwhelmed. Driving a lot of this is my husband, who is the tree from which our little ADHD apple fell, and he feels strongly that if he had known “what brain he was working with” as a young kid he would have been happier–“I would have learned to work with it, not fight it every step of the way.”

Anyway, I think there are some of you that have kids with (or with suspected) ADHD that are now “in a good place”– can you talk to how this may or may not have changed over time? Advice as we move through this process, which is 2 long sessions of evaluation with the kiddo over the next couple weeks? Things to make sure we include?

Also, separately, is it typical for kids to not give a flying F about sports or other competitive outcomes? I have 3 kids and the other two aren’t Elite Athletes at all, but they play sports and are happily part of a team. They are bummed when they lose a game and happy when they win. This kiddo…she just DNGAF. Like, she’ll do the sport if she likes playing but if they are down she doesn’t care and doesn’t’ try harder (sometimes just decides she’s done playing, thanks!). This kiddo doesn’t care what other kids do, or how she measures up in any way. On the one hand, that seems awesome…but also, I never played sports but still have a competitive streak in me that she seems to just…not have. Is it odd for me to think this is odd?

does anyone else have a kid who is like a completely different kid during the school year. my daughter loves kindergarten, but she is a total monster before/after school. challenging in the morning, hard to get to bed before 9pm, then exhausted in the morning, etc. has these meltdowns every night and basically cannot go to sleep until she has a sobbing meltdown, sometimes brief ~5ish minutes like some kind of release, but other times 45 min. usually these meltdowns begin with her bothering her twin sister. while traveling over winter break she was her sweet self again and i felt like i got to actually enjoy her.

I’m years late to this “party” but I have Covid for the first time and am wondering how your progression went, if you had a “standard” mild, symptomatic case.

I really don’t know when my symptoms started, because I could be conflating things, but I had a sore throat for four days, then came down with pink eye, which turned into mild congestion three days later. The next day I felt awful, like a flu, and that is when I had an immediate, dark positive test. (Didn’t test before, thought it was just pink eye and winter blah.) The next day my chest felt better and my energy was improving, but felt like a bad head cold. Today, I’m much improved, but have a lot of snot and slight pressure in my head.

I plan to test again Saturday, and continue til negative (per advice of my doctor and my own knowledge.) But, does the snot stage continue indefinitely?? I’m more than a week past my initial sore throat, so possibly approaching end of contagious period?

(And this is why return to school and daycare should have a hard metric, lol.)

Thank you all – especially SC – for the awesome NOLA reccs! I’ll definitely post more specific questions as the trip (hopefully) comes together.

We live in a city that shares a lot (but certainly not ALL) of the cultural stuff as NOLA, and has a lot of NOLA and Louisiana natives that live here. In fact one of my colleagues has family that works at Cafe Du Monde ;) NOLA has SUCH a special vibe and I’m excited to introduce it to our kids.