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Mar. 2nd, 2026 09:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnTime to update on the kiddos!
- K and another parent I know had both strongly recommended a no-electronics-in-the-bedroom policy for what I suppose are obvious reasons and which became more and more obvious would be a good idea in our particular family last year. This was already the case for A. E. and I had agreed to do it this school year, and she went as far as not having her cell in the bedroom, but resisted every attempt I made to enforce her laptop not in her bedroom -- until Christmastime. I don't even remember what the inciting incident was, but it was something along the lines of how she was on her computer when she'd said she would be working on something else and then got all stressed because she hadn't gotten the stuff done she needed to, and I finally just put my foot down (and she agreed). It has been really great. She still spends a lot of time on her laptop, but she's more present in the family, she talks to me more, it's easier to do family time with her and A, I have a much better idea how much time she's spending doing homework/math vs. how much time she's spending looking up Blood on the Clocktower playthroughs. (I mean, I don't look over her shoulder, but I'll ask about it sometimes, or she'll tell me what she's up to, or it's clear she's writing up a problem because she's glued to the keyboard and she doesn't actually post on social media.)
- E. is DONE with AP World History, she worked super hard on it and got through it. She was super stressed about her grades and I kept repeating that she just had to do her best and let's not get too caught up in grades (she is very caught up in grades -- I don't think she's thinking about colleges, she just has these friends who are high-achieving, some of them extremely so), and she would get super stressed before every test because they had a bunch of them and she knew her grade depended very heavily on those. When all her grades were added up, the average came up to 3.48, which is an A-, even though she had come out with top grades in the final exam and also had attained the stricture of at least one 4/4 on each set of assessments, and she was pretty sure she was, gradewise, the top kid in her class. Okay, I said, I don't think that your teacher can get away with giving no one in the class an A, and I am pretty sure she will do some kind of curve, but even if she doesn't, you really did do your best and it is what it is. (And I think it is pretty great that although she grumbled a bit, she actually didn't worry about it too much once she got her exam grade back. I think she worries the most about looking stupid, and once she realized she wasn't looking stupid she relaxed a lot.) And lo, a couple of days later her grade magically flipped to a 3.50, which is an A. She is very very proud of that A, which she feels like she legit earned (whereas she isn't as proud of her math and science A's, as she didn't work nearly as hard for those). I'm not entirely sure the stress was worth the accomplishment, but I'm also not sure it wasn't!
- She is ALSO done with English, which is such an utter relief to both of us I can't even tell you. She ended up doing fine in the class but only because I extensively tutored her in English the entire semester. So she isn't as proud of that class either because she had a lot of help, whereas she did AP:WH all herself. I think she did learn a lot, so I'm glad about that, but gosh was it a slog.
- It's actually kind of astonishing how much less stressed she is about school this semester without either of those classes. I don't really know what to do about this information. I worry this means she will have a lot of anxiety with classes like the ones I had in college where the grade was conditioned mostly on the midterm and final. But on the other hand maybe that means she is anxious about it twice a semester instead of every other week like in AP:WH, so maybe that's better? And she can almost certainly get away with taking fewer English and history classes in college. Also I talked to a parent whose kid has the same teacher this term and was considering contacting the teacher about how stressful it is, and at least E never needed me to step in, so it could be worse!
- Spanish and AP Chem are her two academic classes; she also has Orchestra and Academic Mentoring. AP Chem is super fun for her as a lot of her friends are in it, and not hard for her. Her Spanish teacher seems muuuuch better than the one last year, though my bar is low: current!teacher does not give them multiple choice tests and every week she mentions something new she's learning, like the preterite or direct/indirect objects! Orchestra is fine. E. thinks A. should play in it. Academic mentoring is interesting; she's helping out with "math compaction 2/3," which as far as I can tell is a mix of Algebra II and geometry (it's the "honors"-level class before Precalculus), and I think this is really great. I think she can improve her explanation/tutoring skills (which are not very good) and this is a good class to do it in.
- It turns out the community college math class she didn't take last term is running this term, but it was oversubscribed so she never had a chance to get in (high school students have last priority, which is as it should be, to be fair). So she'll be doing it self-study through UIUC's NetMath program, which is rather more expensive than I thought it was when I signed her up. I guess we'll see if it's any good.
- She took the AIME (American Invitational Math Exam) and was cast into despair for a few days because she didn't think she did as well as she was hoping and was worried that she might not make the next level (which even so she should have easily made, and would have easily made with her projected score even three years ago, but the over-the-top cheating these days means that it's getting harder and harder). But it turns out she both did better than she thought she did and got the email she'd made it, whew.
HOWEVER. the Mathematical Association of America (which runs these tests) appears to suck A LOT. So much so that I found myself writing an entire rant about it, which I will probably post tomorrow as I am not finished yet :P
- She did get to go to an in-person math competition (with D) a couple of weeks ago which she greatly enjoyed and got to hang out with some of her camp friends and play Blood on the Clocktower with them. (She did not distinguish herself in the slightest, as we all expected, and that was totally fine.) All the travel went well, but D got sick with something flu-like after that and is just getting back to normal.
- She volunteered at regional Mathcounts this year as she did last year, and had a great time!
- There has been progress on the anxiety front: last year getting her to post on discord something super innocuous only happened after much negotiation and sometimes me writing the actual post and the two of us pressing the post button together. She still does not want to do it and still gives a lot of pushback and asks if people will think she's weird and maybe has posted two? comments this year when I made her, but she did write those two comments herself and press the button herself. Baby steps! She is also off her anxiety medication right now, and I can tell that she has more mood swings without it (especially last semester), but it seems like she's actually okay for the most part.
- A is actually having a great year; there's a small group of boys in his grade and he's friends with all, er, three of the others. Plus a couple of the older kids. He is really starting to talk more and socialize more, and on my side I've been better about setting up playdates (easier when there are like four kids to choose from instead of one!)
- Hilariously, part of that coming into his own is that he is starting to post on the AoPS forums, and I'm glad that he has found an audience for his propensity to spam with emoticons (there is literally a thread called "The Spam Thread" that he posts to regularly), although I am also watching it, lol. But he's made a virtual friend who is into LotR and as a result he is rereading it, so so far this has all been good!
- Though this week there was this Minecraft incident where apparently A. inadvertently offended one of his classmates because he didn't really communicate properly about something he was doing in Minecraft and then didn't realize that classmate was upset about it. Which is very on-brand for this kid.
- I asked A's head of school whether the school was going to run next year, and I got "I am pretty sure it will but it's complicated," which is not really the answer I wanted to hear, but I appreciate that he is honest! (Complicating this is that I really do not know how to read the "I am pretty sure it will" part; I do believe he is being honest with me, but I have now seen enough instances of the HoS not getting things quite right that I don't know how far to trust his judgment.) Sooooo I've put A. in the lottery for the hybrid homeschool charter, just in case, and we also applied for the local Catholic school that we looked at last year, which I think would be great for his English, and he would be bored to tears in math.
There are some reasons to believe that the school is not doing too badly, and also other reasons to believe that it's running on fumes. Basically, Lower School (K-4) (as far as I can tell) is very healthy and happy; Upper School is... running at about half capacity, and the new families seem to be very happy, and the old families are skittish and I think we will lose some of them, and it doesn't seem like there are that many kids applying for upper school. (And no one is coming up from lower school this year due to old deficits in Lower School; next year that will hopefully be very different.) And coupled with that the head of school is... great with educational pedagogy (which the parents love) and works super hard, and also has never headed a school before and in fact I think he has less managerial experience than I have, and also is pretty clearly neurodiverse himself in a way that is, ummmm, challenging for the type of role he is in which requires a lot of people skills.
- I had this hyperfocus moment last week where instead of getting, like, work done, I took a few hours vacation time and instead looked up a bunch of writing curricula because I had gotten spooked by E's English class (or lack of writing skill thereof), although I do think he is a stronger writer in general. sooooo I might be starting that with him. (This one and this one.) Am I essentially doing the things I'd do to homeschool him even though he is in this fancy private school. Er. Well. He's not enrolled in a math class outside of school right now? :) (Fine, he's enrolled in AoPS Programming, which he has been looking forward to all year and which he is loving.)
- A. is not taller than me yet, but he has done this 5th grade thing I knew was going to happen, where last year he was a little kid and this year he's become a pre-adolescent (though he still does act like a silly kid quite a bit, he knows he's our cute baby and totally milks that sometimes, and he hasn't had his growth spurt yet so is still shorter than I am). With E. I was always looking forward to her growing up, because she got monotonically easier to be with in basically all possible ways as she matured, and there was/is not too much I miss from previous years. With A. there is totally a (mild! he's also getting more awesome!) grieving period when he grows from one stage to the next, and I knew parents were sad when their kids grew up but I never really understood it before A. Next year he's gonna get that growth spurt and move even closer towards adolescence and I don't think he'll be as cuddly and I'm trying to get in all the cuddles I can right now.
- A. is having a birthday party with eight kids invited! (Seven have responded yes, waiting on the eighth.) A. hasn't had a proper birthday party in a few years for a couple of reasons. (E.'s last birthday party was when she was in first grade, after which she pointed out to me that she didn't actually want a birthday party.) At his request, we are going to the local escape room and then to his favorite pizza place. This was such a low-key birthday party to plan, it was great, I reserved the escape room and D called the pizza place and I texted the parents. Maybe D or E will make a cake for it, maybe not, and either way it will be fine. I think because birthday parties seem to be extremely optional at this age that it's much less stressful because I don't feel like it has to live up to some kind of standard, because there isn't a standard anymore!
- K and another parent I know had both strongly recommended a no-electronics-in-the-bedroom policy for what I suppose are obvious reasons and which became more and more obvious would be a good idea in our particular family last year. This was already the case for A. E. and I had agreed to do it this school year, and she went as far as not having her cell in the bedroom, but resisted every attempt I made to enforce her laptop not in her bedroom -- until Christmastime. I don't even remember what the inciting incident was, but it was something along the lines of how she was on her computer when she'd said she would be working on something else and then got all stressed because she hadn't gotten the stuff done she needed to, and I finally just put my foot down (and she agreed). It has been really great. She still spends a lot of time on her laptop, but she's more present in the family, she talks to me more, it's easier to do family time with her and A, I have a much better idea how much time she's spending doing homework/math vs. how much time she's spending looking up Blood on the Clocktower playthroughs. (I mean, I don't look over her shoulder, but I'll ask about it sometimes, or she'll tell me what she's up to, or it's clear she's writing up a problem because she's glued to the keyboard and she doesn't actually post on social media.)
- E. is DONE with AP World History, she worked super hard on it and got through it. She was super stressed about her grades and I kept repeating that she just had to do her best and let's not get too caught up in grades (she is very caught up in grades -- I don't think she's thinking about colleges, she just has these friends who are high-achieving, some of them extremely so), and she would get super stressed before every test because they had a bunch of them and she knew her grade depended very heavily on those. When all her grades were added up, the average came up to 3.48, which is an A-, even though she had come out with top grades in the final exam and also had attained the stricture of at least one 4/4 on each set of assessments, and she was pretty sure she was, gradewise, the top kid in her class. Okay, I said, I don't think that your teacher can get away with giving no one in the class an A, and I am pretty sure she will do some kind of curve, but even if she doesn't, you really did do your best and it is what it is. (And I think it is pretty great that although she grumbled a bit, she actually didn't worry about it too much once she got her exam grade back. I think she worries the most about looking stupid, and once she realized she wasn't looking stupid she relaxed a lot.) And lo, a couple of days later her grade magically flipped to a 3.50, which is an A. She is very very proud of that A, which she feels like she legit earned (whereas she isn't as proud of her math and science A's, as she didn't work nearly as hard for those). I'm not entirely sure the stress was worth the accomplishment, but I'm also not sure it wasn't!
- She is ALSO done with English, which is such an utter relief to both of us I can't even tell you. She ended up doing fine in the class but only because I extensively tutored her in English the entire semester. So she isn't as proud of that class either because she had a lot of help, whereas she did AP:WH all herself. I think she did learn a lot, so I'm glad about that, but gosh was it a slog.
- It's actually kind of astonishing how much less stressed she is about school this semester without either of those classes. I don't really know what to do about this information. I worry this means she will have a lot of anxiety with classes like the ones I had in college where the grade was conditioned mostly on the midterm and final. But on the other hand maybe that means she is anxious about it twice a semester instead of every other week like in AP:WH, so maybe that's better? And she can almost certainly get away with taking fewer English and history classes in college. Also I talked to a parent whose kid has the same teacher this term and was considering contacting the teacher about how stressful it is, and at least E never needed me to step in, so it could be worse!
- Spanish and AP Chem are her two academic classes; she also has Orchestra and Academic Mentoring. AP Chem is super fun for her as a lot of her friends are in it, and not hard for her. Her Spanish teacher seems muuuuch better than the one last year, though my bar is low: current!teacher does not give them multiple choice tests and every week she mentions something new she's learning, like the preterite or direct/indirect objects! Orchestra is fine. E. thinks A. should play in it. Academic mentoring is interesting; she's helping out with "math compaction 2/3," which as far as I can tell is a mix of Algebra II and geometry (it's the "honors"-level class before Precalculus), and I think this is really great. I think she can improve her explanation/tutoring skills (which are not very good) and this is a good class to do it in.
- It turns out the community college math class she didn't take last term is running this term, but it was oversubscribed so she never had a chance to get in (high school students have last priority, which is as it should be, to be fair). So she'll be doing it self-study through UIUC's NetMath program, which is rather more expensive than I thought it was when I signed her up. I guess we'll see if it's any good.
- She took the AIME (American Invitational Math Exam) and was cast into despair for a few days because she didn't think she did as well as she was hoping and was worried that she might not make the next level (which even so she should have easily made, and would have easily made with her projected score even three years ago, but the over-the-top cheating these days means that it's getting harder and harder). But it turns out she both did better than she thought she did and got the email she'd made it, whew.
HOWEVER. the Mathematical Association of America (which runs these tests) appears to suck A LOT. So much so that I found myself writing an entire rant about it, which I will probably post tomorrow as I am not finished yet :P
- She did get to go to an in-person math competition (with D) a couple of weeks ago which she greatly enjoyed and got to hang out with some of her camp friends and play Blood on the Clocktower with them. (She did not distinguish herself in the slightest, as we all expected, and that was totally fine.) All the travel went well, but D got sick with something flu-like after that and is just getting back to normal.
- She volunteered at regional Mathcounts this year as she did last year, and had a great time!
- There has been progress on the anxiety front: last year getting her to post on discord something super innocuous only happened after much negotiation and sometimes me writing the actual post and the two of us pressing the post button together. She still does not want to do it and still gives a lot of pushback and asks if people will think she's weird and maybe has posted two? comments this year when I made her, but she did write those two comments herself and press the button herself. Baby steps! She is also off her anxiety medication right now, and I can tell that she has more mood swings without it (especially last semester), but it seems like she's actually okay for the most part.
- A is actually having a great year; there's a small group of boys in his grade and he's friends with all, er, three of the others. Plus a couple of the older kids. He is really starting to talk more and socialize more, and on my side I've been better about setting up playdates (easier when there are like four kids to choose from instead of one!)
- Hilariously, part of that coming into his own is that he is starting to post on the AoPS forums, and I'm glad that he has found an audience for his propensity to spam with emoticons (there is literally a thread called "The Spam Thread" that he posts to regularly), although I am also watching it, lol. But he's made a virtual friend who is into LotR and as a result he is rereading it, so so far this has all been good!
- Though this week there was this Minecraft incident where apparently A. inadvertently offended one of his classmates because he didn't really communicate properly about something he was doing in Minecraft and then didn't realize that classmate was upset about it. Which is very on-brand for this kid.
- I asked A's head of school whether the school was going to run next year, and I got "I am pretty sure it will but it's complicated," which is not really the answer I wanted to hear, but I appreciate that he is honest! (Complicating this is that I really do not know how to read the "I am pretty sure it will" part; I do believe he is being honest with me, but I have now seen enough instances of the HoS not getting things quite right that I don't know how far to trust his judgment.) Sooooo I've put A. in the lottery for the hybrid homeschool charter, just in case, and we also applied for the local Catholic school that we looked at last year, which I think would be great for his English, and he would be bored to tears in math.
There are some reasons to believe that the school is not doing too badly, and also other reasons to believe that it's running on fumes. Basically, Lower School (K-4) (as far as I can tell) is very healthy and happy; Upper School is... running at about half capacity, and the new families seem to be very happy, and the old families are skittish and I think we will lose some of them, and it doesn't seem like there are that many kids applying for upper school. (And no one is coming up from lower school this year due to old deficits in Lower School; next year that will hopefully be very different.) And coupled with that the head of school is... great with educational pedagogy (which the parents love) and works super hard, and also has never headed a school before and in fact I think he has less managerial experience than I have, and also is pretty clearly neurodiverse himself in a way that is, ummmm, challenging for the type of role he is in which requires a lot of people skills.
- I had this hyperfocus moment last week where instead of getting, like, work done, I took a few hours vacation time and instead looked up a bunch of writing curricula because I had gotten spooked by E's English class (or lack of writing skill thereof), although I do think he is a stronger writer in general. sooooo I might be starting that with him. (This one and this one.) Am I essentially doing the things I'd do to homeschool him even though he is in this fancy private school. Er. Well. He's not enrolled in a math class outside of school right now? :) (Fine, he's enrolled in AoPS Programming, which he has been looking forward to all year and which he is loving.)
- A. is not taller than me yet, but he has done this 5th grade thing I knew was going to happen, where last year he was a little kid and this year he's become a pre-adolescent (though he still does act like a silly kid quite a bit, he knows he's our cute baby and totally milks that sometimes, and he hasn't had his growth spurt yet so is still shorter than I am). With E. I was always looking forward to her growing up, because she got monotonically easier to be with in basically all possible ways as she matured, and there was/is not too much I miss from previous years. With A. there is totally a (mild! he's also getting more awesome!) grieving period when he grows from one stage to the next, and I knew parents were sad when their kids grew up but I never really understood it before A. Next year he's gonna get that growth spurt and move even closer towards adolescence and I don't think he'll be as cuddly and I'm trying to get in all the cuddles I can right now.
- A. is having a birthday party with eight kids invited! (Seven have responded yes, waiting on the eighth.) A. hasn't had a proper birthday party in a few years for a couple of reasons. (E.'s last birthday party was when she was in first grade, after which she pointed out to me that she didn't actually want a birthday party.) At his request, we are going to the local escape room and then to his favorite pizza place. This was such a low-key birthday party to plan, it was great, I reserved the escape room and D called the pizza place and I texted the parents. Maybe D or E will make a cake for it, maybe not, and either way it will be fine. I think because birthday parties seem to be extremely optional at this age that it's much less stressful because I don't feel like it has to live up to some kind of standard, because there isn't a standard anymore!
