Precocious

Oh dears. We certainly hope that The New York Times posed its photo for today's article about hyper-mature young girls, because the prospect of a gaggle of seven-year-olds perusing "People", "US", "Star" and "InTouch" while skipping lunch to browse adult-oriented gossip mags on their lunch break seems a little depressing/upsetting(?). The New York Times examines youngsters' familiarity with adult-oriented material from an early outset. When kids like the Olsen twins and young adults like Lindsay Lohan have allegedly developed eating disorders and coke habits barely after graduating the Disney Channel, savvy urban kids can find themselves chatting about rehab before prom ware.

Gone are the days when children who wanted to learn the meaning of a naughty word or slang term had to find a dictionary or a more worldly pal. Today, Wikipedia can explain in a matter of seconds that badonkadonk is a term for a woman’s buttocks.

Michelle Dale, a second-grade teacher in Brooklyn who works with the youngest of the tweens, said she is “always blown away” by all the things her students know about. “The movies that these little second graders have come in and watched,” she said, “I’m like, ‘Oh, my goodness.’ ”

So feel free to reference women as skank-ass hos in front of your nieces and nephews, because they're probably more familiar with the modern vernacular.