Speaking from my personal experience - it pays off to be careful and read what other people think regarding the appliance you wish to purchase. We wanted an open burner range and bought a premium BlueStar six-burner. When I turned on the oven there was a strong smell of unburned gas since day one. After I complained about this the factory phoned and told me to adjust the air-gas ratio. I decided not to touch anything. The flames were okay. I just didn't want to insert myself into the repair process. The problem got progressively worse and one day the range had caught fire while I was cooking and I had to put out the flames with a fire extinguisher. First BlueStar wanted to dispatch a local technician who would repair the range in our kitchen. I refused, on the grounds that the problem was pretty serious and the factory should take the range back and find out the cause of the fire. They said that this kind of a problem has never happened before. They offered to replace the range, which was still under warranty. But we discovered that there were numerous complaints about BlueStar ranges leaking gas and some customers have indeed experienced fires as well, contrary to what the factory had claimed. Someone else had an ongoing problem that never got properly fixed, and when the warranty expired he was basically told that his warranty had, well, expired. From reading about those complaints and realizing that what BlueStar told us ("This kind of a problem has never happened before.") actually wasn't true, my wife thought it would be foolish to accept a replacement. What if the same problem appeared again? Could we trust the quality of their products, as well as their word? We thought that the best and most simple solution would be to get a refund. They wouldn't have to build a replacement unit and we would be free to purchase something else. But BlueStar flatly refused. Finally, under duress and with no other option to speak of we decided to take a gamble and take them up on their offer. Finally, some two months after the initial fire in our kitchen the replacement unit had finally arrived. We went to the showroom and realized that what BlueStar had sent us had a different color from what we ordered. At this point we were fed up with their attitude and decided that we would find our own solution to this. We ordered a different range, a Culinarian by Capital. The dealer had agreed to put the newly arrived replacement piece up for sale in their showroom, so that we could get our money back that way. When the new range by Capital arrived, we removed our original BlueStar, the one which had caught fire from our kitchen and replaced it with Culinarian. The old BlueStar, which I called Godzilla was taken to our dealer, where I thought it would be picked up by BlueStar for a transport to the factory, so that they could find out what the cause of the fire was. But it never happened. BlueStar wasn't interested in doing anything else. The range was sitting in the showroom for a while and ultimately was scrapped by the dealer. This told us something about the manufacturer. I decided to share my experience with other people, figuring that some potential buyers might be interested. I posted the story on Chowhound, where my post was removed the next day. I posted it again, just to have it removed again. I also posted the story on GardenWeb, where it inspired over 85 replies. Prominent among those was one particular person who also posts here, who immediately launched attack directed at the post and my person. Among other things, he blamed me for not following the repair instructions by the factory (adjusting the air-gas ratio) and so on. This generated more exchanges and finally the post was declared disruptive by GW staff and removed. Later there were some new developments and I posted Part Two of my original post. Again, I was attacked by the same person, called names and accused of having a nefarious agenda. I tried to support my case with pictures, but was accused of manipulating the scene through fiddling with distance, angles and the flash settings, although no flash had been used. All this resulted in having my post removed a second time, which was probably the goal of this other person all along. Newsflash! Mojavean, another senior member here was booted from this forum by GW staff for having the audacity to come to my defense. His was the welcome voice of reason and now he's gone. This is inexcusable! Anybody interested in more details can follow the story on wwww.iwvnews.com in Appliance Talk. So, as for purchasing any appliance, do your homework. Don't believe everything you read or hear, but if there are enough people complaining about something, they probably have a reason. Check from various sources and think before you jump. We wanted open burners and have no problem with our Culinarian so far. It is a refreshing change, after what we had with BlueStar by Marcus.

This thread has helped me a great deal. I'm in the process of designing my kitchen for a new home we will be building (hopefully) soon. the hangup has been my klitchen . I've had kitchens a tad tight, but functioned well, and I've had the huge kitchen with too great a distance to everything, including carrying a kettle of boiling water across the kitchen to dump in the sink. I've been going around and around with wondering if the table should go in the center of the whole kitchen, (Julia Child style), or if I should I have a wonderful island, for baking and perhaps a small prep sink in it. The pros to table centered in kitchen is small steps to serve and clean up. The cons are I give up having full view of our woods. With the island the table can have full view of the woods at the end of the kitchen area, and I can have my wonderful baking island. The cons are it's a lot of steps to set the table in a kitchen that long. Twenty some feet seems long. I'm thinking the view and the use of the island would be well worth it. Sandy

I admit I've only just scanned these posts, and I'm going to go back and read them more closely later to get all the smaller details, but I'll share my impressions based on what I've read so far: SD is in a horrible situation, as we know, with her BM's unreliable nature. Of course, Ima & her DH are in a bad bind, too, as is any parent is who has to step in and pick up another parent's slack. This tends to happen ---in varying degrees of severity--- in one way or another with almost all children of divorce. In that both parents essentially resent doing anything that smacks of what the other parent should be doing, according to them. Even in the best of situations, even when everyone involved is very nice and congenial and caring towards the child, there is bound to be some of this back-and-forth resentment and one or more of the parental figures feeling "put out" by the other. And too often the child is put in the middle of the conflict, and sometimes the resentment starts to get directed at the child, and the parents can easily underestimate how difficult that position is for the child to be in, because many children don't show their upset and sense of basic insecurity. Largely because they haven't yet reached a point in their lives where they can even comprehend it. They are thrust into a no-win situation that just isn't fair. That being said, though, it's very important for SD to begin the lifelong lesson that the number one person she can rely on in this world is herself. It's sad that she has to learn this at such a younger age than many people, but the circumstances are what they are. In the long-run, if handled well, she'll probably be better off for it later. The key distinction that I think is crucial to make in this situation is the difference between making sure SD learns to be more independent and self-reliant not because there is something wrong with HER, but because too often there is something wrong with OTHERS who will not keep their word. This doesn't have to mean either the extreme of breaking the 100% full-on truth about her deadbeat mom nor the extreme of taking the "tough love" (aka "tough s--t") approach of saying "you're 100% on your own, kid, can't help ya". There is a way to impart the helpfulness of the lesson of self-reliance without the risk of it being brutal. It should be explained to her that it's important to start to try being more self-reliant because what other people do/don't do is largely unknown and out of your control. They may or may not do what they promise, so you've got to have a backup plan because YOU are in control of what you yourself do. Explained this way, it doesn't badmouth anyone. And it also doesn't mean that ---at her young age, especially--- the situation should be such where she is truly without a lifeline if she absolutely needs it or if the circumstance at hand is larger than her capacity to deal with it. Everyone, including many fully-grown adults, needs some help every once in a while. Any steps that any adult in her life would make to help her become more self-reliant should be very clearly understood by her to be truly helpful guidance and not a punishment for having a crappy unreliable BM nor for having tried to trust this BM. As long as that is very clear, the goal should be that every year SD is alive she will learn more and more to rely on herself before anyone else. And that's another key distinction: she doesn't have to grow up and be a totally self-reliant person *overnight*. There's no need for any sudden, 'shock-and-awe' type way of teaching these lessons. Every stage of this learning process, and the well-intended reasons for it, should be totally transparent to her so that she actually feels grateful for being shown in a positive way how to cope and feel personally empowered. This way she won't develop the sense of jilted and deprived bitterness that can develop when circumstances & people thrust a person very suddenly and mercilessly into the realization that life can be brutally unfair and ---what's more--- that everyone else is too busy with their own problems to give a damn. Unfortunately, that is too many kids' introduction to the lesson of self-reliance, and it doesn't have to be that traumatic. So in a nutshell, the motto that seems very fitting for SD's main lesson from all this is: "Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst."

Answering three at once here... We also thought that 100 reasons was too long, but we weren't about to go against BM's instructions for this. If she had made him come up with 100 reasons to finish his lunch, then we probably would have shortened it, but fighting is a big deal. Since you all think that his negative/defeatist/self-loathing reasons are a part of being 9 and knowing he did something bad, I'll try to not be too concerned. And we'll just try to emphasize the individual behaviors as single incidents. We often bring up a past good incident as an example of what he should be doing, and to remind him of that has made good decisions in the past, so we know he can do it in the future. Once in awhile we bring up a past bad incident as an example of what not to do, but that's rare. He's generally pretty confident and proud of his academic and sports achievements. Once in awhile he'll say "I only got 24/25 my math facts because I'm pretty dumb." We reply something like "24/25 is not the grade of dumb person! You did great on it! Nobody knows everything all the time, and everyone is allowed to make mistakes. You're smart and don't you forget it!" I don't know if keeping consequences non-personal would work... I've mentioned before that I suspect he has some ODD (Oppositional Defiance Disorder) on top of his ADHD. Well, he REALLY blames others for his own mistakes and problems. For example, there was a recent battle to get him to admit that HE left his bike on the driveway (he insisted that Papa moved it, the neighbour moved it, a thief came to steal it but then changed his mind halfway down the driveway, etc) even though Papa and FDH saw him leave it there. We're trying to get him to take responsibility for his own actions at this point. My 4yo niece is that same as JNM's DS though. If she thinks that anyone is disappointed in her, the waterworks begin and she is apologizing left and right. She's also VERY well behaved, but she feels absolutely awful when she does something wrong. I like the idea of writing some of the scenarios we talk about. I'll suggest it to FDH and maybe next time we have something we have to do hypothetical situations for, I will write them too and he can write down what he will do in each case. This idea just keeps getting better - it could be photocopied so BM knows EXACTLY what we've talked about at our house. I think this could work well. I'll also talk to FDH about the diary of how A__ should behave at GM's house. Since it's her mom's house, she obviously gets to make the decision. I think it probably would be helpful to have a list to refer back to of what he needs to do. We wrote down his grounding rules this time and that made it easier for him to remember/understand when he was restricted from something he wanted. Rewards for checks hasn't worked in the past for him (he cheated on his star chart), but the last attempt was a few years ago, so maybe he's old enough now to handle it. Thanks for the help and encouragement!