Recently my very articulate two-year old has been trying out new words. "Shut-up!" being one of them. Now, I don't approve of saying "shut-up", I believe it is extremely disrespectful, and I get upset when I hear Sean saying it to his sister. But I have to admit that I have had those words exit my mouth once or twice. As soon as the words left my lips, I internally cringed and then backtracked. "I'm sorry, I should not have said that. It is never the right thing to say."
None-the-less, the next day, Alina is running around shouting (with the same amount of expressed frustration as I had obviously demonstrated) "SHUT-UP! SHUT-UP! SHUT-UP!" My darling Sita and Sean are anxiously trying to stop her with pleas of "No Alina, that is not a nice word, don't say that, you can't say that..."
To which Alina responds with even more exuberant shouts of "SHUT-UP! SHUT-UP! SHUT-UP!"
So I explain to Sean and Sita that it is best not to make a big deal about the words, because it just makes it more fun for her to say them and watch our reaction.
I wish I could say it stopped there. But we have had a few moments where other words have come up. Now to my husband's credit, he is an extremely articulate, intelligent, sensitive, and well-mannered man. In fact he is an extremely considerate gentleman, through and through. On cold mornings he will run outside in the freezing air in his morning t-shirt to start the car and scrape snow if there is any, just so I can get into a clean and toasty warm car on my way out to work. But the soup incident and the assembly of a difficult and very large kitchen island brought out some otherwise unused obscenities.
Soup incident? Take an entire bowl of creamy corn chowder, open the refrigerator door, make sure you are wearing your favourite new Appalachian Trail t-shirt, wool socks, and then drop the bowl of corn chowder so that it literally explodes everywhere. "I couldn't have made a bigger mess if I had tried," he tells me as I return home that evening. It was as if the large bowl had magnified into a tsunami of chowder - every nook and cranny and condiment in the refrigerator was coated, his socks soaked, front of his shirt soaked, even the ceiling got hit.
So he must have said a few choice words...
And the assembly of the kitchen island, it took all day, the instructions were written poorly, the parts didn't always fit together properly....
Now we have days of Alina quietly playing with her dollies, blocks, horses, etc and suddenly she lets fly "Dammit." Always with the correct inflection, and at an appropriate moment (she has dropped something). We calmly tell her that is not a nice word and we shouldn't say it. Which just makes it all the more interesting to her of course.
She has also become the word police. Expressions like "darn it" sound her alarm, and she will inform us "don't say darn-it, that's a bad word."
I am sitting at the computer the other morning and sweet Alina comes over and drops the F-word. My eyes widen and I am calculating my response when she then follows that with "I say F-". Obviously she knows it is not a nice word, and is waiting for a response from me.
"Mmm, that's not a very nice word. We shouldn't say that word," I reply as calmly and serenely as I can. She wanders off and returns to her play.
That evening dear husband and I have a talk. Somewhere I read someone speaking about young children and the power of imitation. "If our children, young and old are going to imitate us, let us be worthy of their imitation." That has really stuck in my head, and I aspire everyday to be worthy of their imitation.
My husband wholeheartedly agreed.
As we are finishing the dinner dishes together, I wonder out loud. "You think she'll say it in front of Oma (Dutch grandmother) tomorrow?"
M
None-the-less, the next day, Alina is running around shouting (with the same amount of expressed frustration as I had obviously demonstrated) "SHUT-UP! SHUT-UP! SHUT-UP!" My darling Sita and Sean are anxiously trying to stop her with pleas of "No Alina, that is not a nice word, don't say that, you can't say that..."
To which Alina responds with even more exuberant shouts of "SHUT-UP! SHUT-UP! SHUT-UP!"
So I explain to Sean and Sita that it is best not to make a big deal about the words, because it just makes it more fun for her to say them and watch our reaction.
I wish I could say it stopped there. But we have had a few moments where other words have come up. Now to my husband's credit, he is an extremely articulate, intelligent, sensitive, and well-mannered man. In fact he is an extremely considerate gentleman, through and through. On cold mornings he will run outside in the freezing air in his morning t-shirt to start the car and scrape snow if there is any, just so I can get into a clean and toasty warm car on my way out to work. But the soup incident and the assembly of a difficult and very large kitchen island brought out some otherwise unused obscenities.
Soup incident? Take an entire bowl of creamy corn chowder, open the refrigerator door, make sure you are wearing your favourite new Appalachian Trail t-shirt, wool socks, and then drop the bowl of corn chowder so that it literally explodes everywhere. "I couldn't have made a bigger mess if I had tried," he tells me as I return home that evening. It was as if the large bowl had magnified into a tsunami of chowder - every nook and cranny and condiment in the refrigerator was coated, his socks soaked, front of his shirt soaked, even the ceiling got hit.
So he must have said a few choice words...
And the assembly of the kitchen island, it took all day, the instructions were written poorly, the parts didn't always fit together properly....
Now we have days of Alina quietly playing with her dollies, blocks, horses, etc and suddenly she lets fly "Dammit." Always with the correct inflection, and at an appropriate moment (she has dropped something). We calmly tell her that is not a nice word and we shouldn't say it. Which just makes it all the more interesting to her of course.
She has also become the word police. Expressions like "darn it" sound her alarm, and she will inform us "don't say darn-it, that's a bad word."
I am sitting at the computer the other morning and sweet Alina comes over and drops the F-word. My eyes widen and I am calculating my response when she then follows that with "I say F-". Obviously she knows it is not a nice word, and is waiting for a response from me.
"Mmm, that's not a very nice word. We shouldn't say that word," I reply as calmly and serenely as I can. She wanders off and returns to her play.
That evening dear husband and I have a talk. Somewhere I read someone speaking about young children and the power of imitation. "If our children, young and old are going to imitate us, let us be worthy of their imitation." That has really stuck in my head, and I aspire everyday to be worthy of their imitation.
My husband wholeheartedly agreed.
As we are finishing the dinner dishes together, I wonder out loud. "You think she'll say it in front of Oma (Dutch grandmother) tomorrow?"
M
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