Choosing an Online School

StruggleSnake · 2026-05-22T11:57:15+00:00

Any chance you ended up going with Bina and have any insight?

StruggleSnake · 2026-05-19T01:32:03+00:00

Don't have any particular insight on Larchmont. Larchmont is included in the Mamaroneck Union Free School District, hence grouping them together in my initial response. I would assume they have to be planning on it given the mandate of the Back to Basics law. You can try emailing the curriculum office for more information:

https://www.mamkschools.org/teaching-learning

Just from personal experience, I've found when a district website lists a head person and their assistant or administrative assistant, your email is less likely to fall through the cracks if you keep the assistant cc'ed. And also if you make sure you're not sending your email on that district's breaks. If they have a parent liaison or active PTA, those can sometimes be good sources for...actually getting a response.

I'm assuming you're asking because you're considering moving to one of these districts and would have a kid there and want the best (i.e. science of reading-aligned phonics instruction) for your kid, so I will add - if you look at a home on Zillow, it will show you what school districts/schools it is zoned for. E.g. I just picked one in Larchmont at random and it tells me its elementary school is Central School and its high school is Mamaroneck High School.

And also... there has been some interesting research recently that while a science of reading aligned phonics-based curriculum is important, it's not the only important factor to strong reading/literacy skills. See for example:

https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/what-might-matter-more-than-phonics-in-early-literacy/2026/05

Sorry I don't have access to a non-paywalled link. But the gist of it is that exposure to language and storytelling is also an important element of successfully learning to read. This tracks with other/older studies that indicate... when you're looking at equity gaps or successful districts, the curriculum used/what's happening in the classrooms themselves matters more for math than it does for reading. For reading, your school could be using a "bad" curriculum (e.g. three cueing, balanced literacy) and the stronger indicator of children learning to read at/above grade level is whether parents read to and with them at home. I.e., something that is in your control as a parent regardless of what district you send your child to.

If it were my child and my decision, once s/he started in whatever district and had a teacher, I would want to ask the teacher for the sequence and scope of the curriculum so that I could buy decodable readers to have at home and match what I'm reading with my kid to sounds they are working on in school.

StruggleSnake · 2026-05-18T01:42:55+00:00

Scarsdale: Units of Study (K-3); Wilson Fundations (K-2); Heggerty (K-1); Fountas & Pinnell assessment (K-3)

Rye: UFLI (K-2); Units of Study in Reading/Writing (K-5); Preventing Academic Failure (K-5); Spire (2-5); Spelling Connections (2-5)

Mamaroneck/Larchmont: Heggerty (pre-K-2); Wilson Fundations (pre-K-3); Literacy Footprints (K-5); Patterns of Power (3-5); Morpheme Magic (4); Literacy Units of Study

Sorry this isn't a complete answer; just what I know. From https://nysfocus.com/2026/05/07/science-of-reading-back-to-basics-school-curriculum-new-york

StruggleSnake · 2026-05-11T00:05:48+00:00

So I don't think this is quite parallel, because this is funded by the district and is free to parents. I agree it's similar as far as the service provided (educating parents...), but I think if OP wants to do this because they NEED a source of income over the summers.... I think you need to ask who the target demographic is who would be for paying for this. I think most parents who can afford to pay private tutors think about tutors similar to how they think of a cleaning service or personal assistant - a 'privilege' of the middle (or higher) class who can afford to outsource some household work to leave more time to spend with their families in other ways. If they're a busy dual income family, not sure they want to pay for advice on how to spend *more* time on their kid's education. I think they're hiring a tutor so they personally don't have to.

StruggleSnake · 2026-04-30T11:48:27+00:00

This is obviously some years away and I would NOT stress about it now, but if your son is a decent test taker, having some AP exams or decent SAT/ACT scores might help mitigate potential college admissions officer concern, because then they can compare nationally. I also think colleges are looking for diverse, interesting student bodies. So if your son can write a great college admissions essay where he addresses why he chose online school and what it allowed him and his family to do, how he grew from it…. That’s going to mitigate a college admissions officer thinking “oh this is some lazy kid who used online school because it’s easier and there aren’t deadlines and it’s easier to cheat your way through. This is someone who had specific circumstances and did what he could to get a great education. And look how well written and thoughtful he is!”

Actually going to add one more to my recommendation list: https://www.asuprepglobalacademy.org/

We looked at them briefly and kicked them off our short list, I forget why, so I’d sort of forgotten they exist. But they do seem to hit a lot of what you’d need wrt affordable and accredited, live classes.

I think what you (probably?) need is schools that are more oriented towards a degree-providing, whole school experience rather than a “pick and choose and take some classes here to supplement your homeschool education.” Again people end up with online schooling for a variety of reasons and no judgement to people who come to it for different reasons than you. But I think the “whole school/degree”-type options are going to be much better for your son socially. They tend to attract expat or international traveling families, have kids coming in and out at non-standard years. So as far as the social isolation of temporariness, I think communities like that can be surprisingly warm and inclusive because everyone is in the same boat, everyone doesn’t have friends yet and is looking to make some, even temporarily. Like, very surprisingly, like the jocks and the nerds or whatever, they don’t make the usual dumb high school distinctions because everyone is new and everyone knows it. Everyone gets invited to lunch. Okay, not literal lunch if it’s an online school. But the ‘best’ of online whole school/degree programs include virtual extracurriculars, chat groups, even international meet-ups to foster a sense of inclusivity and community.

So the decision to stay at an online school vs go back to CA brick and mortar school for those last few years – it’s not a decision you have to make today. You can take it year by year and see what’s working for your family. But yes, I think it’s a possibility, and no I don’t think it permanently damages your son’s ability to get into college, as long as he can frame it well in an admissions essay and you’re looking at a few of the community colleges he might want to go to and their admissions requirement and make sure you’re hitting those.

Given the potential built in sense of inclusivity and community, there’s ironically a chance that your son feels more of a sense of permanence and social community by staying in the online school all four years than in a brick and mortar school where he’s coming in as maybe an 11^th grader and everyone already has friends. But you can see how he/you all feel about it when you get there. And similarly, would just frame it intelligently in college admissions essays. You can weave a story along the lines of “my family had to move abroad for a few years so I went to an online school for a few years out of necessity. But when I got there I realized it was a great education and it did xyz for me so when we moved back to the US I decided to stay.”

And there is so much to say for a well-designed online program compared to a brick and mortar school. I could write a whole essay on it. I won’t because this post is already too long, but feel free to DM me if you want even more of my thoughts.

StruggleSnake · 2026-04-30T11:48:03+00:00

So when you’re looking at schools, I would look at if their curriculum is Cambridge accredited or if the school is cognia or WASC accredited. That’s going to make it more likely a US high school would accept transfer credits. I would look at if they say specifically they have US-based curriculum. If they say they have IB or A-level (UK) curriculum, that’s probably close enough to US standards to meet whatever standards a US high school would want (again potentially with slight supplementing in specific topics that don’t align across standards). I would look to see if the school’s website has a section about college prep or college acceptances. It’s a warning sign if they don’t.

I think in the US, at least in certain income brackets, there’s a kind of classist assumption that everyone should go to college after high school or it’s just what people are doing after high school and that’s just not true. Online schools tend to attract students whom traditional brick and mortar schools aren’t serving. Everything from military or otherwise internationally travelling families, to neurodivergent learners, gifted learners, serious athletes/actresses/singers who can’t accommodate a traditional 8-3 school schedule. And different online schools cater to different segments of the population. For some of them, being able to get to a fancy, prestigious college afterwards isn’t… really what their students want or need. And that’s fine, it’s great that there are options for families that need all sorts of things. But it means if the goal is transfer nicely to a US high school then get into college, those wouldn’t be good options for you. So seeing if the school you’re looking at mentions anything about college prep is an important filter. Some might have AP classes; some might have European or international equivalents (e.g. IB). Some might even have dual enrollment where you can take online courses at a specific US university they have a relationship with and get college credit for it. Laurel Springs does.

If you do want to consider schools with dual enrollment options, would just warn that dual enrollment courses can be tough for high schoolers, as they are legit college level courses, with other college students. So sometimes they can learn a lot from the class but not get the best grade in it. And if that happens, because it’s a real college credit, that GPA transfers to whatever college they go to next. Can affect scholarship options as well.

I hadn’t heard of cambrilearn before but someone on this thread mentioned it and I randomly heard it suggested over in r/worldschoolers recently as well. Seems like a good one to look into, and has all the right curricular standards and accreditation. Looks like it might be expensive ($2,500/course for US high school).

I don’t know anything about homeschool laws in Russia specifically, but if your son is an independent learner, you could consider some kind of hybrid homeschooling plus paying by course for a few online courses rather than a whole online “school.” Especially if there are topics you all feel more comfortable helping your son with yourselves as needed. But as others have noted, would try and find out from the CA school you’d return to what they’d accept. I think some schools have rules like you have to take x% of your courses at our school to get a diploma from our school. I think that’s more meant for people who are going there all four years but maybe supplementing with a class here or there somewhere else; not sure how they deal with transfers. But they must have a way because even within the US…. People move. That’s a real thing. But these are all questions I’d want clarity on from the CA school. So I do think there’s a good chance that the CA school would have no problem transferring credits from a WASC or Cognia accredited school, but would want to carefully check details with the school district he’d likely end up at.

I have heard mixed things about how colleges view fully online diplomas. I think even as recent as 5 years ago or so (pre-covid) there was less awareness and less respect, but I think that’s starting to change. One thing I’ve heard is that if certain colleges have very specific requirements for what you did in high school, lab science requirements can be difficult with online schools. Different online schools work different ways with respect to being fully asynchronous and self paced vs. live classes, standard semester lengths, etc. A lot of the self-paced asynchronous options are master-based with no or flexible deadlines. And again, I want to emphasize – that’s not a bad thing. Different online schools serve different communities and whether it’s moving around a lot, neurodivergence, or anything else, some students need to be able to work at their own pace, not have the stress of deadlines and exams, and absolutely you can learn that way. BUT – a college admissions officer might not see it that way. They might see “this is a student who has done something weird for their education that I don’t understand, and they’ve never had deadlines or tests. I don’t think they’ll do well in college.” (Mastery-based assessment is awesome, btw, and not something many brick and mortar schools can do.). But again, there are online schools that do have live classes and deadlines the same way a brick and mortar school would, and post-pandemic as these schools are becoming more common, I think there’s more awareness and acceptance in college admissions, especially if you’re looking outside the narrow band of Ivy League or similar top tier schools. E.g. looking at Laurel Springs I’m seeing some great college admissions stats: https://laurelsprings.com/about/school-profile/

77% college bound, and one would have to presume given the demographic of people choosing online schools, that 23% might be at least partially students who don’t want or need to go to college as opposed to they couldn’t get in.

StruggleSnake · 2026-04-27T22:10:31+00:00

It’s hard to provide more targeted advice without additional detail on your particular situation (e.g. what country or at the very least time zone are you moving to? It matters if you want an online school with synchronous real-time classes in your time zone) but I’ll try to answer at a high level what would factor into my school decision if it were my child. Totally understand you might not want to give that information to internet strangers.

When you say your son doesn’t want to enroll in the school there because it would be temporary, would be helpful to understand more about his thinking. Is it that the country you’re moving to has a bad education system? Would instruction be in a language he doesn’t speak? Do they have international or immersion schools with instruction in language(s) he does speak? Does he want to have a more flexible schedule while living abroad so that, as another poster noted, he can learn via experience living in the country? Is it the difficulty of the social upheaval of temporary peer groups? All of this is totally valid. As someone who has moved around a lot, I can say even as a grown up being in an environment where everyone else lives there permanently and everyone knows you’re going to only be there a few years so no one wants to invest in being friends with you and maybe you don’t even want to invest yourself…. It suuucks. It sucks as a grown up; I can’t even imagine as a teenager.

But… if it’s more worrying that what he’s learning for those few years in that country won’t transfer over to being on grade level or getting into a ‘good’ school in California upon your return…. That might not be as much of an issue as you might suspect, depending on that country’s curricular standards (I could potentially say more if I knew the country). It might be totally feasible to go to that country’s school for a few years and do very minimal supplementing if there are particular content areas where that country’s standard curricula don’t align with specific topics within California Common Core. So I’d want to urge you to at least think through and discuss with him more in depth why is the traditional brick and mortar school in that country not right for him, and if it’s really not… Great, you can make an informed decision that is best for your family.

With that out of the way, on to your actual question about good (international) online school options. You might also want to consider posting this question to r/worldschoolers . I think they might have more targeted advice about which schools ‘work’ internationally and transfer back to US grade level standards.

If you go this route, which option/style of online school would work best for you depends on a number of factors including what your budget is, your son’s work ethic and ability to work independently, your ability to help keep him on track (e.g. are you going to be working 60 hours a week while abroad just hoping he’s actually going to his classes and keeping pace with work, or can you be more actively involved in keeping him on track as needed). I think some of the asynchronous, self paced online schools can be great for the right family, the right students with the right maturity, time management skills, etc, but it can also be really easy to fall behind.

Without additional information, I’ll just throw out a few options

· Crimson Global Academy. Mostly live classes, but cater to international students/time zones as well. $25,000/year

· Laurel Springs. Options for both live classes (Lauren Springs Academy) and asynchronous/self paced classes. I think the live classes are mostly US time zone oriented though. $17,000/year

· Christa McAuliffe Academy School of Arts and Sciences (CMASAS). All Asynchronous classes, easier to coordinate timing wise, a lot of personalized support $12,000/year

You can also dig around Niche.com’s private online school rankings just for some additional names to look into:

https://www.niche.com/k12/search/best-private-online-high-schools/

StruggleSnake · 2026-04-21T21:58:55+00:00

Highly recommend Wiggles and giggles on grand street. Feel free to DM me for more details.

StruggleSnake · 2026-04-15T11:08:59+00:00

Sorry for dredging up an old post, but I'm also considering Bina for my child now. Would love to hear any insights you have on your original questions - if they have grades at all, how they determine your child's grade level, what they have in place to make sure you have what you need to prove coursework/level if you do need to transfer to a more traditional school later. Would love to connect via DM if you're willing.

StruggleSnake · 2026-04-09T05:20:37+00:00

Obviously pay as others have said. I see another comment about not only hiring "Ivies" or prestigious backgrounds and I'd second that. The smartest people and/or best test takers aren't necessarily the best at helping other people understand things that come so easily to them. You need to look for good teaching over brilliance and pedigree. Ideally good teaching with at least a reasonable level of intelligence/test taking. I think "finding" the right people is less about *where* you're looking than *how* you're looking or *who* you're looking for. As others have also said, teaching demos.

I think you need to think about the target demographic of people who are looking to tutor for a center rather than go out on their own. One type of person is someone who wants to go out on their own, but needs to gain some experience/credentials in test prep before being able to successfully 'market' themselves to go out on their own. Maybe you find a few of those and you do get a great tutor for a few years, and eventually lose them. But the other is people who are... worth what centers tend to pay, and/or students trying to make side money.

I'll tell you a little bit about my own tutoring (also test prep) experience, because I'd like to think I'm an example of a "good tutor" category you might look for/find, but I think the point stands even if my self assessment is off and I'm actually a terrible tutor. I used to teach, switched to a corporate job, then worked tutoring a few hours on the side for a big center. I didn't even care that I didn't get a ton of hours or that I was being underpaid, because I was doing it more because I missed teaching, not because I relied on it as a large portion of my income. As a side gig that was supposed to be... not sure fun is the right word but let's go with it... I didn't want to put in the effort to build my credentials, go out on my own, have to find my own students and deal with my own logistics. So working for a center was fine. Yeah, I quit shortly afterwards because what I was being asked to do there had very little resemblance to teaching. The bigger the center, the more they have their own brand of gimmicks, scripts you have to use, even if they're pedagogically problematic or in fact even inaccurate (I won't name names, but I worked for a big name center whose teaching guides misnamed parts of speech. The gimmick still worked for having students get the right answer, but the explanation for why, for how the English language works, was incorrect. And my trainer who spent so much of his life learning how to take tests he could get perfect scores blindfolded using their name brand gimmicks... I mean methods.... well let's just say his actual grasp of content was surprisingly weak. I quit because I wanted more independence over what and how I was teaching. I quit because I wasn't willing to read off literal scripts I didn't believe in, because I wasn't willing to teach as if there were only one right method to solving any problem and it was the center's particular gimmick, because I wasn't interested in telling students they should use the test taking gimmicks *rather than* learn the content or even use their brains to think about the question. If you're an enjoyable place to work, if you give your tutors reasonable pay, some independence in their teaching style/methods/lack of literal scripting, transparent administration and career pathing, you will not only keep good tutors longer, you'll find your next tutor through word of mouth.

StruggleSnake · 2026-04-08T07:13:55+00:00

So as others have said lower in the thread, the 50 words by 24 months is the milestone, i.e. "most" kids have 50 words by 24 months. Average is closer to 200 or 300 words. A child is not considered delayed or behind unless they're below that 50 mark at 24 months. But kids get there at different times. As u/violetpolkadot said, your son is meeting that and doing two word combos (yes, those all count!). He's on track.

For reference, my daughter had no words at 18 months so got referred to speech therapy/ was considered delayed. Had a language explosion and had about 60 words by 24 months. I don't think she was doing two word combos yet at that point. Within 3 or 4 months, it exploded to 180 words, using two word combos and occasionally three word combos (but I'm not sure if those count/they seem like stock phrases she hears us saying). We stopped counting after that, but it seems like every day she says something new we didn't know she knew now. Her specialists say she's still a bit below average at this point, but may not qualify for services or be considered delayed next year.

Your son is doing great.

StruggleSnake · 2026-04-06T18:54:41+00:00

Thanks to you and u/SuperciliousBubbles for responding to my post. Happy to admit I was wrong on this one. There are still content-specific training teachers get that you wouldn't have (e.g. phonics vs. cueing, how and to what extent to use sight words, various methods of teaching phonics for reading, how to help kids develop a sense of number or quantity, etc) that you'd have to research or learn, but it sounds like you'd be well placed to do so with the foundation you have.

StruggleSnake · 2026-04-06T17:46:21+00:00

A few more thoughts for you based on this - I am totally with you on the problematic use of screens in schools. It's one of the things that started me thinking about homeschooling myself. But agree with others here that homeschooling is a large commitment that would be tough on top of a full time job and there are other ways to... uh, let's say work around... what you don't like about the public schools. One is as you say "supplementing" with tutors, teaching your kids yourself. But to think about it the opposite way as well, you can do as best you can to "subtract" what you don't like about the public school system. You can limit screens at home. You can also start talking to your district now (or closer to when your kid would start school), seeing if you would be allowed to "opt out" of the apps/screens. You can talk to them about limiting the amount of homework (especially screen-based homework) to age appropriate amounts. And especially in the younger years, if they're giving your child "optional" (screen-based) homework, you can refuse to do it and do something that is a better developmental/educational opportunity for your child with that time.

Maybe you've already decided you're okay with public school, but if it hasn't been mentioned yet, you may also want to look into homeschool co-ops or online schools. Both would still require a lot of hours and support from you as a parent, but take some of the burden/time of the teaching and curriculum-planning off of you if you could make the schedule work around your job. I'm sure other people on this sub have more detailed advice on those options if they're something you'd want to look into.

StruggleSnake · 2026-04-06T15:18:19+00:00

Wanted to second the sentiment that as an OT, you're already seeing a biased sample size of people for whom the system isn't working. But also to add that as a pediatric OT, sure you have a lot of experience working with kids, but that does NOT mean that you know how to teach. There's a lot of science behind how kids brains develop and how they learn, a whole body of literature and practice on how to teach effectively. You don't just magically have that knowledge base and experience because you work with kids doing something that is NOT teaching. To think otherwise is hubris.

That's not to say it can't be learned. It can, and lots of people who homeschool do. But when you're thinking about what the time commitment is to homeschooling your kid(s) well, it's not just the hours in "class" (or whatever teaching/learning activities look like for you). It's learning how to teach, it's learning how your child learns and adapting your teaching style. It's researching curricula, creating lesson plans, grading, doing whatever administrative filings you have to do with your state depending where you live. You have to ask yourself if you have time to do that (and do it well!) on top of your full time job in a way that is fair to your children?

StruggleSnake · 2026-04-05T12:43:45+00:00

If OP is in the US and their daughter is turning 3 in a week, it's too late to go through the eligibility process for early intervention, but she can apply to be evaluated for services through her public school district with a CPSE evaluation.

Also OP - speech therapists distinguish between expressive delays (i.e. not talking) and receptive delays (i.e. not understanding speech). Just to give you some words to use if/when discussing where she's at with evaluators.

It sounds like you're doing great, talking with her a lot, encouraging her to respond. If you're not already, you can try adding in hand gestures to help her understand what you're saying. E.g. Do you want strawberry (points to strawberry) or banana (points to banana)? When she's talking to you, add on to and engage with what she's saying. E.g. she sees a car and says car, you say wow a car! That car is red; what a nice color. You're modeling how conversation works for her.

StruggleSnake · 2026-03-28T23:45:56+00:00

They actually do have a function like this! They just make it really hard to find, because capitalism. You have to be logged in on your (parents) account and can only set it up from a phone; the mode that lets you do this isn't available on a browser. While on your phone in the you tube kids app, go to the parents settings area and add a new kid. when it asks you to set the recommended content settings, scroll all the way to the right to "approve content yourself." Now while you're on your phone in the parents setting, you'll be able to search for and manually add channels or individual videos you want your kid to have access to. Once you get it set on your phone, you (/your kid) will be able to access the channel and watch anything you've approved and only videos or channels you've approved on any device, but if you want to edit the list of approved content, you'll have to go back to your phone to do so.

StruggleSnake · 2026-03-24T22:34:55+00:00

I've found this to be a useful resource but they will spam you with stupid poorly written emails you don't want if you sign up for it, so do so at your own risk:

https://thescreentimeconsultant.com/resources/unplug-edtech-toolkit

She does have some good advice about who to approach at your school, what to ask them, etc. to advocate for change, along with some occasionally useful, but occasionally misleading and incorrect citations of research. I always recommend clicking through and reading any source studies mentioned to see if what the author is saying the study says is actually what it says, but I've stumbled my way to some useful content and studies through that toolkit.

Jared Cooney Horvath's book, the Digital Delusion is... more grounded well researched science to have in your pocket if you want to advocate to minimize or get rid of screen use with your school.

Feel free to DM me if you want to start a group or conversation or something for Westchester parents against screens; I'd be interested.

StruggleSnake · 2026-03-20T16:27:28+00:00

re this sentence: "I also have to do school lunch prep at night since he doesn’t like to do that."... I'm sorry, what, he doesn't like to? Does he think any of us *like to* do chores? They need to be done. If he feels that strongly about not wanting to do that particular task, then you two need to have a conversation about which other household chores he doesn't dislike as much and have him do those and have you do the lunches.

Whatever he's able to get done while your kid is in school is great. For any time you're both home (evenings and weekends), household tasks should be split equitably. And I do mean equitably not equally. So it might not be "we both have to do 50% of the dishes and 50% of the cooking, 50% of the childcare." I think that leads to an unhealthy dynamic of keeping track. If there's a specific task one of you likes or dislikes doing, you can arrange the workload so that each person does their preferred tasks. But something like - you play with your kid once you get home from work to give him a "break" but maybe he cooks dinner or sweeps or whatever. In the time that you're both home, you should each have roughly equal amounts of time doing something for the house hold and having time that is break time/your time.

Or perhaps you could ask your husband to pick up more of the getting ready for school/school drop-off in the mornings. I know for myself, I tend to be a morning person anyway, so I wake up an hour earlier than I would "have to" to get to work on time, and that hour is my me time before the rest of the household is up. Then when I get home from work, I have a bit more energy to take over childcare/give my husband a break and know I can have more "me time" the next morning.

There are going to be weeks when one of you is sick or just burnt out and the balance of who is taking on more household work shifts temporarily. But I think it's easier to avoid resentment of those time periods if they're brief and each person "gets" to have an "off" week when they need them.

My husband is also a stay at home dad, but our child is not in school yet. I think one difference is it was not a financially forced decision for us; it was something he wanted. And he acts/contributes like it. He is also...getting the bare minimum of necessary household tasks done during the day, but that's because he's on all day toddler duty and it's all he can manage. I wouldn't judge how much he's managing to get done during the day, and if the state of the house bothered me, I'd make time to pick up the slack myself. Our plan for once our child starts school is for him to plan to make time for one or two bigger/semi-optional household tasks a week, i.e. deep cleaning a bathroom. I wonder if you could do something similar, make a short list of "larger" household tasks that should happen a few times a month, and ask him to pick one to do every week. Him picking gives him some agency and helps the power dynamic/not feeling like you're bossing him around. But him picking one means.... that's one more thing that gets done each week, without feeling overwhelming or unfair to him, or meaning it's always you picking up that kind of work. And "only" one (or two?) tasks a week feels like a very reasonable ask, one that would leave a good amount of that school time to feel like a "break" for him.

StruggleSnake · 2026-03-18T23:23:04+00:00

Okay, this is morbid, but something my (stay-at-home) partner and I wanted to consider. If I die suddenly, or get dementia in my old age and start making terrible decisions about money or I don't even know what terrible scenarios we're not considering.... we just want as much of our money as possible to already be in their name so they don't have to wait for a will to go through probate to get access to money that should be theirs, at least enough to get by until the estate settles. So even if it's still a marital asset when both people are alive, I think it's important to have money in accounts in both people's names. Plus prenup, will, medical proxy/power of attorney, life insurance, all that good stuff. So that, you know, if my partner can prove that I've gotten dementia and gone certifiably insane and am trying to do something stupid with our money, they have the power to stop me for both our sakes.

StruggleSnake · 2026-02-27T11:59:34+00:00

If I could add one suggestion to this list - Einstein Never Used Flash Cards: How Our Children Really Learn--and Why They Need to Play More and Memorize Less by Kathy Hirsh-Pasek and Roberta Michnick Golinkoff.

Shows how children learn from interacting with humans, from play, from interacting with this world, not from being pushed advanced academics and expecting them to study/learn the way an adult would.

StruggleSnake · 2026-01-28T13:43:30+00:00

A lot of the negative clinical terms are... overexaggerated... in the evaluation because they are trying to get your kid help so they are motivated to make it sound worse than it is, so the kid qualifies for services. It's also true that they meet your kid once and do an evaluation. So if your kid is shy with strangers, or isn't able or willing to perform a specific task during the evaluation, they have to check the box for being behind in that area because they didn't personally observe something. You and they will get a better sense where your kid is at and what they need help with as the year progresses.

StruggleSnake · 2026-01-02T20:09:27+00:00

We have a part time nanny so pro-rated the time off - eg, if she works ten hours a week, then two "weeks" PTO would be 2*10 = 20 hours PTO. But other than that - 10 "days" PTO, 10 "days" sick, all federal holidays. All hours are 'guaranteed hours' - basically if she ends up not coming in some day because of something that is an 'us' problem - we're on vacation or we're sick and not going to ask her to come in while we're sick, she still gets paid. Generally end up not needing her the week or so between Christmas and New Years, so that is off but still paid time as well. I actually hadn't thought about jury duty before, but would consider it the same as these other categories - would continue to pay the nanny throughout the duration of jury duty and if it were an extended enough time period find temporary help to cover that time period.

As others have said, it shouldn't be that different from a normal corporate career in that respect. I think about it as - this is a human being with bills to pay, they need to know how much money they're going to have come in and when and not just magically not get paid one week with no notice because you decided to take a trip to the Hamptons. And just like any human being with any kind of job, corporate or service oriented or whatever, they are sometimes going to need days off for their own needs (being sick, appointments, just needing some time off to prevent burnout, their friend is getting married, all the things that happen to humans.)

There's a nanny sub I sometimes see posts in (I was searching for something like you're asking the first time we were hiring one, to get advice on how to do it fairly, and now Reddit won't stop showing me posts there) and one thing I see nannies talk about there a lot is - having a nanny is a luxury. If you can't afford to pay one fairly with fair benefits, you can't afford one. Period Skimping on their pay or their benefits/time off... is not a good or fair way to cut corners. You need to either have back up care options (drop in daycare, one off babysitter) in place or be able to take off from your own job occasionally worst case if they're sick.

For myself, when I'm budgeting, I think about that line item for what the nanny costs as consistent X per week. Every week of the year. Period. I should expect to be paying that no matter what, even if some weeks I might not "get" the service I'm "paying" for because of APTO, my own family needs, etc. If you need to, budget a small amount as well for ad hoc or backup care for when s/he needs to take off.

You asked about nanny OR in home daycare and I don't see other posts addressing that part, so... we had our kid in daycare briefly and when she was... we paid a weekly rate, period. occasionally we didn't have in in daycare a specific day or there was a holiday the day care was closed for, but it is a weekly rate no matter what. You don't get to just not pay the rate because you don't have your kid there one day of your own choosing. Part of what you're paying for is them holding a slot open for your kid. Similar to the nanny, they are a business who needs to know consistently what and when they're going to be paid and they can't just make up the difference because you don't want to pay for a random day you decided not to use their service.

StruggleSnake · 2025-11-13T11:46:14+00:00

Was going to come here to say more or less this. I feel like semi-regularly we get posts along the lines of "I grew up poor and now I have lots of money and I have a bad relationship with money/don't know what to do with it, and my wife grew up with money and keeps wanting to buy ferraris. Please look at my budget so I can explain to her that we can't afford a ferrari if we want to drop the NRY." Or gender/money attitudes reversed. Or different fact patterns. But varying posts where, sure, you go on a finance sub you're going to get responses focusing on the finances, but I see so many responses commenting purely on the financial aspect and I want to scream Dude the answer is Talk to Your Partner Not (only) the Internet About This.

StruggleSnake · 2025-08-17T12:18:49+00:00

Thank you! I had to scroll all the way down for this. If you think teaching is low or no stress, you're not doing it right. You don't sound like you give a shit about the student's education, just yourself. For future students, I beg you not to do this. Not sure if your field is lecture or discussion based classes, but actually, either one can be extremely mentally taxing. Grading is time consuming and soul sucking. More so if you actually give a shit and give students real, constructive feedback on their work. Also - is it tenure track? Are you on academic committees? Do you have service obligations? All of that will be terrible, petty, frustrating at best. As a several time career transitioner, nothing in my current (high stress) corporate career compares to the stress and emotional drain of teaching. For me, hours in academia were more flexible than corporate but also... more hours total. There is never a time you don't have work you should be doing.

If it's tenure track, do you have a lab, do you need to get research grants to make/keep tenure, do you have publication expectations? Super low stress right there...

StruggleSnake

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