F16’s Don’t Kill People, 500 Lb. Bombs Kill People

"Mama?" Danny asked from the back of the car, "have we tooken lunch with us?"

Seeing an opportunity, I informed him that "tooken" isn’t a word.

"Well, Mama, how do you know?"

"I’ll tell you what, we’ll go home and look it up in the OED and if it isn’t in there, it isn’t a word."

"What’s the OED?"

"The Oxford English Dictionary. You know those big brown books on the two shelves by the stereo?"

"Yes."
"That’s the OED. If "tooken" is a word it will be in there.

Later:

"Uh oh. Well, isn’t that interesting, tooken is indeed a word, obscure, but a word."

What’s more, he used it correctly, and is now prepared to inform anyone that dare correct him that "tooken" is in the OED.

We have a running joke here where I keep telling Danny, "Nice boys stay at home with their mothers."

At four and a half, my son is obsessed with all things Star Wars. I can’t even remember how it came up, but Danny was telling me how he was going to run off and become some evil Dark Side guy.

"Don’t do that Danny." I told him."Look at Darth Vader. If he’d just stayed home with his mama the Sand People never would have killed her, and he wouldn’t have gone all "evil and stuff".

You can tell when kids are frustrated, and think the adults are just stupid nuisances. A very big sigh, and then a pause.

"Mama." He began slowly, "That’s not exactly what happened, and it isn’t what made him a Dark Side guy. Besides, Anakin’s mama isn’t central to the story."

Central. She isn’t central to the story. Where the hell does a four year old get "central" from?

I should probably be pleased he didn’t use integral.

Standing in line at the grocer (where my son often feels inspired to share interesting facts with strangers), Danny decides to inform the cashier, and others in line that:

"Mama has two bleeding ulcers. They stuck a tube down her throat at the hospital and could see them being all bloody. Did you know that you have an esophagus? Everyone does."

Well, that impressed the hell out of the cashier. But anyone that knows Danny knows, there’s more:

Did you know you can get trichinosis from eating raw pork? I don’t eat pork because it comes from pigs and pigs aren’t vegetarian, but if you eat pigs, you should cook them first. I saw a television programme about it. Don’t eat raw pork mister."

I suppose it is a time honoured rite of passage for children once they begin reading and writing to insert suggestions on mother’s grocery list. I keep mine hanging on the fridge so anyone who needs to may add an item before my weekly shopping trip.

Looks like we need a bar of laundry soap, some carrots, onions and livestock. And Milky Way bars. Wait scratch that, Milky Way bars and a horse. Tinned beans? He actually wrote "tinned beans", though the variety isn’t mentioned.

I still maintain that teaching children to read before first grade is pointless, and done incorrectly (as a drill exercise, for example) will present the potential for burn-out before they make it to middle school. Unfortunately, children are now expected to be reading in kindergarten and although we’re homeschooling, I still need to be sure he is meeting the requirements. absurd as they are.

I did not purchase a programme, or employ a formal system of phonics lessons. Again, at this age putting a child through a series of drills seems the surest way to instill anxiety and a dislike of reading. We just started writing everything down, beginning with the ingredients in lunch.

Each day at lunch we write down what goes into Danny’s sandwich. I know what you’re thinking, but I cram a whole hell of a lot of vegetables into that sandwich so that on a typical day the list may read:

The Danny Sandwich Contains:

Bread

Butter

Cheese

Lettuce

Onions

Thyme

Mushrooms

Roasted Red Pepper

Olives

Then, while Danny chows down, I will have him select a letter, or pair and we’ll try to come up with as many words as possible.

An hour later, we’ve had lunch and a lesson. If he’s still in the mood to write, we make up absurd rhymes like:

"Star Wars guys eat Mama’s pies.

They eat them in a hovercar

They eat them on the Deathstar.

We did that sort of thing for a good six months until one day he sat down with a brand new book (never before seen) and started reading it to me. He’s reading at about second year level now, but it really isn’t due to any pressure on my part. I might as well admit to making him practise printing by writing :

"Nice boys stay at home with their mamas."

I mean, you could teach a child to memorise worse things, no?