Words for All of Your Two Thousand Parts

I sometimes find myself very fearful of what may come out of my child’s mouth in the presence of strangers. Or in his Sunday school classroom. Most parents, I’m sure, suffer from this same fear. It’s bad enough that kids pick up on things so deviously in the first place, but my husband sometimes forgets to use the child-friendly filter that I am attempting to install in his head.

Don’t misunderstand me, neither of us is in the habit of using coarse language or anything like that, but I find that my sensitive woman/mommyness can be easily offended. Words like “butt” and “fart” only sound funny the first time they make their exit from a three-year-old’s mouth.

My husband was gone last week on a business trip, so I cannot blame the following on him. Sometime during the middle of the week my son betook himself from the bathroom, where he had taken himself to the potty, and brought his pants and underwear to me for assistance. All smiles, he handed me these articles of clothing and said, “Look at my butt crack!”

Now, really, I must draw some sort of line here! I felt badly because he was so proud that his command of the English language enabled him to articulate this phrase, but I didn’t feel good about encouraging his use of it.

Awhile back he punctuated his sentences with “fossil poop” after perusing a dinosaur book with Daddy. That went on for some time. Much to my dismay he had no scruples about sharing his knowledge of dinosaur droppings with persons he had just met. After that phase passed the age of “blubber fat” began. (This time after reading a book about whales; I begin to think that learning is overrated).

Most of these phrase-related issues become issues because a certain grown-up boy in our house laughs like a madman when he hears them uttered in the singsong voice of our little Blank Slate. Thankfully Daddy wasn’t home to witness the declaration of a cloven rear-end, and I’m confident that another potential word-sharing crises has been averted.