Right now we have my sister Katie (will be contributing soon) and her 3 year old twins living with us while she finds a new place to live in Charlotte. We live in a bungalow in Elizabeth that seemed large before we had kids, seemed just about right with 2 kids and now feels rather tight. Now, I know that we are blessed to have this wonderful home and I know that we have more than others, but still, it is hard to count my blessings some days with all the screaming and gymnastics and messes that go on.
We have the time out corners down, we have a dinner time and play time and bed time ritual: all is going well. We really feel like we are doing well with 4 kids under 4 in one house.
Then, out of the blue, we are driving in the car and Sam, my nephew says “Shut the F*#@ up!” . We almost crashed. While I do not have a perfect mouth, I do not say this. This is really bad. Even though we are in the car, we are afraid that someone has heard this foul potty mouthed boy. There was no need to ask him “What did you just say?” as it was clearer than any word he has ever spoken (of course). So we responded by telling him that was a bad word and that when we use words like that we need to go to time out and take a break from play. Lily (Sam’s twin) told us a boy in daycare had said this word and got a time out. We said thank you Lily for exposing the teacher of the word, and re-iterated that Sam would have a time out when we got home.
The problem is, time out did not work. This phrase was so upsetting that immediately all of the kids learned that it got our attention faster than anything else. And so, our brilliant time out corner failed. Sam sat down and seemed quiet until we realized he was whisepring this dirty little phrase and smiling. Now we were stuck. He was sort of being quiet but the little noise that was coming out was terrible and he was enjoying saying this and both Sophia and Lily kept laughing at what he was whispering. It was like this dirty word was a magnet. Previously, all the kids knew to stay away from those in time out. Now, our beautiful structure was gone.
Katie decided that it was not okay even to whisper and told Sam that he should not use that word, even in a whisper, and that he would have to start his 3 minutes over. Well, he gave a monster look to us, took a deep breath, and screamed that nasty phrase at the top of his lungs. Over and over. We were all stunned!
The house has never seemed smaller. My neighborhood seemed small at this moment as I was sure everyone could hear this terrible outburst. We did not know what to do. When I was little I definitely would have gotten a spanking or, more likely, have my mouth washed out with soap. The pic above is from the movie “A Christmas Story” – not our home. In this day and age, those options are off the table so we were stuck with time out. We told Sam that we do not speak to boy who use that language and that when he was ready to speak like a big boy we would talk to him. Really I think we both had a slight urge after many minutes of just saying it right back to him, but we refrained as we summoned every ounce of adulthood we possess.
It took Sam about 20 minutes of screaming this to finally calm down. We are dealing with these outbursts and they are getting shorter but they still happen. Children’s counselors say that it normally gets worse before it gets better so we are waiting. And cringing each and every time this comes out. I just pray that he does not say it in front of people, but I am sure this is a wasted prayer. Kids repeat what they hear and they seem to find really shocking things more interesting than the regular old conversation.
Life as a mom or aunt or any guardian is never easy, but this is the worst yet. I will let you know if we survive. Right now I want to crawl into an unoccupied corner of my house and dream of having a really obedient toddler.
