Xander Week 129 – I’m not ready for this stuff yet!
September 1, 2009
Yesterday was Xander’s first day in the Purple Room. We were all so excited about this change – new and exciting challenges, etc. So last night, Zach went grocery shopping as he does every Monday night. Xander and I watched about 20 minutes of a movie (while I read a book to Parker – gotta love multi-tasking!) Then when I took Parker to the kitchen to feed him dinner, Xander followed us. I was busy trying to convince Parker to open his mouth, and not paying super close attention to Xander bopping around in the kitchen. He was sort of babbling to himself (more on that in another post). But then Xander said something that caught my attention. I stopped, turned and listened more closely. Then I thought to myself, ‘nah, that can’t be what he said’, so I said Xander, what did you say? He turned to me with a smile on his face, and said as casually as you would say lamp, “fuckin” to which I responded, “say that again please?” and he repeated it again. My two year old son dropped the f-bomb (twice) and thought it was perfectly normal.
Needless to say, we had a long discussion about why this was a naughty word and why he shouldn’t ever, ever use it. I know, this just means he’ll be more tempted to use it (don’t you dare do xyz and that’s the first thing we humans want to do). But, I wasn’t really prepared for this discussion! He’s not even three yet. That was his first day in the big kid room! How do other people handle kids and swearing? I told Xander that Mommy and Daddy never use that word, and that is a naughty word, that it really upsets people and he cannot use it ever – most especially at school because other kids don’t need to hear that word either, and the other mommies and daddies would be very upset if their children said that word too.
I also asked Xander who taught him that word. At first I got the usual response from him, “I don’t know” then eventually he told me he heard it at school, and when I kept pressing him, he told me it was his friend C. I find that hard to believe (knowing C’s family, I can’t imagine this is something that would come out of that little guy’s mouth).
I hope that I addressed it with Xander in an appropriate fashion. I didn’t get mad, we talked about why it was a bad word, and I told him he couldn’t use it anymore. I also told him that the next time I heard him use it, he would get into trouble. Of course, Xander conveniently did this while Zach wasn’t home, so I got the whole discussion. Maybe he would have had some other words of wisdom or a different approach that would have worked better…. We didn’t address it again when Zach got home.
I’m not sure what we’ll do next time we hear Xander use that word, but I’m hopeful that I’ll have several years to figure it out!
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