CarVan 14: The Abeka Boxes Have Started to Arrive

[fluffernutter]

I'm 5'0", and my oldest and youngest daughter are 5'3" but the middle totally got my mil's tall gene in her, she is 5'7". I love when she is home, she can help get stuff down for me. 🤣 I don't mind being short for the most part except for not being able to reach anything. 

[justmy2cents]

On 2/20/2024 at 11:47 PM, Keys said:

My hubs and I are super average height (I’m 5’4 and he’s 5’10), and yet our toddler has been in the 95th+ percentile for height since she was born. Super interested to see what height she ends up at! Genetics are so interesting. 

I’m 5’4 and my daughter’s father is 6’. Her growth chart shows she was 97th% as a toddler and then it started dropping off. Now at 13 she’s in the 60th % (5’3). Will probably grow an inch or 2 more max. I was also a tall child who ended up average. You never know though.

Edited February 22 by justmy2cents

[marmalade]

The ban is over. Carlin is back behind the wheel. 

[rebeccawriter01]

I was thinking the other day that the Stewart videos have been less boastful about the Tesla. And then today's video dropped. Carlin is now behind the wheel again. Half the video is her driving the Tesla while crying that she's so happy to be back driving. And in true Carlin fashion she can't stand to not let people know she's driving. She invites Whitney and Zach to join them as she drives. We are treated to flashbacks of Carlin hitting the metal thing at the gas station back when they were first doing videos. Good times. That was the vehicle they bought from a Duggar boy after almost buying one from Josh and ending up with their names in a federal case for CSAM. Good times!

In other news, they went back to the bowling place in Knoxville to take the kids bowling. I think we're due for a video on Zade's speech delay. I get the whole second children usually speak later but he's coming up on two years old next month. Most 18 month olds to 2 year olds have a vocabulary of 50 words. I see in social media and videos that they are trying to talk to him on camera more and get him to respond. He usually makes a noise and nods his head. I don't like trying to speculate on health of a child, but clearly this is an issue.

[gobucks]

This week's video... Carlin is allowed to drive per doctor! "6 months free of no unconsciousness" Honestly, the video was cute. Carlin said she appreciates Evan but she enjoys the independence of being able to drive herself places. She is excited to drive herself to work. Evan says he will see and work on it until he is comfortable with her actually driving alone. They input clips of when she turned too close at a gas station with the Explorer and when Zack first taught her to drive. Of course, Evan has to show her the ways of the Tesla driving. She actually tears up. It's sweet. He calls her a fighter. I try so hard not to let her be my little pet fundie. I know they have terrible beliefs but she has been through it medically and it is nice to see her progressing, taking her meds, following doctor advice, and being able to drive again. She says she appreciates him and will take care of him when he is old and he thanks HER for ALLOWING him to get his dream car. She says it's a big God moment for her. 

Edited February 24 by gobucks

[SoSoNosy]

My son didn't say a lot of words until he was almost 3; when he started talking, he never stopped.  I'm not negating the fact that Zade might have a speech delay.

[rebeccawriter01]

38 minutes ago, SoSoNosy said:

My son didn't say a lot of words until he was almost 3; when he started talking, he never stopped.  I'm not negating the fact that Zade might have a speech delay.

My daughters were both slow with their speech. My girls didn't say much until about three but could say yes, no, and a few (less than 10 words) to ask for what they wanted. There was some gesturing and whatnot, including a lot of pointing. One is still very quiet and the other could go for days on a monologue if you let her.

I only bring it up because it is clearly something they are aware of lately with how much they talk to him and ask questions on camera. He doesn't seem bothered by being recorded all the time but he could behave differently off camera (are the Stewarts ever not recording?). He nods yes, smiles, and points to things. The only recognizable word for him is ball and that is a struggle, it seems. Carlin and Evan say that he says I love you, but I haven't really interpreted that one yet. It's been a while since I took language development classes or had kids that were learning to talk. There may be a good reason for him not to be speaking. Maybe he just doesn't think he needs to speak in a very verbal family. I think it is something the pediatrician will pick up on with his 2 year old visit. I'm sure there will be a very special episode video of click bait about it. 

Since Carlin and Evan have dropped hints (saying the doctor has okayed it and they are thinking) that they might try for number 3 now or soon, I hope that they don't ignore what could be a fixable issue for him. He can easily be overshadowed by Layla and another baby could potentially distract them from his needs. Of all Gil and Kelly's grandsons, he is probably the happiest in outward appearance of in the top three.

[marmalade]

Zader Tot seems to understand what's being said to him. I'm not concerned about speech...yet. I've heard his I love you. It sounds like I wove ooo. I think he'll start talking sooner rather than later. 

[Cupcake79]

Our youngest did not speak a lot when she had her two year check up. She didn’t speak two word sentences. We were adviced to give a call if she hadn’t started to speak more within six months. As she didn’t she was sent to speech therapy. I was never worried because she understood what we said. I think we did speech therapy for about six months, something like once a month. It worked out for the best and she started speaking more and more. After that she had follow up visits at three, four and six years. The only thing she really struggled with was the hard “r” we have in our language. It’s fairly common around here and a handful of kids in her preschool group did group speech therapy. She was the only one who didn’t learn the “r”. And then BAM! came the Covid lockdown and we were all stuck at home for two months. That’s when I decided that we’re going to focus on her learning to say “r”. So we practiced every night in bed before she went to sleep, because she didn’t want to practice when her older brother listened since he teased her. In June she finally learned and boy what a victory that was, to both of us. We recorded a video and sent to her pre-school teacher because she (our daughter) was so proud. She was seven at the time. Kids start school here the year they turn seven.

[Lurker]

My son did not speak at two, maybe one or two words.  My doctor agreed with me at his two year checkup that it was a matter of concern and referred me for an early intervention evaluation.  At our two year checkup we discussed temperament and chill level as she knew my older daughter was on the late side of normal for milestones but then zoomed ahead.

He spent years in early intervention language based center based preschool and then a variety of special ed schools K-12 with lots of speech therapy along way.  He has other issues, ADHD and on the low level spectrum. He was able to graduate from an engineering school at a selective school in NYC.    

My thoughts on this are it will not hurt your child to be evaluated, and speech therapy is not traumatizing or painful so when in doubt go ahead and get it done.  My mother, sister etc was not at all supportive of my testing him were worried what people would think, instead of thinking it was great that I was giving him skills to be able to participate, enjoy and possibly succeed in life.

 

Edited February 25 by Lurker

[nolongerIFBx]

I think Carlin was right when she said that Zade is an introvert. Everyone else in his household talks nonstop. He can probably talk just fine but doesn't want to contribute to the constant hubbub.

[Expectopatronus]

My kiddo was very late with speech and even now (4 yrs and 2 months) mixes up pronouns and does some strange grammar things. We have seen a speech therapist but it wasn’t super helpful. She seems to find math easier than language. She counts, groups, identities and extends patterns and can add and subtract with manipulatives but is struggling with letters, printing and reading. Every kid is different. I hope language gets easier for her and have been considering buying the K4 Abeka videos to help her with phonics; does anyone have experience with Abeka phonics? 

[nolongerIFBx]

23 hours ago, Expectopatronus said:

My kiddo was very late with speech and even now (4 yrs and 2 months) mixes up pronouns and does some strange grammar things. We have seen a speech therapist but it wasn’t super helpful. She seems to find math easier than language. She counts, groups, identities and extends patterns and can add and subtract with manipulatives but is struggling with letters, printing and reading. Every kid is different. I hope language gets easier for her and have been considering buying the K4 Abeka videos to help her with phonics; does anyone have experience with Abeka phonics? 

You're probably not going to find much love for ABeka around here but I do think they have a very good phonics program. That said, I did not learn from the videos but from my kindergarten teacher and then my mom going through the flashcards and workbooks with me.

[Expectopatronus]

@nolongerIFBx Thanks. I only want the phonics program. I don’t want the Christian Nationalist social studies, inaccurate science or ‘pay, pray, obey” view of religion but I had head that the phonics portion was good and figured that someone here was bound to have gone through the Abeka program. 

[Bassett Lady]

The phonics program is excellent. Many homeschool groups have curriculum sales at the end of the academic year. 
 

You may be able to pick up the visual aids and readers at a very reduced rate. 
 

Saxon also has a decent phonics program and is not a fundie organization. 

[Lurker]

@Expectopatronus if you feel your daughter is struggling with language please try a different speech therapist in addition to the phonics.

[Expectopatronus]

@Lurker She’s unfortunately not low enough to qualify for speech therapy under the provincial health care plan (we got an hour every three months when she still wasn’t speaking in sentences at three. Once she had tubes put in her ears and could hear, her speech improved significantly so she no longer meets the criteria for moderate speech delay). She has a significant stutter and mixes her pronouns. I paid for a few private sessions but I can’t afford $160/hour. With luck, in kindergarten the school speech therapist will pick her up but there’s one therapist to something like 10 schools so again, it will be limited. We sing, read, play, talk etc everyday so I’m hoping she’ll catch up. 

[rebeccawriter01]

13 hours ago, Expectopatronus said:

@Lurker She’s unfortunately not low enough to qualify for speech therapy under the provincial health care plan (we got an hour every three months when she still wasn’t speaking in sentences at three. Once she had tubes put in her ears and could hear, her speech improved significantly so she no longer meets the criteria for moderate speech delay). She has a significant stutter and mixes her pronouns. I paid for a few private sessions but I can’t afford $160/hour. With luck, in kindergarten the school speech therapist will pick her up but there’s one therapist to something like 10 schools so again, it will be limited. We sing, read, play, talk etc everyday so I’m hoping she’ll catch up. 

Reading to my daughters and letting them "read" to me (they held the books and tried to tell me the story) worked well with my girls. I worked with teacher friends to pick out books that had sounds and blends that were challenging to my daughters. Also letting my younger one (the artistic one) draw pictures and narrating the picture to me. Instead of putting her on the spot and saying what is this, I used questions like who is this, tell me about this house, etc.  I felt foolish at first but narrated everything and asked them to repeat after me. "I'm cooking dinner. What is mommy doing?" I had to work on not doing that at work . I also did the logo game with them. I printed out different logos of restaurants, stores, and other brands. We would run through those like a game with the girls calling out what logo it was for like they were sight words. Then when we were out in the car they would see those logos and call it out. 

[nelliebelle1197]

Carlin's driving again. And filming it.

 

[SoSoNosy]

My daughter homeschooled her three, but they are all grown now and the youngest one is a senior in college; I asked her which phonics programs she used but she could only remember the younger, but she said Explode the Code and she liked it.  I remember something called Hooked on Phonics, I think.  But again, this was a long time ago.

[GreenBeans]

On 2/20/2024 at 10:47 PM, JermajestyDuggar said:

Shorter than average parents have shorter than average kids. Not everyone can be average height or tall. There has to be some short people in the world. 

That’s true, but sometimes there is an underlying medical condition (lack of growth hormone for example), and then kids will not just be “shorter than average”, but really short. So it definitely makes sense to have doctors look into it when a child is unusually short, even when the parents are on the short side, too.

I have a friend who just went through that with one of her sons. She and her husband are both fairly short, so they didn’t really think much of their son being on the lower percentiles. But the gap to other kids his age became bigger and more visible as he got older, so they had him evaluated. He will now be getting growth hormone injections. Not to be “tall”, but to at least become a “shorter than average” adult (and not “so short it’s a major issue in everyday life” adult).

On 2/24/2024 at 10:22 PM, rebeccawriter01 said:

I think we're due for a video on Zade's speech delay. I get the whole second children usually speak later but he's coming up on two years old next month. Most 18 month olds to 2 year olds have a vocabulary of 50 words. I see in social media and videos that they are trying to talk to him on camera more and get him to respond. He usually makes a noise and nods his head. I don't like trying to speculate on health of a child, but clearly this is an issue.

Maybe he just doesn’t like to speak / perform on camera? My son was very early with his speech and spoke really well. But in some situations - for example music class, or when we called the grandparents on the phone - he just froze and wouldn’t say a word, even when addressed directly.

[rebeccawriter01]

1 hour ago, GreenBeans said:

Maybe he just doesn’t like to speak / perform on camera? My son was very early with his speech and spoke really well. But in some situations - for example music class, or when we called the grandparents on the phone - he just froze and wouldn’t say a word, even when addressed directly.

I am not trying to diagnose him. He has no issue seemingly with the camera and smiles, poses, etc. just like his stupid parents want him to do. They have even said he doesn't really have many words yet. He's just not speaking though he seems to understand and can nod/gesture with accuracy. I am not diagnosing him. I'm simply saying that Carlin and Evan love their super dramatic clickbait videos. He's due a doctor's appointment soon for his 2nd birthday. My guess is that unless there is something else wrong with him, we will get Evan looking worried and Carlin pretending to cry as they tell us he might have a speech delay. 

[GreenBeans]

5 minutes ago, rebeccawriter01 said:

I'm simply saying that Carlin and Evan love their super dramatic clickbait videos.

Oh yes, they love those! So much drama!

It’a awful how those Bates 2nd generation parents exploit their children. It’s actually worse than the tv show their parents had going. With the tv show, there were filming days and I assume lots of scripting, but the filming was limited to specific days and occasions, not too focused on individual kids and the episodes usually aired half a year or so later.

With Carlin, Alyssa, Katie, all the Bates kids really, their children are on camera 24/7, always expected to perform, and so many private details are exposed to millions of people on the internet in real time.

[WatchingTheTireFireBurn]

And the show had lots of "outings" there were filmed. So at least the kids could know -at this outing we're being filmed, we're away from home, this is a special situation. Not having to live knowing that at ANY moment in 5 seconds mom could be posting dramatically about you.

I'd develop a complex. Like lately I've seen a lot of younger people (teens/young adults) going up to parent/older adult in their family and asking them a random question while filming and over and over the older adult/parent is like "*Answers*...wait are you filming this? don't post that!" or "not again....{exasperated sigh}." 

 

[Kiki03910]

9 hours ago, GreenBeans said:

Oh yes, they love those! So much drama!

It’a awful how those Bates 2nd generation parents exploit their children. It’s actually worse than the tv show their parents had going. With the tv show, there were filming days and I assume lots of scripting, but the filming was limited to specific days and occasions, not too focused on individual kids and the episodes usually aired half a year or so later.

With Carlin, Alyssa, Katie, all the Bates kids really, their children are on camera 24/7, always expected to perform, and so many private details are exposed to millions of people on the internet in real time.

The ill-educated fuckfaces of the Bates 2.0 generation never stood a chance. They don't know anything, AND they're living in the Influencer Epoch. And let's face it, do any of them seem that bright?