My first grader now has basic reading skills. I knew reading would open up a new world for him and I'm pretty excited that it's happening. I just didn't realize how much advertising would play a part in this world. He finds and reads words all over the place, and then he asks me to explain them. For example,

Y:     Mom, what are ‘Vitablocks?’
Me:  Huh?  (I’m a little distracted because I’m trying to feed two babies with two different spoons while eating my own lunch without dipping a spoon of baby spit into my yogurt.  No, it hasn’t happened yet, but that doesn’t mean I can’t live in fear.)
Y:     That box of baby cereal says it has ‘Vitablocks.’  That’s a funny word.  What are ‘Vitablocks?’
Me:  That’s just a word the company made up to try to make the baby food sound healthy.
Y:     Why did they think that sounds healthy?
Me:  Because it sounds sort of like vitamins.
Y:     Why didn’t they just say it has vitamins?
Me:  All baby cereals have vitamins.  They want to make theirs sound better so people will buy it.
Y:     Okay.  Mom, what does ‘Ritz it up!’ mean?

This is when I put all three spoons down to explain how nonsense and an exclamation point are intended to make us think the crackers are fun.  I know whenever I’m looking for a little excitement, the first thing that comes to mind is usually a box of crackers.

I’m not really complaining about all the branding on my lunch table.  (Okay, I’m complaining a little bit.)  I’m just trying to illustrate what happens when written words are no longer a mystery to your children.  It’s one more way you need to be aware of your surroundings.  If you leave the newspaper on the kitchen table showing a story about, say, a six-year-old who was killed getting off the school bus, you just might have to have a conversation about that.  This isn’t necessarily bad.  You just want to be ready.  And if that isn’t something you want to talk about while you’re still half asleep and trying to keep a wiggly baby from dumping a bowl of cereal on your lap, you may want to turn the paper over.  Then you can have a talk about how ‘door-buster’ doesn’t mean what he thinks it means.

Mandy appears weekends on TriangleMom2Mom.