The "Bad Word" talk

The other night Ian, Brennan and I were playing a game on their new computer. It was some silly game on Yahoo called Sally's Salon. In the game you run a beauty parlor and you have to make sure to get to each customer before all of their hearts run out. Sounds easy, but let me tell you IT WAS NOT!!! While I'm clicking and dragging people to different chairs in the salon the boys were keeping an eye on the customer's hearts. It was a super crazy part of the game and I knew I was running out of time. As innocent as can be Ian says, "Mom, you better hurry this guy is getting PISSED!". He automatically slapped his forehead and the tears were coming on. I was kind of dumbfounded but not "pissed" at all. I told him it was ok, he knew he said a bad word and I knew he would not do so anymore.

A few nights later I was telling this story to his teacher. Apparently this is not the FIRST time Ian has used that word. In a previous post I mentioned about the notebook that his teacher had to sign daily. She was joking with him on a good day and telling him that she was going to write that he was just terrible today, she was just playing with him. In all seriousness he said, "No you can't do that. My mom will get pissed." She said that he kept saying it over and over not even realizing that he was saying anything wrong. Thanfully she got a kick out of it.

To out myself as not the best parent for the second time in a week here's what happened today. We were at the store earlier and it was packed. The boys could not get out of the way no matter which way they went. And of course they are 6 and really were not paying attention, so often times they would be in someone's way. There was an elderly lady that was trying to get through and huffing and puffing. I got the boys out of the way as quickly as possible by touching their arm and telling them to please move. She huffed one too many times and I turned to Jesse and mumbled under my breathe (super quiet I thought) "what a bitch". Seriously, to get them out of the way any quicker for this SWEET lady I would have had to grab them by theirs arms and yanked them towards me. Well, I guess I wasn't really as quiet as I thought or just didn't realize where Ian was. "Who's a bitch, Mom?" Again, he realized that he said a bad word, but why should he be in trouble. After all he was just asking his mom to clarify who she was talking about. Mayber her name was Bitch for all he knew, right? Well, I'm going with that. We proceeded to the diaper aisle and I knelt down to Ian's level and we had the bad word talk. I kind of laid it on the line what words he could not say until he had a job. (I use that excuse a lot. "Do you have a job? Then you can't do that!" Whatever "that" may be, it works). Brennan was quick to throw in "butt crack" as a bad word and I agreed. We covered all of the basics (I purposely left out MANY), but hopefully he got my point!!

Maybe next week I can be that "perfect" mother that we all strive to be! The way I look at it is that my kids are well dressed, well taken care of, not neglected or abused in any way shape or form, and for the most part have great manners and are generally polite kids. If they hear a "bad word" a time or two they'll probably survive, don't you think!