When my oldest was in nursery (18 months to 3-year-olds' class), and my second was a baby, I was a teacher in Relief Society (women's group). On a warm Sunday, many of the windows in the church building were open. The nursery room windows faced the parking lot and my sweet limited vocabulary 2-year-old saw a cool looking truck outside and excitedly pointed and loudly said "_uck" I suppose to let his classmates know that there was a life-size Hotwheel in the parking lot. His sweet, always calm, teacher and everyone else stopped and looked at him. Probably because no one came over to the window to see for themselves, he repeated it in quick succession several more times so they too would come and see the wondrous vehicle outside their own windows. The other children all started jumping up and down and excitedly repeating this new word too.
His stunned teacher finally unfroze, grabbed my son's hand, told him to be very quiet as they walked through the halls to deliver him to me in the Relief Society room. She signalled me to the doorway where she stood with my darling boy, who was so tall and big for his age he always looked so much older than he was. Someone took over for me (which I remember happened often anyway when one of the boys needed me - I wasn't a teacher there very long) and I went back to see what could make the face of the sweetest, calmest, most patient person on earth look so beet red. Embarrassed, she pulled me out into the hall and whispered to me what my son had started in Nursery. She knew he was just trying to say truck, he wasn't in trouble, every so often a child would mispronounce it while playing and she'd quickly smooth it over and no one else would notice. This was the first time however, that a child had said it SO LOUDLY and NEXT TO OPEN WINDOWS and ALL THE OTHER CHILDREN chimed in and began chanting it loudly, so she removed the instigator and went to restore order.
On a beautiful warm Sunday morning several years later, when my third child was the 2-year-old, we saw hot air balloons in the sky between the tall buildings as we walked toward church. The 5 of us, Mom carrying baby boy and holding toddler daughter's hand with 2 young boys walking in front, all clean (as much as we ever are) and dressed for church, walked along watching for and pointing out interesting shaped hot air balloons. We were passing through an area of town I tried to stay on the outskirts of, but Sunday mornings (any mornings) was usually safe enough and we cut across a large parking lot. A very tall and angry gruff sort of man started striding across the parking lot too. Instinctively, before our paths crossed and the locomotive of a man possibly trampled a small child he may not notice, I pulled my daughter closer to me, just as she noticed a truck shaped hot air balloon and pointed and loudly said "_uck."
Of course the man's head passed in the line of her cute little finger pointing diagonally up to the truck balloon just as she said it AND of course the truck balloon floated to the left behind a tall wide building just as I tried to sputter out an explanation that she was pointing to the hot air balloon shaped like a truck and that 2-year-olds have a difficult time pronouncing the world "truck" AND of course at that moment, there were NO other hot air balloons visible between any of the buildings to help give credibility to the fact that a truck shaped hot air balloon WAS REALLY TRULY JUST THERE. And of course while trying to explain to a giant man who seemed only capable of a low growl building louder and a hard glare, my sweet precious toddler in her fresh flower print frock, had to repeat the word in a questioning way, at which point I quit trying to explain and rushed us on our way.
Those are examples of when children are little though, and they have no intent of saying something which causes such awkward moments for the adults in their lives. Blessedly, my children do not use fowl words on a regular basis. We even work hard to not say other words which sound very close to swear words or to fowl words. The few times when they have said something on purpose, usually at 4 or 5 years old, I used shortening.
When I was little, maybe 6 years old, I remember being alone in the kitchen and seeing the container of Crisco Shortening with it's yummy looking picture of a frosted cake on the front. I knew my mother used shortening to make frosting and I figured it was just uncolored, unfavored, frosting. I swiped my finger in and took a lick. YUCK!!!!! AWFUL!!!! and you can't spit it out, and it just spreads more around in your mouth, and it's awful, and you want it out NOW!!!!!! and you gag and .... yuck! Mom discovered me and had me brush my teeth and figured I'd learned my own lesson. Years later, when my oldest, then old enough to know he shouldn't say certain words and old enough and mad enough to say it anyway to make me mad, when I knew from past experience that time out and other traditional consequences didn't work on this child, when I needed something new, I suddenly saw the shortening in the pantry and decided to try it. I got a plastic spoon, swiped about an eighth of a teaspoon of shortening and told him he had to eat that instead of soap (knowing him - he'd like the soap, and I knew he LOVED hot spicy things). He looked smug. Only that tiny little bit, and it's what Mom uses to make pie crust and cookies and frosting, how bad could it be? Seconds later, he was desperately trying to spit it out in the kitchen sink and drinking water didn't help. He looked wide eyed at me for help. I talked to him about how when people say mean things, dirty things, it's like that yucky feeling he had in his mouth right then. And that's how other people's ears and minds and spirits felt hearing mean or ugly things. I got him another plastic spoon filled with thick sweet pancake syrup and he ate that and let it work it's way around in his mouth and down his throat. I told him that when we use kind words, nice words, it feels sweet and nice, like the syrup. He got the point.
Each of my kids has had that experience once or twice. First shortening, then syrup (or jelly if I'm out of syrup) with the talk and followed by some serious teeth brushing.
I also allowed growling (grizzly bear style) and roaring (lion or T-rex style) when we were angry. People get angry, it's not "bad" to be angry about something, there are some things that people NEED to get angry about. It's what people do or say that can be "bad," that people have to be careful about, and people have to be careful to not stay angry. Most of the time, we've lived in places where they could go in their room, or out on the porch and let out a big growl or roar and count to ten and then handle things better. Sometimes, we had spontaneous "roar contests" especially when MY tension was building. I'd suddenly say, "Who can roar the loudest?" and then I'd roar as loud and as long as I could, then each of the kids would do their best roars. (If a baby was sleeping, we had to do it outside.) By the end, I felt better, maybe nothing was solved, but things were better. I was realizing today that we haven't had a good roar contest in a long time. Not that anyone is super angry at each other today, just on each other's nerves.
The Meanest Mom's Successful Discipline Idea #454: Washing Your Child's Mouth Out With Soap
