Naked Dragon

I had a funny experience with my 5 year-old today. A little voice in the back of my mind said "You should blog that. That is exactly something you would have written about back when blogging was your thing."

I feel like my family has entered a new chapter of life. My babies are now little kids, well except for my baby, he's still a baby but that'll change the next time I blink. We now live in Colorado. David is going to be a kindergartener and here they have an open enrollment system in the district. That means if I don't like our neighborhood school or if I like that this school has ipads or this school is dual immersion, or this school is all day kindergarten, or this school is an academy, I can try to opt in. I never thought of putting David in any school other than the public school we were zoned to, but here there are seemingly better options than the our home school. As I've attended meetings and talked to other parents I've gathered advice on what is and what is not important. One thing that has come up a lot is that David will learn things on the playground that I won't necessarily want him to know. I mentally was preparing myself for conversations with him about how our family might do things a little differently than his friend's families, and so forth.

 So after I picked David up from preschool today I said "Hey you look cute. Did anyone notice your haircut?" After a moment of hesitation as we were walking out to our car he said "Naked dragon." "Naked dragon?? What does that mean?" I asked. "Nothing" David said with a giggly grin. Knowing that this moment was coming at some point with him I jumped right in to having a heart to heart with him in our van about potty talk and bad language. I think I went a wee bit over board as I started firing questions at him like "Who said naked dragon at school today? Why were you talking about naked dragons? What does naked dragon mean?" David at that point was frustrated and defensive "MOM! I didn't say naked dragon, YOU did!" "What? Don't you remember you said naked dragon after I asked about your hair coming out of school today?" I asked. "Mom I said MAKE a dragon. I was wondering if we could cut my hair so there could be a dragon on my head".

I was so relieved David hadn't been talking about naked objects with other five year-olds! (But am slightly concerned he wants a dragon haircut). One thing I'm learning entering this next chapter of life is that it's important to keep calm and not accidentally teach your kid words that they could repeat on the playground to other kids at school.