A couple of weeks ago I got myself invited to my oldest son's fourth-grade class to talk to the kids about security. The teacher is really into technology and is doing some very cool stuff. Unfortunately, he is not very into security, yet, so that part was, shall we say, lacking. He created this really neat literature blog about books they were reading and the kids were supposed to submit comments to the blog. I sent the teacher a note asking if he accepted anonymous comments. The answer: "No. I told the kids they have to put their names on the comments."

So, this entire discussion launched into a mini-lesson on security, and the next thing I know I have a date to go speak to the class, and I now have to figure out what to talk about. A couple of days before I was out driving with all my kids and decided to talk to them about passwords and how you should come up with long ones, how you can write them down and hide the note somewhere only you know where it is, and how you should never tell anyone, even your brothers and sisters, what they are.

My oldest son, who is very security savvy, immediately echoed all this to his younger siblings. "Yeah, that's right. You should have a long password. Mine is 'expialidocious'." I asked whether he hadn't listened when I told him, about thirty seconds ago, not to tell his brother and sister what the password was. His comment was totally priceless:

"But dad, it's OK. They don't know how to write!"

Way to show me up. I guess it's OK to tell someone that doesn't know how to write what your password is, as long as you change it before they learn how.

Read the complete post at http://msinfluentials.com/blogs/jesper/archive/2007/10/09/from-the-mouth-of-babes-part-12398.aspx