I hate to admit I was a control freak mom THE last couple years. When my daughter started middle school, I wanted her to make good friends and study hard. But she started making friends at school and got interested in other things like wearing makeup rather than STUDYING, so I started worrying about what if she didn’t study and just hung out with friends and I became a control freak mom. I wanted to know what she did after school and WITH whom she hung out. During mid-termS or finalS, I always wanted to know what she studied and how hard she studied. If she didn’t get good grades, rather than understand or ask her about the results, I just pointed out her mistakes and scolded HER. We had lots of arguments and got into verbal fights. Sometimes I got emotional and said some things without really thinking about how she would feel. I was a really bad mom but now I don’t do that. I don’t impose my way of thinking on her. I let her be herself and just try not to involve her and just try to guide her in THE right direction. I hope this helps! Reach out if you have any further questions.

Alkaloids are an organic compound, so another reading of this could be "a chemical from vegetables." In this context, it seems to refer to vegetable alkaloids being used as medicines/drugs at the time of Sherlock Holmes. Holmes is a scientist and a very curious person, so he would give his friend a vegetable alkaloid as an experiment, but not out of malevolence. "To do him justice" refers to the fact that Holmes is not doing this out of ill-will, but rather that he would be willing to take the vegetable alkaloid himself. I hope that helps! Let me know if you have any questions.

“I am being charged BY Greyhound even though I’ve never taken a bus from them” “I’ve never taken/ridden a Greyhound” “I’ve never bought anything from Greyhound” “I’ve never bought any tickets from Greyhound” “I’m being charged by Greyhound but I’ve never bought tickets from them.” I edited these slightly to sound more natural. The sentence "I’ve never charged anything to Greyhound” sounds strange to me, because "charge to" is used more for credit cards. Hope this helps!

Both "break open" and "cut open" are phrasal verbs. All this means is that they are verbs that have more than one part. Another important note: most phrasal verbs are less formal than their single verb counter parts. Take for example "to solve/resolve" (formal) versus "to sort out" (informal). The difference between "to break" and "to break open" is that "to break implies that the subject has caused damage to something. "To break open" implies that the subject is causing damage to something to gain access to whatever in inside. For example, "I broke open the box to see what was inside" / "I broke the box open to see what was inside." The difference between "to cut" and "to cut open" is similar. "To cut" means to break the surface of something or to divide something, usually with a knife. For example "I cut the chocolate into squares." "To cut open" means that something is cutting to being cut with the purpose of gaining access to the inside. For example, "I cut open the coconut." "To cut open" is also used in reference to surgery, as the doctor "cuts you open" to perform an operation. I hope this was helpful!

In short, yes. However, if you want to retain as much of the original sentence, you could also say "The doors are now opened..." Either seems fine by me.

Hi Skyler, it's better to say "her homework, which was always accurate." "Had high accuracy" seems out place in this sentence.