Kids say the darnedest things. How should I respond?

Posted on by peeinpeace

Eliza’s current state of curiosity has her saying some interesting things.  For example, she loves to kiss things to show her love, whether they are inanimate or not.  As she talks about her favorite people, for example, she’ll talk about kissing them.  But she’ll also hear a helicopter overhead and say, “Kiss el-i-pop-ter” or she’ll hear the jingle of the ice cream truck and say, “Kiss eye keem truck.”  Along those lines, our dog, Abbey, poops in the backyard.  I have to clean it up daily so we don’t step in it while playing outside.  Eliza walks around with me to help me spot the piles, and at every one, she says, “Eat poop.”  And I say, “No, Eliza, we don’t eat poop.  It’s gross.  Dirty.  Yucky!”  She’ll repeat me, but it doesn’t stop her from saying it day after day.  Nor has it kept her from sticking her fingers in it sometimes, just because, well, probably because I don’t want her to and it’s so darned interesting.

Now fast forward to this afternoon, when I was changing Zach’s diaper.  She’s really intrigued by his private parts, and I can tell she’s not quite sure why they’re there.  I’ve used the word penis with her.  So she was trying to wipe his penis off with a wipe today, and I said, “I think he’s okay.  His penis is clean.”  And she said, “Eat penis?”  And I said, “No, we don’t eat his penis.”  And then she said, “Kiss penis?”  And I said, “No, let’s not do that either.”

Am I just a loser at coming up with the appropriate things to say to her?  Should I have never used the word penis with her?  I want to call it what it is.  It seems like a waste of time to teach her it’s his “pee pee” only to make her learn a new word for it when she’s older.  And I’m sure she just as easily would be saying, “Eat pee pee” and “kiss pee pee” if that’s what we called it, which doesn’t fix the problem.  She’s entering that, “kids say the darnedest things” phase, and I have to say – I really love it!  Now if I could just figure out the right way to respond …

My little mimic

Posted on by peeinpeace

It’s pretty amazing how easily an almost two-year-old finds it to repeat words and sounds you make.  Greg likes to play a musical game with Eliza where he makes “bah bah bah” or “lah lah lah” sounds in varying patterns and she repeats them.  This would be an example of a good mime.  This morning at our usual diner for our weekly Saturday morning family breakfast, Eliza decided she wanted to take part in the conversation, so she kept saying, “So, um … “.  This she has picked up from me.  I think I start most conversations this way.  I would judge this to be neither good nor bad, but a sort of annoying habit (of mine).  Then there are the imitations you wish you didn’t know came from you.

Eliza and I were making hazelnut gelato this morning.  She wants to help with everything in the kitchen, and I’m embracing this as best I can by having her stand on a stepping stool by me while I prep or cook.  (You can see where this is going.)  She was so helpfully stirring the cream mixture on the stove when she decided that our sweet gelato needed some salt.  She dipped her left hand in the salt bowl I keep next to the stove, and as she lifted her hand to sprinkle a handful into the pot, I stopped her mid-move and said, “Oh, geez, we don’t want salt in our ice cream.  No thank you.  That would be bad” (or something like that).  Yes, she got a little in the pot, but most of it went all over the counter and stove top.  It wasn’t a big disaster.  But my tone and volume made it clear to her this was a no-no.  She looked at me and said, “Dammit.”  I said, “Wha-hut?”  And she said, “Dammit.  Dammit.  Dammit.  Shoot.  Dammit.”  I started giggling, which is probably not the best way to react to behavior you want to curb.  And as she continued to say it, I then explained to her that “dammit” wasn’t a good word and I was sorry for using it myself.  She probably picked it up  four days ago, when she grabbed my empty glass while I was nursing, started walking away, and after I asked her to bring it back and she didn’t, dropped it on the floor, breaking it into pieces around her bare feet.  Or perhaps she heard it three days ago, when I walked into the kitchen for TEN SECONDS to get my pumping supplies and I heard a crash, and she had knocked over my full cup of coffee onto the floor, breaking the mug and making a huge mess.

The important thing is not how she came to know how to use the word “Damnit,” but that she came to know how to use it.  In the salt mess of this morning, I realized just how much she is learning from me, whether it’s good or bad.  This is the only job I’ve ever had where every word that comes out of my mouth is unforgiving; where someone else’s development into the person he or she is going to be is dependent on my actions.  So, the first thing I’m going to do is switch to “Darnit.”  The second thing I’m going to do is start counting in my head to ten before I say anything after an accident.  She is a toddler and disasters big and small are part of the job.  And third, I’m going to count my lucky stars that at least it’s “Damnit,” and not an uglier word.  At LEAST I have that going for me.

Nor can I go #2.

Posted on by peeinpeace

Toddlers know exactly when you are unavailable. It’s like they have innate radar that alerts them to do something naughty when you’re at your most vulnerable. How are they so smart?

This morning while pumping (clearly a case when I’m not able to jump at the drop of a hat), Eliza managed to find the small shells I had hidden from her in the bathroom drawer and do – I can only imagine what – with. I have found two of the five, and the other three? I honestly would not be surprised to find them come out the other end in her diaper tomorrow.

Which leads me to poop. Here’s another example of her craftiness, fresh from this morning. I sat Eliza down at the dining room table with her oatmeal, set Zach on his play mat in such a way that if he rolled 3 times in any direction he’d be relatively safe, and took the moment to head to the bathroom. Of course, tonight I’m supposed to make a French side dish for a fun girls dinner party, so I grabbed my “Art of French Cooking” masterpiece and sat for what I hoped would be 4 or 5 uninterrupted minutes to flip through the vegetable chapter. Not so. One of Eliza’s current annoying habits is calling my name over and over and over until I respond. I chose to ignore it (again, if she doesn’t get what she wants, which is a response, perhaps she’ll stop), but after about 25-30 “MAAAAAAA-MEEEEEEs” I finally got up and went to look. She had punished me. Her oatmeal was everywhere – on her clothes, the rug under her, her cloth-padded chair – and she was standing up in a pretty precariously dangerous position. She then proceeded to require me to feed her, probably because I started Zach on solid foods yesterday and she wants the attention.

The point is that I have to start giving her more credit than I do, and I must begin anticipating her antics. Both of these situations, at least to some extent, were avoidable. I have a child lock on the bathroom doorknob, but I had failed to close the door before sitting down to pump. Likewise, Eliza has this week decided to refuse sitting in her high chair anymore. It’s a timely choice because I now need it for Zach, but the only alternative we currently have is for her to sit in the Bumbo on a dining room chair. It’s not safe, for one, and she can’t be strapped. She’s also not tall enough to reach her food easily, which is part of why she threw the oatmeal everywhere. (Thank goodness we have the dog. In fact, I’m sure I will complain inexorably about Abbey, our mutt, so this is a good time to remember why I keep her around.) So I could have asked Greg, my husband, to sit with her and help her eat while I went to the bathroom, or I could have brought her to the bathroom with me before sitting her down to eat. Or I could somehow make the time to get to the store for a proper booster seat.

Part of being the parent of a toddler is accepting a lack of control. Things are going to get messy and that’s part of the fun. But another part is realizing she is learning how the world works, and because I already know the answers to that, I can prevent a lot of frustration. The best offense is a good defense, right? Eliza might have stealth radar, but I have the atom bomb.