The big kids (written before Christmas but lost in broken computer land.)

The "big kids" as viewed from Dancing Baby Girl's perspective!  (see her head at the bottom of the picture.  They were all discussing putting the star on top of the tree the day we decorated.
Interactions between these two are not always the best but they are getting better.  They are the last two home and have been for a couple of years now so there has been jockeying for postion going on as well as just getting tired of each other.  But still I see enough expressions of caring and compassion to know that they do care for one another.

We have been lucky so far with both of these teens in that we have not had a lot of the typical teen defiance and bad choices from either of them.  Douglass' mental health issues can make him high maintenance and difficult to live with but so much of that is not choice of behaviors that we roll with it and go on.

I'd like to think that it is because of my wonderful parenting, and I do think there is a kernel of that, I have indeed learned something over the years, but I also think a lot of it has to do with the truly attached relationship we developed over the years of homeschooling.  The level of respect between the parents and children (teens) is very high and because of that respect we treat each other differently, we interact differently and life is better than was possible with any of my other kids.  In retrospect I really regret that I did not homeschool all of my kids through at least part of their school years.