“Don’t buy a lemon” Zoe reads as we drive to Nanny’s house.
“Does that sign say ‘don’t buy a lemon’ Mum?”
“Yes!” I reply, impressed that she has not only been able to work out what that random sentence says but also do it quickly as we drive past….
As we drive I marvel at the wonderfulness of them learning to read.
My girls can read!
I mean, they can really read!
Not just a handful of words, in carefully constructed sentences, in books about things they already know, where the pictures tell the story…. no, they can really, really read….
I’m lost in that wonderful place when Zoe asks…
“But why don’t they want you to buy a lemon? What’s wrong with buying a lemon?”
“Yeah” Izzy enters the discussion, “Lemons are fruit, they are good or you”.
So there I am, simultaneously in awe of their wonderful new reading skills, trying to negotiate city traffic and explain what people mean when they use the word ‘lemon’ to describe a car.
And then…..
Yesterday afternoon I was clicking through some blogs when I realised Izzy was looking over my shoulder…
“What does that say Mum?” she said pointing to a post title on a blog.
I looked at what she was pointing to and tried to distract her but it was too late….
“S-E-X-T-ing…. does that say ‘sex- something’?”
“Yes” I said hoping a quick and simple answer to the question was where it would end.
“Sex what Mum?”
“Sex-ting” I reply still going with the simple answer idea…
“What is sexting mum?”
Now the particular blog post I was reading was talking about the dangers of sexting and how to educate and talk with your kids about it… but they were talking about teenagers, not 6 year olds!! There were no tips on how to explain sexting to a 6 year old!
Lately their reading has just come on in leaps and bounds and the magic of reading has opened up a whole new, wonderful, world. Suddenly they can read all kinds of things – random signs and billboards, headlines in the local paper, the back of the cereal box…. All these things that we, long time reading adults, take for granted. All these things that as a parent, I never paid any attention to, until now…
E-gads this is going to mean a whole new kind of difficult questions isn’t it!
And I guess there will be no more secret spelling of words like ‘i-c-e-c-r-e-a-m’ and ‘l-o-l-l-i-e-s’ between the father figure and I.
Reading sure is magical, hey.
ROFL Once Annie figured out our spelling out the words code hubby and I had to figure a new code.
Empire of the Evil Clown = McDonalds sort of code.
Annie is often asking questions about advertising that I find tricky to answer.
Oh geez the reading over my shoulder when I’m at the computer gives me heart attacks sometimes! Luckily she still can’t spell many words, so even though she can read I can still spell things out!
Hehehe! My son learned to read very very early, and I will forever remember the day I was reading the ‘Go Fug Yourself’ blog and a little not-quite-four year old head popped out from behind me and sounded out quite clearly: ‘Fug Me’! (a ‘subscribe here’ style box on the sidebar, I think). That was the day I realized I had to be a tad more careful with my reading habits :-)
I was going to say you don’t have to worry about the sex thing with all those hens and the rooster but then I remembered Auntie Sue as a curious six year old asking my mother ” You know how Dad ties the cows up for the bull ?
Does he tie you up to the bed!”
Needless to say Mum was speechless.
Lol at the “sexting” example. I have often thought about how I will need to be more careful about what I read/ write about when my children can read over my shoulder. I think I have a couple of years of reading yet (eldest is only 2 and a bit). Hope you don’t have too many more things to explain away…
It really hit home for us when Josh had a friend over and they were playing the Wii. He told his friend to click on Start (or something like that) and his friend couldn’t do it because he couldn’t read yet. And yes we have had to have words to older nephews about swearing on facebook when curious 6 year olds read over our shoulders!
(ps my SIL just found out yesterday that she is having twins. Understandably she is a little freaked out. I will send her the link to your blog for a bit of reading)
FOFL. and again.
ow, i laughed so hard it hurt all my sore muscles.
Also (sense of anticipation now) I can’t wait to take them book shopping for their birthdays :-) For something other than fairy and princess books.
My oldest is in kindergarten and just learning to read…guess I’ll need to be super careful in the next couple of months when he’s over my shoulder…and no more Jackie Collins novels left out….haha
come and visit my blog if you’d like to take a peek at my cuties….
LOL at “sexting”!! I’d like to have heard your explanation!
Suddenly I thought of this long car trip when I was about 7. I was reading every single sign we passed in a robot voice thinking how amusing that was. Finally my mom cracked and yelled at me to quit it OR ELSE…
But yeah, it opens up a huge amount of information coming into your kids’ heads. That’s totally magic!
my 5 year old son can read too and it is quite a shock when he is reading out loud what you are typing in an email. Got to be so careful now! Yeah it sure is magical :)