A Glimpse of What's to Come

I'm not going to lie-I try to shelter my kids. There will be plenty of time in the future for corruption, whether it comes from television, the Internet, friends, or even me. But now is not the time. And frankly, neither is tomorrow. I'm pushing Dora over Pokemon and nursery rhymes over anything that happens to be on the radio.

Conversations with my kids cover such things as planets, dinosaurs, gardening, and those things that live in the darkness at the bottom of the sea. And I'm not the one who initiates these conversations. The kids come up with these questions, some of which I can answer, and some I pass off to Jason or Papa or Grandpa or even great-grandmas, if needed.

As for the actual LANGUAGE they use? I don't allow words like "stupid" or "hate" or any of those poop/potty/butt words that kids find so funny. Sure, I slip one out here and there. I've even slipped out a genuine curse word. (OK, many curse words.) But the kids know they aren't words they can use.

For entertainment while we're traveling, I let the kids keep notebooks and markers in the car for drawing pictures and writing little notes. I always keep the notebooks when they get full-I love to look back on all of their artwork!

You can imagine my surprise when I recently heard the following conversation out of the back of our van:

Em: Owen, I have an idea. Let's write all the words we know in our notebooks.
Owen: Em, I have an ever better idea. Let's write all the BAD words we know in our notebooks.
Em: OK, but I don't know that many.
Owen: Well I do. MOM, HOW DO YOU SPELL "HELL"???

And here's what he had written when I looked at his notebook when we got home:



I guess I need to lay off the curse words...