GAIL WHITE Kids' journals are astoundingly unpredictable

Since first grade, my children have kept a daily journal at school, writing on a prompt the teacher gives them.
I have always championed the journal writing promoted at their schools. I have enjoyed watching their writing progress from barely coherent words to entire pages of well written verbage -- with paragraphs.
After reading my fifth-grader's most recent entry, however, I have changed my mind about this journal-writing exercise. The thought and notions of children are far too unpredictable!
Phillip's prompt was to write about his family.
"I live with my mom and dad and 3 brothers," he began innocently. "I have 2 dogs and one cat. One dog is old. The other is very young. My dad could sell a ketchup popsicle to a lady in white gloves. My brother, Robert, is in 8th grade. My brother, Andrew, is in 4th. David just started preschool."
I don't know why he wrote it. I don't know where the saying came from. But there it was, crammed in between all the other perfectly scripted sentences about our family.
I almost missed it the first time I read through the paragraph. The realization of what I had read hit me about two sentences later.
"Ketchup and white gloves," my brain registered. "What in the world?"
Order of importance
Somewhere between the dogs and his brothers (I found the order interesting -- the dogs, then his brothers), Phillip decided to share with his teacher what a good salesman his father is. (I think that's what it means!)
Phillip isn't our only child with unpredictable thoughts.
Last year's journal revealed that Andrew's five most important people in his life are: (1) Mom, (2) Dad, (3) Lifeguard, (4) Friends, (5) Brothers.
I don't know why Lifeguard made the list. The child has never been rescued from drowning.
(It is interesting that Friends are No. 4 and Brothers No. 5. I guess the brothers should be happy. At least they are before the dogs this time.)
When I asked him about the lifeguard, he said, "Because they save people."
"But you've never been saved from drowning," I said both as a statement and a question, trying to remember if he was ever swimming without me that some tragedy may have occurred.
"No," he answered me, using a tone as if I were crazy.
Phillip shared in a journal from a past year about the things he is most afraid of.
"Thifs and robers (thieves and robbers), lions and bears..." he wrote. "But the thing I am most afraid of is hurricanes."
"What about tornadoes?" I asked him.
"No," he answered resolutely.
Their list
Hurricanes are on the lifeguard, ketchup and white gloves list of things my children write that I don't understand.
Occasionally, there are those entries that can be a tad difficult to understand but warm my heart and soul.
"The nicest thing I can do for my mom is make her brekfest in bed."
"One way to show respect is to say ikscuwus me." (That is excuse me spelled exactly how it sounds.)
"We had a graj sayol." (Is this child not a phonetic genius!)
While these journal entries are cute and funny, I shudder to think of what else my children will share with their teachers.
I envision sentences, strategically placed near obscurity, that describe all those things that go on in our chaotic house of four rambunctious boys that I would prefer stay within our walls.
Yet, it seems that even without the details in writing, the teachers gain an understanding of our plight at home.
In third grade, Phillip wrote, "At home I like to read on the couch. Before bedtime." (Fragmented but understandable.)
His teacher wrote in the margin, "Do you have to fight to get a piece of the couch?"
"How did she know?" I remember thinking to myself as I sat on the couch from which I had just scooted a child.
gwhite@vindy.com