Teachable Moments

There's no telling how many times a day I say something as a parent that I simply never imagined I would ever need to say. It happens so often now that I rarely stop to acknowledge the oddity of the words coming out of my mouth. I shouldn't be surprised; she wasn't a year old before we were saying, "We can't get anything past her." She was in preschool when we realized we couldn't dodge a sticky situation by spelling words. We tried speaking in slightly obscure code phrases, but she rises to the challenge and decodes them anyway.

Today I needed a little of this stuff:

I was still drinking my coffee and doing the crossword puzzle in the morning paper. It was so peaceful. Princess Pea Pod got up and came to give me a really great hug. She brought an envelope to me and asked if I could help her mail it. It was this:

That's an order form she pulled out of her most recent National Geographic magazine. Do you see the note where she sealed it? It says "Can I come visit you?" She can't get enough National Geographic! Still, today's first teachable moment is that you need to discuss visiting arrangements with your parents. It's a pretty cool destination, though. Maybe we need to add the National Geographic museum to our list.

I was still reveling in the realization that our kid is really into Nat Geo, when I heard, "Is it ok to choose Bill Me Later?" Um. Huh? "No. What do you want to bill?" I turns out that she wants to order The Body: A Complete User's Guide. Not only does she want to order this book, she wants the more expensive deluxe edition. Oy! I got to teach a couple lessons out of that experience. "We don't just buy things and have a bill sent later." "This is a good book for school, but you have a very similar one you've never used." "You are welcome to order this book if you work around the house to earn enough money."

She got interested in her Usborne Complete Book of the Human Body and found that it will work quite nicely for now. She got so interested, in fact, that she asked to replace her science curriculum for the next couple weeks with a study of the human body. OK!

We encounter so many teachable moments every day. Got a good one? Let me know in the comments. It's nice to know we're not in the trenches alone!