When Is It TMI For Kids?

Bridget came home the other day and said, “Mommy I love third grade.”

What luck! Thought I.

She must love her teacher, unlike me as a student in cross-eyed Miss Henzi’s class. She yelled constantly, but you could never be sure who she was yelling at.  

Or or or maybe Bridget’s cheated her genetics and triple-digit multiplication is no problem for her!

Or the Pleistocene period at the La Brea Tar Pits speaks to her; the museum field trip that brought saber-tooth cats alive!

Shannon: Why do you love third grade so much, honey?
 
Bridget: Because now my friends are old enough to know all the stuff you told me inappropriately when I was too young. Like about sex and what all the bad words are in English and other languages.
 
Shannon: Our neighbor, Andre, is the one who taught you “shit” in French, not me!
 
Bridget: True, but you did teach me the C-word in Spanish!
 
Shannon: Nunca! Nunca lo hice. I never did that!  What C-word are we talking about?
 
Bridget: Caca.
 
Shannon: Gracias a Dios!
 
Bridget: Also you told Clare and me the neighbors were selling marijuana.
 
Shannon: Well, how was I supposed to know the DEA was going to descend on their house during broad daylight? Besides, I used that as a teaching moment about drugs.
 
Bridget: Yes, they land you in prison, make you stupid and give you unwanted pregnancies.
 
Shannon: I never said anything about unwanted pregnancies!
 
Bridget: Yes you did. They mentioned it on Modern Family and you used it as a teaching moment.
 
Shannon: That’s only because my mom let me watch Summer of ’42 at your age and well into peri-menopause I thought a condom was a water balloon.
 
Bridget: What’s a condom?
 
Shannon: Oh, no you don’t! You are not tricking me into telling you something before you should know it anymore!! I’m getting too much of a reputation in the neighborhood. Which is what will happen to you if you need a condom before you’re married!
 
Bridget: And I almost forgot about you over-explaining what happened between Jedediah Smith and Amelia Earhart in Night at the Museum 2.
 
Shannon: How was I supposed to know you’d honk the ample Miss Shannon’s breasts in pre-school and shout, “I just got to second baaaasseee!”

Silence. A giggle. The giggles multiply.

We’re cracking up. I won’t win mommy of the year. But we laugh a lot. I love you, my precocious sidekick. Are you guilty of TMI for kids? Confess, damn you!

2 thoughts on “When Is It TMI For Kids?”

  1. I remember when my 14-year Maggie angrily snapped at me “I don’t know anything about you!” And I thought, “I am a better parent than I thought.”

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