My children are like little sponges soaking up their surroundings and recreating actions and words that they hear or see.
Sometimes it’s so cute, like when they share the mirror with me as we “put on our make-up.” Sometimes it’s a disaster as they insist on “helping” with the dishes which ultimately turns into a pool of water on the kitchen floor.
Sometimes they copy cat the looks we make or scrunch up their little noses to be silly like us in selfies. They even have mastered the nightly dinner question of, “how was your day?” Which is completely adorable.
Unfortunately, they also follow in our not-so-good ways. If something is hard to believe, Maylie has already mastered my questioning of “seriously?” And Reagan will sometimes give the “ughhhh” if she is frustrated with a rough task at hand — you know like getting the Play Doh out of the container.
All in all, though, we try really hard to set positive examples in both our actions and our words. In our house, we typically do not use bad words — especially around the girls. Ok, there was that one time I backed out of the driveway and ran right into my husband’s truck — but that was almost a year ago and we won’t talk about that. For the most part, we are completely “G” rated.
So you can imagine my surprise when my sweet preschooler nonchalantly dropped a bad word on our way home one night. It completely stunned me even though she didn’t seem to even realize it was bad.
That is, until I went into serious Mom freak out mode. I was so shocked by what just came out of my baby girl’s mouth that I didn’t know what to do. No one warned me that my 4 year old would drop a cuss word!
With my most stern mom voice, I went on and on for about 2 minutes about how awful it was. I literally just kept saying over and over that I better never hear it out of her mouth again. I was completely repetitive and adamant about it.
At the next red light, I looked back at my sweet 4 year old, and she looked like I just told her Santa Claus wasn’t real. She was so sad and so confused. Here she was just trying out some new vocabulary that she learned — just being her innocent little self.
And here I was going on and on disappointed and making her feel like she just did something awful. I mean it was awful. But she didn’t know that. And furthermore, why is it actually awful anyway? Who decided that “darn” and “shoot” were OK but the other words aren’t? I’m 32 years old, and I don’t know that answer. I just know that they are not words for anyone to be saying, especially a 4 year old.
And I could tell by the look on her face that I had crushed her. So I immediately apologized. You hear that? Kids make you do the craziest things! My baby girl drops a cuss word and there I was apologizing! But I felt so terrible for the way I handled it, that I tried to back track.
She was just doing what she knows how to do — learning from her surroundings and applying it to her life. Unfortunately, her surroundings are not always going to be the best. Regardless how hard we try to keep her from all things bad in the world, she will meander across them.
So in a much calmer voice, I started over. We had a conversation — together — about how the word was bad — but she didn’t know. Now that she did know, it was important that she did not use it again.
Then she smiled and said “OK, Mommy, I’m sorry. Can we watch a show before bed tonight?” And just like that, it was over.
At least for now. Thankfully, I haven’t heard the word out of her mouth since. But I’m still not sure the surprise of it all has gone away for me yet.
What it did do, was open my eyes a little bit more to her surroundings and my reaction to her interpretations of them. Trust me, I wish I could put my girls in a bubble and never let them witness or learn any bad behavior or words. However, I know this is only the beginning of being shocked by the things my baby girls will share with me.
Still, I have no choice but to keep encouraging their little minds to soak up the world around them. As a mom, I just hope and pray I can squeeze out enough of the bad and help them absorb enough of the good to keep their little sponges on the right path.
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