The other night I was exercising in my husband's office (the home of my beloved elliptical trainer) while my son Patrick was bouncing endlessly below me on a mattress left over from our recent family visits. A box of my husband's Physics papers falls from the mattress to the floor. Oooops! My son looks at it and beelines it for the office door (figuring I'm in my blissful state of elliptical trainer heaven and won't notice).
"Uh, Patrick," I say through exhausted puffs. "Can you please pick up that box of papers and put it back on the mattress."
As a side note, it really makes no sense to put the box back on the mattress where it will simply sit for another period of days or weeks until the next child knocks it over - but it is my husband's office and, well, it is the principle of the thing, right!?
Patrick takes a long look at me. He grimaces. He lets out an audible sigh of disapproval and states in no uncertain tones (and in English no less): "Papa should put that box back, it's full of HIS CRAP."
CRAP?!?! Where the heck did that word come from, I ask myself!
So I give Patrick an eyebrow-raised look and say, "Did you know that crap actually means poop?"
"WHAT!?" he yells out. "Ewwww. It does not mean that!"
"Oh yes it does, it certainly does," I give a satisfied smile.
Then he takes off down the hall yelling, "Yeuck, yeuck."
I retell my husband the story and he lets out a hearty chuckle. We discuss the situation and agree that Patrick most certainly learned the word in daycare. He learns all of his English in daycare we agree. Then my husband puts the box back on the mattress.
Yesterday, while in a meeting at work with my QA group, I retell the story of what Patrick said. I include the part about how I told Patrick that crap means poop and what his reaction was. We all laugh - ah children, they are so darn funny!
I also explain that I have no idea where he learned the word crap! "It is an English word and he said it in an English sentence so he must have picked it up at daycare." We all nod and agree that daycare is to blame for our children's rampant profanity absorption (albeit, crap isn't really a profane word but what the heck, nice to have someone to blame).
Half way through the meeting we are talking about our office's internal wiki where we post all of our activities. We discuss how at times we get a little overboard with our pages. We post so much information that the pages become cumbersome and useless. I find myself saying, "Yes, we just don't realize it and start putting all kinds of crap on our pages."
Knowing smiles start to spread across the faces of my coworkers. Oh my gosh, I said it! I said crap, it is ME who is teaching my son to say such words!! As this realization starts to hit me and I start to laugh, one of my witty coworkers says: "So, I guess what you are saying is that we should be careful not to put so much poop onto our wiki pages?"
Oh poop, they got me! :-)
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6 comments:
That was hilarious!! I love this story! I also end up teaching the boys "bad words" once in a while. Sometimes I'm actually reprimanded by them for things I say. Kelvin learned the expression "shut up!" at school (with an exclamatory meaning of "no way!") and he knows its actual meaning. Once in a while my husband teases me about something or tells me an exaggerated story and I end up exclaiming "shut up" -- every time I do that Kelvin asks "Mama! Isn't that a bad word!" :)
But hey--at least you know they're learning new words in context and then applying them meaningfully!
I too loved this story. It's just the kind of thing that would happen to me as I also say that I never say bad words and then forget that I do indeed!
Lilian and Sarah - Thank you for your wonderful comments!! I have been bad, bad, bad in not replying to the wonderful comments people leave and for not visiting all of your blogs more often! I need to take a day out to just sit back and catch up. :-)
Gypsy at Heart - I am delighted to have the opportunity to get to "know" you recently! Thank you so much for visiting my blog and it is great to know that you experience the same situations!
And the same to you Theresa! It is always so wonderful to see new faces! Yes, I do count my lucky stars that Patrick hasn't yet made it to the full-force swearing phase... the time will come, I'm sure.
Patrick is now using some kind of swear word which sounds like "shit" but isn't. My husband and I always do a double take when Patrick says it. I think he is saying something like "shike" or "sheek" or something like that. In any case, he knows he isn't supposed to say "shit" or "scheisse" so he decided to get creative. ;-) Man, you gotta love kids!
This was such a cute and funny story. It may be true that you are the one who taught him 'crap' or it just may be that you used the word crap in this situation because it was on your mind from earlier. I forget what that is called, but I believe it is a linguistic term. It's the tendency to use words again shortly after hearing them because they are at the forefront (figuratively speaking) of your brain. Am I making even an ounce of sense here? I feel like I'm rambling and I wonder if you know what I'm talking about. Anyway, just thought I'd throw that out there.
I loved this post. I speak Spanish and I'm also raising a bilingual child.
My 8 y.o. said the same word a couple of weeks ago. We had some problems returning a pair of ballet shoes. The sales lady was pretty rude and when we got to the car my daughter said, "That lady just did not give a crap Mama." and then followed up with the question. "Am I allowed to say that word?" I said it would be better not say it, but that I completely agreed with her comment :)
My daughter is a purist and will not let me use the word "stupid" no matter the context.
Lee
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