Lexi Learns to Swear

(In this post, I have to call her Lexi, because that's the name we called her then, but it's really Ally that I'm talking about.)

When Lexi was 4 she "accidentally" said a couple of disturbing things.

One day we were standing outside our house and Hal's business partner (at the time) came by. He stayed (as he usually does) for quite a long time. When he (finally) left, Lexi said, "Goodbye B-tch." (Instead of Butch, which is his name.)

I stood there for a minute trying to decide if she really said what I thought she said.

As if she could read my mind, she said it again, "Goodbye B-tch."

Ok, I thought, there's no way she could know what that word means. It was an accident.

Then she looked at me and giggled and said, "Oops, I said B-tch."

So, of course, we had to have the little discussion about how that isn't nice word, etc., etc. I really have no idea where she had heard the word.

So, problem solved. Or so I thought.

A month or so later, which was a couple of weeks before she started school, we went to Bear Lake. After we'd been there all day, I took her up to the bathroom to change, etc.

When she was in the bathroom and started changing her shirt she said, "Oh, I wanted to bring the other sh--."

Again, I froze and my thoughts swirled, "Does she know that word? Was it an accident?" And so on.

Well, she answered my questions pretty quickly. She giggled and said, "Oh, I said sh--."

I had heard somewhere that you should explain what certain naughty words mean so kids would just know and then the novelty would wear off from using them or whatever. I would never suggest doing this for the reason you will see at the end of this post, but I was young(er) and dumb(er), and it sounded like a good idea at the time.

I calmly asked her if she knew what the word meant. She said no, so I calmly explained that it's what some naughty people call it when they use the bathroom. (Well, what would YOU say?)

She seemed to take the whole conversation in stride, so I hoped that was good enough. Then I remembered that she was going to start Kindergarten soon so I was really worried that she might start showing off her new vocabulary and that it would not go over well.

I said to her, "Now Lexi, I don't ever want you to use this word again, do you understand? That is a word that you will get in trouble for if you use it at school. If you use that word, you will have to go to the Principal's office and I don't think you will want to do that."

She looked at me innocently and said, "So does that mean I shouldn't do this:" and then she put up her middle finger at me and said "Sh--."

I would have collapsed to the floor if it wasn't a dirty public restroom.

We talked again about naughty words and what it meant and why you shouldn't do things like that. Finally the conversation wrapped up and we joined Hal and Morgan outside to go home.

"You guys were gone a long time." Hal said.

"We'll talk about it later." I replied.

So we all got into the car and were going merrily on our way. We got our usual raspberry shakes and chocolate malts. It looked like it was going to be a pleasant trip home, which I really needed at that point.

All of a sudden, out of the blue, Lexi said, "I know what sh-- means."

Hal slammed on the breaks and started sputtering, "Where did you hear a word like that?"

She answered very calmly, "Mom told me."