Z often asks me to read his books out loud to him. One of his favorites is the book “My First Train Trip.” Unlike his other books that has only one sentence per page, this on has one small paragraph or two on each page. When I first bought it I was concerned that Z would not like it because he would not be able to understand the more complex sentences this book has (at least that was what I originally thought) but since he loved trains I went ahead and purchased it. It turned out that Z liked it so much and would ask me to read it more often than I wish – it’s longer than his other books so sometimes I find it tiring especially if he asks me to do it twice in a row. One particularly tiring day, I was again reading the book and I decided to pause in the middle of a sentence. I do not know why I did it but I looked at him as if challenging him to finish the sentence and to my surprise he piped in and recited the rest of the sentence. I was so surprised but I went ahead, read the beginning of the next sentence and again paused in the middle, without hesitation Z finished the rest of that sentence too. By the third sentence the tables have turned, instead of me entertaining Z, he was the one entertaining me. I was overjoyed and amazed as he finished almost all of the sentences I read. But my excitement was short lived because Z finally caught on to what I was doing and accused me of not reading his book. He would whine if I pause for even a microsecond. That incident gave me an idea, maybe he does not need to learn how to read after all and I will just verbally cram all the knowledge he needs to know in that sponge brain of his - on second thought that will require me to read aloud millions of words. You are right - it’s a really really bad idea.