A year or so ago a friend of mine gave me a parenting book called Bringing Up Geeks.  It was a book about the dangers of popularity and childhood.  It was a really great book.  But I kind of wanted to tell her that I didn’t need that book.  My son’s favorite activity is reading, he loves Star Wars, and the other day he declared that watching football was boring.  I see a bright future for him in Odyssey of the Mind with a side of Quiz Bowl.

Here’s a peek into a standard evening in our back yard.  The other kid you see are our neighbors.  Jared is a Sith Lord named Barbara Bush.  The kids think that it’s a real name of a Sith Lord and that it’s just in a movie that they haven’t seen yet.  So it’s really funny to hear them say stuff like “Watch out Hattie! Here comes Barbara Bush.” with no irony in their voices.

Winfield is always Yoda.  Harriet is usually Princess Leia  but occasionally Padme or Mace Windu.  I find it hysterical that she’s either Carrie Fisher, Natalie Portman, or Samuel L Jackson.  Take your pick.  And Dale?  Well…she’s clearly an R2 unit.

We have the Star Wars soundtrack blasting through the stereo and out the windows of our house.

Harriet is the Clara Barton of the battlefield.  She’s usually rescuing someone.This time it was Winfield.  But bad Anakin (Josh) is about to attack from behind.

It’s amazingly cute.

And for those of you who only have 8 seconds to watch a baby crawl.

Harriet now sleeps on those very sheets.

Harriet reads.  She started reading in December, about 3 months after her 3rd birthday.  Yes, we taught her, but it was like pushing someone off of a balance beam.  Like her dad and her brother, she was ready to read really young.  Here’s a video of her reading a book about the Trojan war.

Just to keep it in perspective early reading can be compared to early walking.   How early walking doesn’t necessarily make someone an athlete, early reading doesn’t necessarily make them a scholar.  Check out this article.