Watch Your Mouth

So, I've talked before about hissing or growling to prevent cussing when I'm in pain. I still do that which usually means I'm on the verge of tears and my kids are laughing at me. I'm usually pretty aware around the kids. I'm only human and I'm sure I've slipped here and there. For all my effort though we still had a couple lessons in how much the kids around you absorb.

I was having a rough day with Miss Roo. She was just being two and I was grouchy and tired from pushing it too hard post surgery. Generally, I hold fast to my sense of humor and distracting her distracts me too. We'd been playing and laughing in the bed. I put on a movie and she was mellowing out and then she decided that wasn't the best plan. She started kicking me in the bad hip and being aggressive. I heard myself say "stop it" in a tone that implied I was losing my calm, but she didn't. So in frustration more to myself than to her I said "I'm gonna smack you!".

I honestly said it to myself in that way adults say "I'm gonna kill you" when we're annoyed with each other. In any event, I couldn't unsay it. After a moment of silence Riley said thoughtfully "Mommy said gonna smack you." Another brief silence followed and I replied "You're right Riley I did say that. That's not a nice thing to say, is it? Hitting is not nice. Mommy didn't mean it." She thought about it and agreed "not. nice." Just a little reminder.

Not long after Isaac got sent to the office for saying "I wish I was dead." He said it in an impassioned fit of frustration. He didn't mean it, but the school was right to investigate such a horrific statement. It was one of those moments were I felt completely overwhelmed trying to decide how to handle it and I'm so relieved not to be a single parent.

Mike kept pondering where he would have heard such a thing. I pointed out that we're not just contending with what he hears at home, but what all of his friends hear at home or on tv too. The root of the idea to claim such a thing seemed irrelevant and only served to make make me feel powerless to protect my child. Beyond that I wondered how we had produced such a sheltered kid. How is it possible that not being able to draw a cheetah perfectly on the first try feels like a life or death scenario?

Clearly, I had failed somewhere. We addressed the issue as calmly and rationally as possible. We made him understand how serious those words are. We talked about the kids who do feel that way. We talked about good ways to deal with frustration. We did everything we could do to address it without giving him undo positive or negative attention for it. We still went to bed wondering if we did the right thing.

You have to be so careful to say what you mean and mean what you say around kids. Hopefully, they'll grow up and do the same.