What about eating issues?
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What about eating issues?
| Fri, 06-10-2005 - 2:24pm |
We have debated sleeping issues to death once again....so what about another one of the issues of childhood....eating and/or not eating?
My kids eat just about anything and have a pretty well rounded diet.

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We kind of did the same thing. We discovered HP the year my older one turned seven, so it must have been 1999. The first book was out in the US, but Scholastic hadn't picked it up yet. They had different release dates for Book 2 (or was it 3???) in the US and Britain, so we preordered our copy off of Amazon UK. DS#1 was Harry Potter for Halloween in 2000, and nobody in the neighborhood had a clue who he was when he was out Trick or Treating. He was really disappointed so I threw him in the car and drove him him halfway across town to knock at the door of a colleague of mine whose son I knew had read at least one of the books. The kid was really excited to see my son dressed up as HP; it made it all worth it.
There are several things that make me wish I'd waited a little longer for the initial reading. One is that Book IV and V are rather scary in parts. The scene in Book IV where Voldemort gets his body back gave me actual nightmares. And also, there's a lot of adolescent stuff going on in IV and V that flew right over DS#1's head the first time he read it. I am reading Book V aloud to my younger son as our bedtime reading right now, and I notice that the 13 y/o, who usually listens in, laughs in all the right places when Harry does something stupid when Cho comes around, for instance, while the 9 y/o just doesn't react. I just think he would have enjoyed them more the first time around if he'd been a bit older.
***Charles***


I see.
I don't know where you stand on the HP movies but at least you are giving your nine-year old the chance to experience the story first as literature and then later as cinema. Only my two older children are getting that "gift." Maybe your younger child will get a kick out of re-reading the books later and rediscovering what he's missed.
I am in a position where I no longer know how scary my nine year old's books are because I can't possibly keep up with his reading. (Well, I could but it would require that I do nothing more than read all day.) At some point I decided to feed his voracious need and not worry too much about whether it was too scary, too mature for him. He is pretty good at self-monitoring. He picked up Lord of the Rings two years ago and set it back down because it was too much.
Two and a half years ago, my ds was a Dementor for Halloween. No one, absolutely no one knew what he was trying to be. His classmates hadn't gotten that far in the series. So I can relate to your story. He was so enthusiastic, it was almost tragic.
I agree that you can't keep them away from the books if they are ready for them -- well, I suppose you could forbid them, and really obedient children would honor that. When I was a little girl, somebody gave me Anne of Green Gables when I was about 8. I loved it, but for some reason, I didn't know there were sequels, so when I read Anne of Avonlea and all the others, I must have been about 13-15. They were wonderful at that age --- I got to experience Anne's teen years when I was a teen, and her love story, etc, just about the time those feelings were awakening in me. I am glad I didn't get them younger. That's probably influencing my idea that it would be better if they could have waited a bit longer to try to understand Harry at 14 or 15 (even I get irritated with 15 y/o Harry. He's grouchy the whole book! Of course, he has a right to be grouchy. Hardly ever gets a full night's sleep, does he ;-) ).
My younger son isn't quite the voracious and accomplished reader his older brother was at nine. It took him the better part of a year to get through Book IV on his own, and since we will be reading Book V aloud together (we made a pact to enjoy it all together) I am reading Book V aloud to bring him up to speed.
When have I ever said I was a laid-back person? My friends and family would laugh if they heard me described that way. I'm more the neurotic mess type. The spazz. I would love to be laid back, but I'm not. I'm driven, have workaholic tendencies, and am extremely ambitious, competitive, and quite often covetous. I'm a schemer, a plotter, a planner. I'm a crackpot. Ask MW. She has burst out loud laughing at some of my more bizarre ideas. ;)
What does disliking insults on a debate board have to do with any of that?
Totally on the side: one of my best friends from high school is fascinated with Lucy Maud Montgomery and has read all her journals. One of them even inspired her to drop out of graduate school! I can't remember reading Anne of Green Gables but I do remember the PBS series and loved it.
A couple of years ago I read I Capture the Castle and I was sad that I hadn't read that one as a teenager. It would have been good for me to read that as a teenager.
You go to bed at the same time and eat at the same time every day? If you go out with friends, you come home early to make your own bedtime? Wow. You are disciplined.
Meldi
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