At Five I was chatting with Avatars

I have a brilliant son. Here, I call him Roadrunner, a name given him by his aunt "Piano Plinker" (Find a link to her blog on the left). He delights my every sense and is my only boy joy. He has three sisters, each is unique in her own way and give me girl headaches, mingled with insight and bright moments of reality. Roadrunner is 5, pictured earlier on this page, he is also very adorably handsome. When my husband of twelve and a half years, "Bicycle Man", and I lay in bed at night and discuss the happenings of the day, Roadrunner comes up. Today's Roadrunner story gave me all kinds of chills, both good and bad. The first good chill to come was that he reads at a very high level. His Kindergarten teacher, has placed him in the "top third" of her class. When I told her that he sends e-mail to his aunt Piano Plinker, she wanted a printed copy to show the class.
So today, he came in to me and asked me how to spell, "I added you." Huh? All kinds of red flashing lights and bells went off in my head, I went out to the kids computer and he was on a web site his sisters visit regularly. I had allowed it because their friends were giving them their user names attached to the created avatar and playing games in chat rooms together after school. (Boy has life changed, I played at the friends house not in a chat room.) Anyhow, figuring it to be a teen/older child web site overall, we had had a meeting about what was appropriate to give out and conversation topics. We alerted them to red flags that they would trigger getting mom and dad involved in. But I think that Roadrunner, does not realize that the set online in the middle of the school day is not kids.
As I watched him carefully repeat out loud the letters " I" "A D D E" " D Y O U" I wondered what he was adding this avatar to. I watched the speech bubbles that appeared and realized that "Does anyone want to date me?" and " I go to NYU" was definitely not an 10 year old behind that avatar. - Now thoroughly alarmed he hit enter and his speech bubble appeared. The cute little avatar next to him said simply: "TY" (Thank You). Then the same avatar said "I got to get some things done" and he typed carefully again. "B Y E". shocked that he was now not only reading words but spelling them out on his own, gave rise that will make me review this sight more carefully-- It will likely end up on the blocked list until he understands what his age group looks like. This innocent and ignorant boy, vulnerable to all on the Internet, yep time to apply "wiser parental control".