When we were kids, we used to sit cross-legged at school and call it Indian Style. No one calls it that anymore for all the right reasons. Hooray for cultural sensitivity and change!
Now kids sit Crisscross at school. Except no one calls it just Crisscross, because ho hum, right? How boring. Now when you sit cross-legged, you have to call it Crisscross Applesauce. Frankly, I don’t know what applesauce has to do with anything, but there it is, an essential suffix. Woe betide the mama who thinks she’s tight enough with Crisscross to only use his first name. Those kindergartners, man, they will school you. It’s Crisscross Applesauce, Mom, they will say and then they will look at you like you are equal parts dumb as bricks and to be pitied. Kind of how I look at banana muffins that are missing chocolate chips. Like, it was sweet of you to try so hard, but this is incomplete.
So, OK. You know what? Fine. Crisscross Applesauce. Got it.
However.
It has recently been brought to my attention that, although I am not allowed to mess with Criss’s name, my children are welcome to call him whatever they like. For example, last night they decided the very best name for Criss is to drop Applesauce entirely and call him Crisscross Tricky Dick.
I just…
I don’t even…
I can’t…
Crisscross Tricky Dick? I clarified. Sure enough. That is, in fact, correct.
What is a dick anyway? I asked. It’s nothing, I discovered. It’s just a silly word, they said. OhpraiseJesusandallthesaints, I replied.
You know, Tricky Dick doesn’t even rhyme with Crisscross, I argued, hoping to appeal to their rhyming sympathies. But their hearts were hard, y’all — stone — and they were not moved.
I let it go because I’ve learned to do that sometimes. Which is a total lie. I let it go because I have no idea what to do with Crisscross Tricky Dick. Tell them to stop? Ignore it and hope it goes away? I DON’T KNOW. Also, SOMEONE HELP ME.
I sent my boys to school today. I think I deserve a badge for bravery. I’m supposed to pick them up in a half hour, and I’m nervous. When I’m nervous, I talk too much. God only knows what I might say.
Pardon me, Nice Kindergarten Teachers, but did my sons by any chance mention Tricky Dick today? Perhaps during circle time on the reading rug? If they did, you should know we are big history buffs at our house. Huge. And we’ve been talking Nixonian politics a lot lately. ‘Cause Watergate? Cannot. Get. Enough. Amirite?
This is just like that time Abby was 2 and thought Clifford the Big Red Dog was pronounced Bull@#$%. And she said Clifford a lot. And at high volume. And in the food court at the mall. And in front of her grandmother. The one who doesn’t swear.
In conclusion, I just…
I don’t even…
I can’t…
………
P.S. If you have a story to share about something your kid has said, I’m not opposed to hearing it. Just saying.
……….
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Just let it go. (That’s my sage advice for the day)
I have learned (yes, the hard way) that the WORSE things that my children have learned are the things I’ve made the biggest deal out of! Not mom’s potty mouth nor road rage nor “EXPLICIT EXPLICIT I CAN’T COOK FOUR MEALS AND NOT BURN SOMETHING INCLUDING MY EXPLICIT SELF GET THE EXPLICIT OUT OF MY KITCHEN”. Nope, the VERY BAD, NO GOOD, NEVER TO BE SAID IN POLITE COMPANY things my children learn, are the little things like “Tricky Dick” that my “you can’t say THAT” mommy senses had a minor meltdown about.
The forbid is SO much more fun, don’t cha know!
So, let it go. Talk to much when you’re nervous. And remember, they have NO CLUE they’re *snicker* saying something *chuckle* that’s TOTALLY NAUGHTY!!! *devolves into immature fits of clutching my side giggles*
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I’ve just spent the last 5 minutes trying to figure out what the heck makes sense about the Clifford thing. Absolutely nothing. I love it.
There was the time my son came home with a button on his ipad that said, “I have a warrant for your arrest.” I actually cannot remember if the meaning behind this ever came to light. Even non-verbal kids say the darndest things.
http://teamaidan.wordpress.com/2011/06/06/ipad-strikes-again/
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HAHA!! Me too! Bull @#$%??
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I have no explanation.
None.
It took me a thousand years to figure out what she meant every time she said it. At one point I even asked her if she was saying bullshit, thinking I opened my sweary sailor mouth in front of her once too often. You’ve never seen a mama more relieved than me when she said, “NO, Mama. I not say dat. I say BULLSHIT.” Well, then. Phew!
It was a confusing time for all of us.
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I remember when one of my youngsters came home saying a four-letter word and he didn’t know it was a ‘bad’ word. I asked him where he learned it and he said it was scratched into the mail box by the playground. And then he proudly proclaimed, “I sounded it out!” FYI mom’s all the 4 letter words are easy to sound out!
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One time our (not-to-be-named) son was telling us about something that happened at school that made him mad. Involving a little girl named Sarah. In kindergarten. “Next time I’m going to kick her in the nuts,” he said. It was all we could do to NOT burst out laughing (okay, we did) and then try to explain why it wasn’t nice to “kick people in the nuts” and how that never solved anything. And wouldn’t solve anything in this case especially.
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My kids said all sorts of things but my nephew just beat them completely. He’s two. He mispronounces the word “truck” to the closest sounding swear. He also mispronounces “dump” to “dumb”. You can imagine how thrilled he was on Christmas morning to get dump truck pajamas. He was quite loud and told everyone he saw about his “dump trucks”.
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My husband used to work driving for a concrete company. What your nephew mispronounces is actually what my husband calls them….. I had heard it for 5 years over and over and over… now I have to try very hard to correctly say it in front of my kids.
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My son was watching tv. From the other room I heard, .”f———k it.” Slowly, like he was sounding it out. Then said it a few times. “F–k it. F–k it.” I ran in and said, “Who told you that phrase?? What are you watching??” He nonchalantly said, “It’s on the Amazing Race, mom. They are at the Phuket Zoo in Thailand.” Well, at least he knows his phonics.
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Oh no!! It’s really pronounced Poo-get, but people always get that one wrong!
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Yes, I told him that, but I definitely can see how he thought it was pronounced differently! ha!
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My little guy had trouble with the word truck. For some reason, it came out sounding like “c*ck.” My husband and I both thought it sounded like that, but we didn’t ask anyone else because maybe we were the ones with the dirty minds.
It doesn’t help that we drive on state highways a lot with a lot of trucks, and he was really happy about pointing out all the trucks. Our strategy for dealing with it was to confirm when he saw trucks and pronounce it correctly, “Yes, sweetheart, that was a big, black truck.” (real example).
We felt a lot better when our daycare person pulled us aside when I was picking him up one day, laughing until she was crying, telling us that she heard it, too. I hadn’t thought about this in a while, but he’s pronouncing it “truck” these days.
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My oldest would play quietly at two yrs but if something went wrong he would sadly say “doe-dammit”. It didn’t take long to stop using the phrase “gawd dammit” anywhere that he could possibly hear!
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My son will be three in April. We just got him a little boy baby doll so he would stop stealing his sister’s. I asked him what his baby’s name was, and he said, “Whiskey.” We neither drink whiskey nor talk about it, so I’m not sure where he got that. He also named the baby doll in the church nursery Whiskey, and told his teachers, “I love Whiskey.” Needless to say, I’m suggesting new names for his doll every day before child services comes to my house!
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On our way to church we passed a field with sheep and my 2 yr old son starts shouting “S–T S–T mommy! Look S–T!” I couldn’t stop laughing that my son was shouting swear words on our way to church.
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My sister’s 4-year-old announced one day that he got hit in the f*#^balls. She’s not clear on how he learned that one.
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My ds was 2 (now 17, yikes!!) he was so excited about the computer and installing the games and such. EXCEPT that he couldn’t say “installation”… it came out “masturbation” and he announced LOUDLY in the middle of the grocery store that he helped his daddy with the installation…. rofl. The looks they got! We left without getting our food, lol.
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My now almost 13 yo would scream “Eat Me!” when she was hungry at age 2, transposing “Do you want to eat?” for her response.
And the 10 yo, in speech for articulation, would do the F for T substitution so Truck sounded dirty. The funniest was when they were working on rhyming and he was asked “What rhymes with sick?” and he immediately replied “D***K”. He was so proud of himself for coming up with a correct response and so very mad that we were laughing uncontrollably.
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Oh, about the 10 yo, that was when he was 4. The other thng he did was tell his 2nd grade teacher “You don’t have to break my balls!” in response to her reminding him to get his homework folder.
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When my son was 3 his preschool teacher pulled me aside and told me he had gotten in trouble that day for telling the boys on the playground to stop being pussies. Appalled, I told my husband (he was no help; he thought it was hilarious) and we sat our boy down for a talk. After telling him we didn’t want him using that word anymore he replied, “They was pushing me so I told them to stop being PUSHY.” Um, new preschool teacher? Maybe look at the situation happening, not listen to the three-year-old’s lisp for perceived vulgarity. Then, he came home the next week saying dammit very clearly and in context so, yeah, there went the last of my credibility. Never mind the phase of him not being able to say “ch” but replacing it with “f”. Him asking for chocolate milk was a gasp-inducing “give me some fu@ket milk please”. This one has kept me on my toes so much I really should have a ballerinas body by now!
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When my older son was younger, he pronounced stick as d*ck. We went to our local beach one day where he found a stick and ran around proclaiming, “I have a big d*ck!”
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My daughter went through the same ‘st’ into ‘d’ phase the same time she was really interested in sticks. Downdairs was pretty cute, but she really caught a friend of mine off guard at an art gallery that had a large long metal sculpture and proudly proclaimed BIG DICK at the top of her lungs.
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Lol, I think this phase of childhood is to keep us laughing through the chaos.
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Oh lord, I was just reminded of what my little boy used to say – absolutely “the big d*ck” scenario out in public. Luckily he grew out of it!
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Wow, I am laughing so hard that I am crying! One vacation we stayed at a place with a hot tub. one son informed us that he likes “women in the hot tub”!
he has trouble with his ‘s’ sounds.
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My daughter was maybe two and at Target was so excited to show me: “DAMN! (then something I couldn’t catch)”. She repeated it over and over and I needed to find out what it was. I knew she wasn’t swearing in the middle of Target but none of these other shoppers did so I needed to get to the bottom of it. Well, remember the dearly departed Billy Mays? He was a fast talking demonstrative spokesperson for Oxyclean and Orangeglo and Bam. The last one had the tagline “BAM! The dirt is gone!” My daughter found it on the shelf and proved to me that she wasn’t a pint size potty mouth but we watched way too much television.
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Recently my 4-year old announced in scandalous tones that another boy had said “the bad S word” at school today. I paused, and during a prayer to all the saints in heaven, I remembered the list of banished potty words and thought to ask him, “Did he say ‘stink’?”
“YEAH!”
Glory hallelujah.
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My almost 2 yo son has the same word for Pizza, coffee and pee pee. Can you guess which? Yes, so every time he wants me to make a coffee, he will say with a SMILE “pee pee”. I am not even sure how that counts. Pizza I can understand. It’s pretty close, but coffee and especially because I like(d) to drink it. And of course EVERY. SINGLE.TIME. I will ask do you have to go potty? Nope just telling you that you need pee pee errr coffee.
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my 7 yr old wants to know what is making me laugh hysterically
for my own kids the one i remember the most was praying my daughter would not say the word ‘fork’ in public. i’m sure i don’t need to explain how it sounded when she said it
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I did that, Andrea… My mother loves to tell me about the way I demanded my fo(r)k ‘n’ spoon when I was ready to eat.
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I’m dying laughing! These stories are great.
My 16 month old, who can barely say “mama” but loves to jabber nonsense has started making a sound that sounds like “sh*t.” I haven’t figured out what he’s talking about but it’s something exciting and worth repeating. Heaven help us when we ride on the plane this weekend…
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A friend’s son liked singing the veggie tales song “IF you like to ….” Except he would only say “if you” over and over. And the i would get dropped. He sang quite loudly, especially if his mom was on the phone. Best was the telemarketer – here she is trying to get rid of him, and her son is singing “F you” in the background. Quick phone call.
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I was hosting a party and my 2 year old was standing on a chair saying “Crazy bitch”. Not once, of course, but really insistent, repeating it over and over as she moved between two of the chairs at the dining room table for emphasis. A perverse sense of humor is par for the course in my friend group, so I jumped to the conclusion that someone was messing with my kids blossoming vocabulary.
“Who taught my kid to say ‘Crazy Bitch’?” is totally NOT the way to be a gracious host, and can leave guests mumbling the same phrase on the way out the door.
Finally, finally figured out that my darling child was trying to say “crossing bridge” but her diction clearly needed work.
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haha, amazing how many of your kids had the same problem as my daughter with the word truck. She also replaced the t with an f. Same with tractor, which came out fr**ker – and bearing in mind we live in a rural area and my family farm, she said it a lot! “Look Mummy it’s a Fr**ker – and another, and another…” Yay.
Not as bad as my neice, whose dog had misbehaved one morning. When the grandparents visited that afternoon and asked her “and how’s holly dog” her response, aged about 3, was “Holly’s a F***ing C*** of a dog”. My brother was suitably mortified…
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When I was engaged to my now husband, Karl, he met my little nieces and nephews for the first time…They didn’t want to call him “Karl”, to impersonal for my fiance, and they couldn’t call him “Uncle Karl”, as he wasn’t quite an uncle yet. So they decided on “future Uncle Karl”, which they quickly realized was too long to say so often. My nieces, of course at the wonderful spelling age shortened it to “F U Karl”, and like you we couldn’t change their minds, so they ran around for weeks yelling exactly that. Awesome…it definitely doesn’t beat “tricky dick” though! Hilarious
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My 6 yo daughter is in Kindergarten this year at the Christian school where my husband works. Her favorite thing to draw is princesses. Lately she’s taken to drawing them with what we found out is puffed sleeves (a la Anne of Green Gables). So she draws these stick figures of girls w/ “puffy sleeves” and to the unschooled eye (that of any adult) they look like girls w/ huge boobs. you can imagine the problem when she draws these pictures and gives them to her father’s unsuspecting female co-workers: “It’s a picture of you, Ms. Julie!” Then he has to give the awkward explanation, “No, she really doesn’t think you have huge boobs, she drew you w/ puffed sleeves!”
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My own wee lassie, who is in Kindergarten this year, said something…from the Disney movie Brave. She said “Feast Your Eyes!” while pulling down pants and panties and mooning her friends, in the cafeteria at lunch time. We got a very interesting email from the Kindergarten teacher that day. I wasn’t sure whether to laugh hysterically or pull out my hair.
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It was a mistake to read this at work. I need to answer the phones, y’all.
Nothing this amusing comes to mind right away, but the first time my very precocious baby boy, then somewhere between 1 and 2 yrs old said, “Dammit!” when he was frustrated is when I quit cursing.
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Dr Seuss’s book, Fox in Socks – I swear that my then-2-year-old called it “F&@(in sucks!”
Re crisscross: my kids are taught “Criss-cross applesauce, spoons in a bowl” – the latter part means hands in your lap.
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My now-3-year-old confused consonants for a while, and somehow the sound a duck makes (quack) came out like the f-word. I hated seeing ducks anywhere we went, because immediately she would start yelling to/with the ducks, “f-ck! f-ck! f-ck!” Totally innocent, of course, but still awkward!
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My oldest was a very early talker, but confused consonants and dropped some beginning sounds. One morning, he crawled into the kitchen and tried to open the drawer under the oven, but we had just installed a baby latch on it. After trying for a few seconds, to no avail, this tiny child cried out “RATS!”. Stunned, I looked down at him and asked, “Did you just say RATS?”. He nodded his head and sadly said “YA”.
Something about it didn’t sit right. All day I thought, he couldn’t have said ‘rats’. No one in our house says ‘rats’. And then it hit me.
He said “CRAP!”
We no longer say ‘crap’ in our house.
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When my son was a toddler and learning to use a fork he used to love to yell “fork!” whenever he held one. Except it didn’t sound like “fork.”
We avoided restaurants for a while.
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My son says sheet with an “i” sound, and blanket sound just like “butt.” He usually likes to tell us about things around him on the bed first thing in the morning, and cracks us up all the time.
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I have many stories to tell of one of my beautiful daughters who just doesn’t know that she doesn’t need to say every thought that comes into her darling little head. One that stands out is when we went out to breakfast and a heavyset lady walked by. “Please don’t say anything,” I thought. No such luck. Now first of all, we don’t make “fat” a bad word at our house. We say, go jump on dad’s fat belly. Or, that dog sure is getting fat from all those dog treats. We do not however promote saying, “Wow, that lady is fat!” in a restaurant (or anywhere for that matter). Luckily she was only two and her f’s sounded kind of like p’s. So I replied, “Yes, that does look like Pat from church” ( I think there was a woman at church named Pat.). Until she clarified it for me, ” No mom, I mean, I think she ate ALL of her breakfast.”. No question to the meaning of those words.
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My then three-year-old son pointed to the candy in the check-out of the grocery store and said, oh so charmingly, “Look mommy! Reeses Penises!” The little old ladies in line behind us were NOT amused.
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My oldest had speech therapy for a year when he was 4…. everything ended up being funny: from “Truck” and “Duck” being “F*ck” to “Ambahips” (Ambulance). He’s mostly over it, “Th” still gets an “F” sound sometimes. Now that he’s in Kindergarten, he came home and exclaimed “MOM! I got kicked right in the PEANUTS!” I’m not correcting that one…….
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These are great! My daughter is two and half, and the hits just keep on coming. She has trouble with the st–>d sound conversion too, so I’m always getting to hear her rooting around in her carseat after a trip to the park shouting “Where’s my d*ck?”
But the BAD MOMMY MOMENT was when I completely lost it in front of her when I said, offhand after eating too much one night, “Ugh, I’m gonna hurl.” and she responded with a shocked old lady face and voice “…WHORE?!” I. Lost. It. And so of course she kept saying it, over and over and over while I curled up on the floor weeping with laughter and my husband shook his head sadly at both of us (chuckling to himself). When I finally got it together, I gave her a thorough explanation of what “HURL” means (still not a great word, but way better than the alternative!!!) and got her off the topic. Thankfully we haven’t heard it again…
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My eldest used to run around the back yard in his diaper yelling “I have a wittle dick!!!” or “I have a big dick!!”
It all depended on the size of the STICK he had picked up off the ground. Our neighbors got a kick out of it.
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My 3 year old daughter’s sunday school teacher told me she farted laudly during a quiet time, then giggled…the teacher prompted her “What do we say when that happens?” My darling daughter said “At my house, we say ‘that was a GOOD one!’” I scolded my husband for teaching her to be so rude, but then later that week when I was patting her baby brother’s back after a feeding and he burped loudly, I found myself cooing to him “Oh baby, that was a GOOD one!” I followed my discovery up with a sincere apology to my husband…
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I love how so many of us have responded on here!!
So my oldest and I rented a movie at Redbox one day, and then proceeded into the grocery store. As soon as we got the movie, he asked me if he could hold it. I told him that there were germs on the movie and yuck dirk all over it. So as we stroll through the store, I forgot all about it. He did not, and about ten min into shopping he glaces it in my purse. He then says at a very loud volume “Mommy, can I hold the dirty movie now??”
Mortified.
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These stories are all so funny! My 6-year-old and 4-year-old like to amuse themselves by talking in nonsense gibberish syllables to each other, and somehow their favorite nonsense word is “focky.” They’ll say it over and over again, at great volume, accompanied by gales of laughter. To my knowledge, neither of them has ever heard the F word, so it’s completely innocent on their part. Not wanting to encourage the word by forbidding them to say it, I simply tried to ignore it for week, assuming they’d move on and pick a different favorite nonsense word.
They didn’t.
So I finally had to outlaw the word. I explained that it sounded like a different word that could make people mad, so I didn’t want them to say it anymore. That was several weeks ago, and I rarely hear them say it anymore, thank God!
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Our curse was a toddler with crystal clear pronounciation. He’d just turned 3 and was developing our family’s twisted sense of humor. We were eating dinner in a large college cafeteria when the campus priest came to join us. Dinner that night was kielbasa nestled in a pile of sauerkraut. We’d all just sat down and my little darling looked up so innocently at his daddy and questioned “Are you going to eat that penis daddy?” The expression on the priest’s face was priceless and it was ALL I could do to act horridifed by my son’s query. When glancing over to my little sweetie it was VERY clear by his expression that he knew EXACTLY what he’d said. Out of the mouths of babes….the timing is just impeccable. I had to excuse myself to run to the bathroom to let my laughter explode!
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These comments.
I am CRYING, you guys. So, SO funny. So funny.
I can’t even pick a favorite. Although, Robin, “Are you going to eat that penis daddy?” was a fantastic finish.
CRYING.
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My now 7 year old had a lot of articulation issues when he was younger and because of that he renamed a lot of things in our house.
Apple piss = apple crisp
Chicken s#it = chicken sticks
But the one that still makes me want to hide under a rock is while walking through Target he was yelling “I want pussy” (He was into the Thomas the Tank Engine trains and wanted Percy!!!)
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My eldest daughter all of a sudden started saying “F#%@ you, Mumma” and for weeks and weeks I couldn’t figure out where it had come from or where she had learnt it. Finally, I discovered that my husband and brother had figured out that she was trying to say “vacuum” and had been telling her that the floor was dirty for weeks, just so they could hear her ask me to vacuum!!! We made sure to catch it on camera for when she’s older, of course.
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My eldest daughter all of a sudden started saying “F#%@ you, Mumma”, and for weeks and weeks and weeks I tried to figure out what she was saying and where she’d learnt it. Finally, I discover that my husband and brother had figured out weeks earlier that she was saying “vacuum” and had been telling her that the floor was dirty, just so they could hear her ask me to vacuum all the time. We made a point of capturing it on video, of course, for her 21st birthday!
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