Growing Up Too Early

When my son was 2 his girlfriend was Kim Possible and Bubbles (of the Powerpuff Girls). He loved cartoons and watched Buzz Lightyear and Toy Story for years and years. He liked Scooby Doo, even through kindergarten and first grade, to the point that he wrote them letters. He wrote letters to a lot of cartoon characters, to the point that he really thought they were real. He wrote Kim Possible and asked her to go out with them. And I hated to disillusion him so I answered back. He had some major reality issues, but it was a young and innocent time. We always had cartoons on. It wasn't until he was older that he started moving on to Nickelodeon. He moved to Zach and Cody, Phil of the Future, and other Disney channel shows and from there it is now Drake and Josh, iCarly, and of curse the new Zach and Cody show that will start Friday. Unfortunately, my daughter is skipping all the cutesy cartoons. Now she watches PBS kids and likes DragonTales, Clifford and Curious George, but her first requests are for "Josh" and "Carly". She is into the teen shows already. I saw Brooke Shields on Jay Leno (yes, Jay) and she was saying how her 5 year old daughter loves the Jonas Brothers. My toddler is going to be old beyond her years. I have a feeling we're going to have issues in the future.

Kinesthetic Learning

While on the subject of education and learning I have to give a big thanks to my younger and apparently, much brighter sister. She figured out that my daughter is a kinesthetic learner. My son is totally audio and I was trying the same stuff that worked so well with him on her. Now that I have been enlightened on various learning styles my daughter is flourishing. Turns out she knew a whole lot more than she let on. My mother is amazed and says that while my son was verbal at her age, she talks circles around him. Of course, she's a girl, and well, ask my husband about women and their ability to talk...lol

Schools - Again

Tomorrow I am doing something I had sworn I wouldn't do--change my son's school - Again! Now I researched schools over the summer and planned to put him into a school that would enable him to settle in throughout his junior high school years. (Can't believe I am saying junior high). But, the school I thought would work is failing miserably. So tomorrow, he and I will be walking around the corner and signing him up there. This means more work will fall onto me because the public school system will only take him if he is on "independent study". As a side note this is bad timing because a temp agency called and are sending my resume out for an available position. Great, I don't know what to root for at this point...but I digress. Schooling-unbelievable that I have to do this. But it is for my son's long term educational benefit. He is a little too smart for his own good, and I don't mean that in a good way. First off he doesn't like on-line schooling. He loves to surround himself with the books and watch them shrink as he works his way through his day. The way this on-line school works is take the assessment first. If you pass it with a 90% or more you can skip all of the lessons. One test and voila! you are done. Guess what, my son has "mastered" all of his lessons at 100%. Sounds great, sounds like a genius. But - no...... There's a minor loophole. Once you take the assessment and hit "submit" the test will give you the results. It gives you all of the answers you gave, if they were right and if not, what the right answer is. Then he goes back out and retakes the test... We talked about it yesterday and I said well that's all fine and dandy but he's not learning anything. He said he's learning how to memorize. His first month into junior high school and he's figured out how to get around the system. Should I be worried about high school???