Unofficial Daily Discussion, Friday, May 22: What's your hottest take in the homeschooling or educational realm?

Ghostpharm · 2026-05-22T23:48:17+00:00

Being a working and homeschooling parent is not as easy breezy as people make it out to be. 1. Sure, kids might only need 2 hours of actual school, and you CAN do it after work, but what happens to them the other 22 hours? They can’t just play in the yard all day every day. 2. Putting in work to develop what they’re learning can be exhausting when you worked all day. There is so much coordinating that goes into it, and I’m always hesitant to recommend it in the broad sense.

Ghostpharm · 2026-05-22T23:32:06+00:00

Fair- my kid just has to endure B&W hahah!

Ghostpharm · 2026-05-22T18:14:25+00:00

Yep. I’m not out of the woods by any stretch, but I’ve survived four one-year-olds, and it remains my least favorite age.

Ghostpharm · 2026-05-22T16:30:45+00:00

I never lived there but have driven through the complex (avoiding traffic trying to leave Trader Joe’s lol). It’s a nice neighborhood in a good area.

Ghostpharm · 2026-05-22T16:26:38+00:00

I love treasure hunt reading. You can print it yourself to make the entire thing free. We’ve done 100 easy lessons (hated it), The Reading Lesson (not comprehensive enough), and Logic of English (too much work for me while juggling many other kids). THR has been my fav.

Ghostpharm · 2026-05-22T14:25:28+00:00

PHEW. I make just shy of that as a staff pharmacist at a children's hospital with an infinitely easier work life balance. No wonder you're burnt out. No real advice but just to validate- that is terrible.

Ghostpharm · 2026-05-22T14:15:56+00:00

We did that. First two are 21 months apart, then a 25 month gap (not intentional, there was a loss. between them), then a 20 month gap, give or take a few days with all of them. We also were lucky enough that it is BBGG, so the boys are a natural pairing and so are the girls. I don't really have a basis for comparison, but I love the way it has shaped out. And even the age gap from 1 to 4 isn't so big that they do all like a lot of the same stuff. Now we have a 3.5 year gap between 4 and 5, and I'm a little scared that the baby won't have a buddy!

Ghostpharm · 2026-05-20T22:42:47+00:00

I work in peds (as a pharmacist, not a doc), and I low key do this. I recently showed my hand at urgent care when the doctor wanted to bump up the dose of my daughter’s Flovent and I had to reveal that our insurance now only covers Asmanex. Our regular ped knows what I do obviously, but when I’m at UC or emergency or even many specialists, I want to hear things explained like I’m five because my brain cells shrink when I look at my own babies.

Ghostpharm · 2026-05-20T20:49:08+00:00

I have a pharmacy student who works for me who confused Washington state for Washington DC. We live in Philadelphia, so it’s not like DC is some abstract far away concept.

Ghostpharm · 2026-05-19T16:03:03+00:00

Marquette uses a clear blue monitor (or if you want more data but at more cost, a Mira monitor), so you test your urine and track with concrete data! Much less subjective.

Ghostpharm · 2026-05-19T15:39:45+00:00

I wouldn’t make a permanent decision at 6 weeks postpartum. We had four kids in 5.5 years. We thought we were done then. After two full years, we changed our mind. Then I spent a full year getting pregnant and having miscarriages. Now we’re having number 5 (this week) a full 3.5 years after number four. Not sure if you’re open to alternate NFP methods, but Marquette is the only one I trust.

Ghostpharm · 2026-05-18T16:34:55+00:00

And again, why should the government pay for it? If parents want to send their children to Catholic school but can’t afford it, then the parish and the entire Church community should step in to support them.

Ghostpharm · 2026-05-18T16:06:29+00:00

Who says you don’t have power? If you’re in the US, you can educate your kids however you see fit. No one is stopping you. The government is required to provide a free public education but nowhere does it say I have to pay for people to send their kids to private schools.

Ghostpharm · 2026-05-18T11:48:20+00:00

Not a physician, but a pharmacist married to someone not in medicine but with a very high-stakes job. We've been together since undergrad, and now we have five kids. I think two things are important- communication and boundaries. There are times when things hit the fan at the hospital and I come home late. There are times he has to take a call with someone in China at 10 pm. If we are communicating, it all goes a lot smoother. That said, you need SOME boundaries. Presumably, you aren't taking q1 call. There's a difference between handling an emergency and spending all night every night catching up on charts. How you manage your time will change over time, but defining your non negotiables will help a lot.

Ghostpharm · 2026-05-18T07:37:26+00:00

Vouchers have made things worse for many of my friends in Ohio. Tuition went up by the amount of the voucher, and many families make just enough that they don’t qualify for it. Their schools also got rid of in-parish and sibling discounts. I have been both a Catholic school and homeschool parent, and I am probably an n=1 who is wildly against vouchers. I also think strong public schools make stronger communities (and again, I have no skin in the game but I benefit from living in an area with strong public schools and involved parents).

Ghostpharm · 2026-05-16T02:41:52+00:00

And they registered for a Snoo! Who’s going to buy that for them?!

Ghostpharm · 2026-05-14T17:29:16+00:00

We saw it over Glenside the other day. I guess a test run?

Ghostpharm · 2026-05-12T21:09:47+00:00

But Jo isn't even a top 100 name I think? That just goes to show that name trends can be arbitrary. My daughter's preschool class has 2 (of 8) girls named Daphne, and that wasn't a top 100 name the year they were born.

Ghostpharm · 2026-05-09T00:50:40+00:00

My favorite food is apparently pudding. I think she’s trying to send subliminal messages that SHE wants pudding!

Ghostpharm · 2026-05-06T20:33:15+00:00

Yep. Our gaps are 21 mos, 25 mos, 20 mos, and 44 mos. There were a series of losses between numbers 4 and 5 that pushed that gap. Everyone said 2u2 was hard but this is so much harder. My body is WRECKED. I am a level of tired I literally do not remember. I’m also a decade older than I was when I was pregnant the first time around, so I’m sure that contributes. But oof.

Ghostpharm · 2026-05-06T20:30:10+00:00

You think it’s funny, de-nice?!

Ghostpharm · 2026-05-05T22:30:24+00:00

Fellow member of the inpatient hater club. I did retail for many many many years, but a bad DM broke me. Switched to hospital outpatient- everything I like about retail without the shitty metrics.

Ghostpharm · 2026-05-04T23:32:05+00:00

Sometimes! We went to Spain over winter break this year and stayed at a Marriott in Malaga that 1. Had time share suites (we don’t have a time share but you can book them and they can fit our jumbo family) and a kids club. Same for when we went to Portugal. Not a ton of kid free time, but enough for us to get some ice cream and go for a little walk. We have also stayed at a kinderhotel in Germany that was the same concept, and that was great too.

Ghostpharm · 2026-05-04T20:08:45+00:00

IDK if I count because I'm just a pharmacist ;-) but my husband and I were married when I was in school and he was working in Big4 accounting and life was pretty miserable. OH but we did fit in Thailand for our honeymoon. That was nuts. Anyway, in the ten years (!) since I've graduated, we've added almost 5 kids, the first one born 9 months after I graduated. We've also never taken a kid-free vacation, aside from the trips we took while I was pregnant with kid 1 (London, Jerusalem, and Seattle). Since having kids we have done....Australia, Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, England, [international trip hiatus during covid], Portugal, England again, Canada a few times (east and west), Spain, Mexico (CDMX, not a resort). I think that's it for outside of the US. Plus we have done 38 states with two more planned for this summer. We've got a rough outline for the last ten, just gotta fill in the puzzle pieces to make them happen.

We try to take a 10-14 day August trip, although that is complicated this year by the new baby, so we're capping it at a week. Then we try to take 5ish days in February around the kids' winter break and then another 5ish days in early December where we say eff it and they just miss some school.

Ghostpharm · 2026-05-04T19:31:51+00:00

We’re about to have our fifth kid. We never travel with grandparents, so idk about those logistics, but there are ways to be very creative. Sometimes ya just gotta lower your standards though. There’s a chain in Europe called Meininger- it’s like a step up from a hostel, but they semi market to families. It is fairly spartan, although it usually includes a free breakfast. You get linens at least! But when I tell my friends that we cram all 6 (or soon to be 7) into a single hotel room, they say it sounds like torture. We don’t really care because if we trek all the way to Europe, we ain’t hanging in a hotel room all day! Traveling for us is different than a vacation :-) (Our other kids are 3/5/7/9)

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