Literacy Milestone: Texting

My daughter recently passed another somewhat questionable milestone on her pathway to literacy. She sent her first text message using words. She had been sending emoji texts or a short while. [She especially favors an emoji that depicts poop, for some reason.] But now she is texting with words.

This started a couple of weeks ago when we were on vacation in Boston. I passed along a message from her nanny, telling my daughter that she was missed. My daughter wanted to send a return text herself. I figured that it would be her usual pattern of smiley face, heart, flag, and other emojis. And she did send some of those. But not until after she had typed, with no help from me: "I Mis you to I luv you" (with to and from names also). Later she sent a similar message to my husband, who was out of the house for the day. And the next day she told family friends "I with that I was thear" in response to a photo that they had sent. (Shown to the right.)

Now, she's off to the races. I've had to change the password on my phone and iPad, because she is a texting fiend. Her latest trick involves selecting random words from the autocomplete, and thus sending us convincing-looking gibberish. Of course none of her friends have phones of their own, but she has no problem at all texting my friends who are her friends' parents, as well as her older cousins. And Daddy, of course. She would send texts to him all day if I let her. For the record, this all started just before her sixth birthday, which was the week before last. Crazy! But I do think it's neat that she's using the written word to communicate with people.

In a related accomplishment (?) she typed her first Facebook comment. And so it begins. 

© 2016 by Jennifer Robinson of Jen Robinson's Book Page. All rights reserved. You can also follow me @JensBookPage or at my Growing Bookworms page on Facebook.