Erin, we lived about four blocks from the school and about six blocks from this local ice cream store that everyone went to. It was across the street from a newstand with comic books, and I'd walk there every Saturday, buy an ice cream cone and comic books, and walk back eating ice cream and reading.

at 6 - you should be at the library with your child. t horrified librarian that see 4 yr olds in the library with 7 yr old siblings 'in charge'.

But I can't even know. I don't find out what they watched at the day-care center or at school or at a friend's house, half the time.

Didn't the child bring the book home from the school library?

This one is, truthfully, a tough call for me. There are large parts of America in which the book violates community standards, and I don't think a school library should necessarily be flouting those standards for elementary-aged children.

My parents might have suspected I'd gone through ALL their books by the time I was ten, pausing longer on the ones with pictures, and that's why they sold them before I turned eleven. Or they thought they were ahead of the game.

They certainly didn't know about the stacks and stacks of porn mags I'd also read by that time.

Sure, you gotta try, but it might be better to have that convo sooner than later.

My parents never had any idea what I was reading. They didn't really read, so unless it was the James Bond books, which I hid, they had no idea whether the books were appropriate or not. My parents were not particularly religious or conservative and tended to believe I was a sensible child. We went to church, but I would characterize their belief as "There is a God, and he hates us." Eventually we had a minister who came to my mother to say the he was concerned about the state of my soul because I was reading .... Mark Twain. Mother was outraged, but not at me.

But those same parents are going to be equally aggrieved by front-page stories on gay marriage (indeed, many of them are) and by men holding hands in public.

There's a difference between a child seeing a gay couple or gay marriage and a fairy tale about two princes who marry each other. A fairy tale is usually more than just an entertaining story; it teaches lessons, morals, appropriate behavior, etc. If you consider homosexuality immoral, you probably won't want your child reading a fairy tale that considers it moral.

This is separate from teaching your child respect and tolerance for other people's beliefs.

And then there's all the parents who need to shield their kids from the powers of darkness as found in Harry Potter.

I met some of those parents. They were especially displeased that the hellbound big-city relative of their child's playmate had also brought a copy of Kiki's Delivery Service, because Kiki is a witch. I told them it was different in Japan, but that went over about as well as one might have expected.

I think you do have the right to determine at what age you teach your kids about homosexuality. For some parents a children's book written for 6 year olds is not the age when they wanted to have that talk.

Heh. Been carrying Emmett around on San Francisco public transport since he was four days old. The subject came up fairly early. Actually, it's just always been one kind of normal thing that grown ups do. It's around him every day. We never had to discuss it as if it were different, because clearly lots of people did it.

I think you do have the right to determine at what age you teach your kids about homosexuality.

What on earth do rights have to do with it? I'm talking about reality. I'd have loved to shield my daughter from the existence of Ronald Reagan, but the minute she saw a newspaper, there he was. If I tell her he's not real, I'm a liar, she'll figure that out pretty soon on her own, and then there we are, with a kid who knows you're full of crap and not being truthful with them.

Teaching them what I believe? Yes and yes and yes. Putting my hands over their eyes and gasping in shock because what I'd like them to believe isn't going to stand the barrage of information from the outside world?

I repeat my choice of word: futile.