Truth hurts
Recently, my mom got S-phie Dr. Seuss's "My Book About Me. " I had it as a kid, and it was great fun. For those of you who were unfortunate enough not to have it, it's a fill-in-the-blank book for kids about how many teeth you have, what your favorite food is, how many steps and windows your house has, what your nose looks like, getting your postal carrier's autograph, etc. We got started on it the other night and filled out a few pages. One of them was about your house. It had pictures of all kinds of houses (apartment house, city house, mountain house, etc., w/about 20 choices). She chose "house in a town," which pleased me, as she did not choose "house in a suburb." Then, at the bottom of the page, it had the following prompt: "My house is: _________." I had been looking at this while she chose what kind of house (in a town) and wondering what she would say, as it's so wide-open and six-year-olds often struggle with questions like this. I was thinking "yellow, small, one floor," all of which she's remarked on, or even "cold." So, we get to the question, and without even a hint of a pause, she exclaims, "Dirty!", and then asked how to spell dirty so she could write it in. D-i-r-t-y.
p.s. I am going to search that book and make sure there's no page that includes the dangerous and potentially heart-breaking prompt: "My mommy is: _________" If such a loaded page exists, it's coming out w/an exacto blade before school lets out today. Some truths cannot be borne.
p.s. I am going to search that book and make sure there's no page that includes the dangerous and potentially heart-breaking prompt: "My mommy is: _________" If such a loaded page exists, it's coming out w/an exacto blade before school lets out today. Some truths cannot be borne.
posted by mama at 12:47 PM
4 Comments:
Awesome. I had one of these books as a child, albeit some generic version. I recall that one of the questions was "How many books are in your house?" WTF? I didn't grow up in a mansion, but I mean, honestly, can you imagine counting the books in a house? I could barely count the books in my bedroom and I was only 5 years old – far too young to have collected the library that my parents and siblings had. I remember my dad told me, after I became slightly hysterical upon my realization that I forgot about his stash of hardbacks in the basement, that it would be okay to "estimate". But I knew that was a cop-out and that I had somehow failed the All About Me book by offering my best guess.
Flash forward to last year, when I bought my niece a similar book. I made sure it didn't have any absurd questions.
To actchy... unfortunately, the number of books in many houses is easily countable...
I had one of those Dr. Seuss books, too. I loved it. I'm so happy it's still around.
Forget about "books" and "dirty", I don't think children care/pay attention to those things. They care about love and attention paid to them. End of sermon!! granny
Just a guess here, but I'm thinking that Karen must have heard the same piece on NPR that I did about the correlation b/t number of books in the home and future success:
"In examining the average 2005 math scores of 12th graders who lived in homes with fewer than 10 books, an analysis of federal Education Department statistics found that those students scored much lower than those who lived in homes with more than 100 books. Although some of those results could be attributed to income gaps, Mr. Iyengar noted that students who lived in homes with more than 100 books but whose parents only completed high school scored higher on math tests than those students whose parents held college degrees (and were therefore likely to earn higher incomes) but who lived in homes with fewer than 10 books."
The article in the NYT about the study is well-worth reading:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/19/arts/19nea.html?em&ex=1195707600&en=19c57bbd70b9bb6a&ei=5087%0A
I too grew up in a home that had more books than I could count and am currently figuring out how to help S-phie w/the task of completing this portion of the My Book About me without feeling, as actchy has, that she failed Dr. Seuss. Even counting the books in her room would be Herculean as well.
So even though I'm not sure that anonymous granny is right that dirty and books don't matter, at least I am getting the books right, if not the dirty. Glass half full.
Post a Comment
<< Home