Reading trouble.

When I thought about teaching Caleb to read, I only thought about the advantages--namely, raising a reader, having family read-a-thons, and cultivating that elusive ability to entertain himself while I'm busy. It didn't occur to me that any disadvantages even existed. But it turns out (surprise!) that reading is Caleb's most frequent introduction to information that isn't exactly geared for five-year-olds. Examples:

A while back, I was re-reading old blog posts when Caleb crept up behind me and was reading over my shoulder. It was a response from 2006 to my friend K, whose Christmas card was then hanging on the back of our door: "My visiting teachers (who, after discussing how Caleb is nearly a year old asked if we'd just gotten married in August--'why, yes, we did! We DID have premarital sex and I conceived and bore a child long before we ever got married!') looked at the picture of you guys and pointed to you and asked, 'is this you?' I was flattered, but also confused since, well, your hair is dark and short and mine is sort-of blond and was past my shoulders when they asked."

I wasn't really paying attention until I realized that he'd nearly stumbled upon the phrase "premarital sex" (which is a topic I'd prefer to discuss on my own terms and not as a response to "what does that mean?") and quickly closed the window.

My favorite, though, was a recent Sunday. Caleb has been great at church in spite of the fact that my frequent exits with a crying baby often leave him alone*. He'll usually sit and read the illustrated scriptures through much of sacrament meeting (or draw pictures of Batman or [sadness] Star Wars battles). A few weeks ago, we were talking about what he'd learned in Primary and what he wanted for lunch when he said to me, "Mama? Why did that king think it was a good idea to cut that baby in half?"

I tried to explain the subtle intricacies of a kingly bluff to elicit the truth, but he wasn't having it. "It was a bad idea," he told me, "a HORRIBLE idea. You should never cut a baby in half."

True.

Lesson learned: the scriptures may not be the best unsupervised reading material for a preschooler. Just a thought.

*Sort of. Just about everybody in our ward has told me to send Caleb to sit with them when I have to leave (since Paul's on the stand), so he's well looked after.