There aren’t a whole lot of words we don’t let our daughter use. First of all, she’s only 27 months, so she doesn’t know a whole lot of bad words. One of the words we don’t like her using, however, is “stupid.”
And she’s been good. She hasn’t said that word in quite a while. Not in front of me, at least. Until tonight…
Daughter: <somethingsomething> stupid…
Me: Hey! I don’t like that. It’s rude, and if you say it again, you’ll get a timeout.
Daughter: …
At this point, she’s figuring out a way in her head that she can say the word again…da
Daughter: I won’t say stupid again.
Me: Good.
Daughter: I won’t say stupid again.
Me: That’s enough.
Daughter: I won’t say stupid again.
Me: Okay, now, see, you’re still saying it.
And she stopped. At least long enough for her to figure out another way of saying that word again. And, in the middle of looking at books, and singing to her, she finally figured out a way.
Daughter: Sorry for saying “stupid,” dada.
Me: Thank you for apologizing, sweetie, that’s very nice.
Daughter: Sorry for saying “stupid,” dada.
Me: Okay, that’s enough.
Kids can be impressively smart for their ages, but they aren’t quite smart enough to outsmart us.
Until they’re teenagers.
We banned that word, too. Somehow it made it the bad word, worse than any other word there could be.
We also completely had fun making up nonsense words to express our feelings. It made the moment less intense, more funny.
Shoozle.
Yeah, it’s great when you can actually see the wheels turning in their wee little heads. I’m always so ashamed of myself when I assume L.A. Toddler doesn’t know or “get” something and she always proves me wrong.
One of these days I’ll stop being stu… err, not so smart and realize that she’s probably smarter than I am.
[Kaz: Part of the problem is that they are better than us at some things, like memory. Sometimes, she'll put together some thought or idea and I have no idea what she's talking about. A while later, I realize it is related to something we said or something she saw a few weeks ago!]