We live in a neighborhood where back yards butt up to one another. Side by side. And here is how things played out…
I hear this God-awful sound coming from outside. I walked out to confirm it was not my girls. I was correct, it was not. It was my lovely neighbors. Their boys. I am less than fond of them to begin with. We just don’t mesh. We are clean, they are dirty. I hate clutter, they seem to apparently love it given the look of their front yard. They smoke, we do not…well second hand sometimes depending on the wind and how many friends they have over. And on and on…
The girls were playing and I stopped to listen to the neighbor boy talk to them. I heard something…didn’t say anything and listened again. I was correct. He said A$$ Hole. Yup…to my 5 and 2 year old daughters. I immediately yelled his name and told him to not talk to my girls the rest of the day. I then proceeded to tell him that was a horrible word and HE should never say it again. All the while I’m sure his Mother was watching…doing nothing as usual. After all, he had to have heard it somewhere. Ugh.
Then, this conversation follows:
Lili: “Mom is ___ a bad word?”
Me: Yes
LIli: “So I shouldn’t say ___?”
Me: “No honey, you shouldn’t ever say that. It’s not good.”
Lili: “Ok Mom, I won’t say ___. I won’t ever say ___.”
YUP….four times in less than a minute. Awesome. NOT!
It’s not that I want to shelter my kids. Well….actually, YES, I do! And I am not ashamed of that. My daughter is 5 years old and there is no reason she should be hearing that word, let alone saying it herself. There are many, many years of her life left to learn stuff like this. I will shelter her as long as I am able from garbage like this. And that is just fine. Oy!
What have you done in situations like this? Did you say something directly to the culprit (my neighbor boy)? Or did you let it slide and talk to your kids one on one?
5 Comments
Ha – I am the same way! I want to shelter my kids from this type of stuff for as long as possible. I have had this problem. Like in the mall and there is a group of teens dropping F-bombs like it’s going out of style. I find that when you call them out in front of all their friends, it works wonders 🙂 I don’t do it in a mean way but just point out that language is not appropriate to use when there are children around…
We had damn it and weiner, not as weiner dog but as the body part 🙂 come out of Barrons mouth this week. Oh man! Wasn’t ready for that! 🙂
I can totally see you being a cute momma bear protecting your girls from that neighborhood potty mouth. It’s hard to not draw too much attention to the word because of course your girls will say it more now. Annabelle was saying “Oh my God.” and it sounded so Toddler and Tiara’s out of a 2 year old (to me.) So we talked about never saying that. Well, Jack was talking about God making the clouds one day and Annabelle went off on him. “Jack, don’t EVER say God. God is bad.” Then Jack bellowed back to me, “Mooooom, Annabelle said God is bad, but He’s not.” OOOOOHhhhhh my. You can’t win sometimes.
There is coming a day that I’m pointing my aging hands in the face of teenager dropping the F bomb in the mall. I hear it all the time. Get a vocabulary that makes sense! I will be livid if my kids pick up that word!
Oh my. Glad you said something! I would have done the same thing.
I think the best solution is that you sell your house and move….into MY neighborhood. 😉 I promise my boys won’t cuss. Just teach your girls how to play kung-fu, lol!
Ugh. Sadly, all of our kids hear something like this at some point. I think it’s right to address it with the boys and to let them know that they can play with your girls, but not when they speak that way. And also to talk to your girls about how lucky they are to have such great vocabularies that they can find much more expressive words than that! 🙂