Well, I am two months in to being a mother of two and a stay at home mom. Things are going pretty well considering that we are living in temporary housing and just moved to a new city where we don’t know anyone. Marlo is wonderful and precious. She’s the easy one. Liam, on the other hand, has been my challenge.
I love my little boy dearly. He is a sweetheart, but he is going through a lot right now – new sister, new school, and a new home. We gave him three large life changes all at the same time…poor guy. He probably doesn’t know what hit him. I knew there would be some regression with his behavior with so many changes. For instance, he’s completely potty trained at school, but at home it’s a struggle to get him to use the bathroom. And at home he usually wants his diapers on…he wants to be treated like the baby again. This I was prepared for.
Despite the reading I did and parents I asked for advice from before Marlo was born, nothing prepared me for the bizarre vocabulary and name calling Liam started using. He first started to call Marlo “Nudey” (as in a name, proper noun usage). Then he started to use it as a verb, as in “I want to nudey her.” And this always means he’s about to do something annoying like shake her bouncy seat or throw a toy at her. Then he started to make up other words: hoinky, berine, gigi?? Wtf?! What do these words even mean? Nothing…absolutely nothing. But they indicate that his behavior is about to take a turn for the worse when he uses them. If it only happened a couple times a day I wouldn’t be that alarmed by it, but Liam intends to “nudey” something at least 20 times a day.
As if these annoying words weren’t enough, somehow he learned the F-word. Yep, that’s right. Liam has been dropping F-bombs. And he totally gets it and how it’s used. Last week we were driving to school and I said, “Oh no, we forgot to brush your teeth this morning.” Liam’s response, “Oh f_ck.” He spills something. His response, “Oh f_ck.” Of course we correct him and explain to him that it is a very bad word and he can’t use it, but the seed has been planted. There is no ridding him of it now. I am pretty sure he picked it up at Marlo’s baby naming ceremony. Liam was around a ton of adults that day and he started using the word the next day after the celebration. I hate to be that person who is correcting other adults and asking people to watch their language around my kid, but it’s come to that. It really bothers me when an adult swears in front of Liam. I know that it’s never done purposefully and it’s hard to restrict your language unless you are used to it because you have kids. But it’s really tough when your two year old is using profanities. Ultimately, Liam’s language is a reflection of his home and his parents. (Ugh...nothing makes me feel more like a failure….)
Of course I was afraid that Liam would start name calling at school and dropping F-bombs in front of his teachers so I confessed everything to Miss Jessi at our parent/teacher conference. The conference was going great, until I started listing the bizarre words that Liam has been using. I think I started cracking up after “hoinky.” I mean, I just couldn’t keep a straight face. Here I was trying to have a professional conversation and I was saying words like “nudey” and “hoinky.” Thankfully, Liam hasn’t used the F-word at school, but he’s got quite the following with his use of “nudey.” Apparently, there’s a crew of kids in the class using the word now…great. Sigh.
Any other parents out there with kids using bad words or name calling? Advice?
