I Said This to My Four Year Old

I probably shouldn’t have

Okay, before I tell you the entire story, I’m gonna need to give you some backstory. I always made one thing clear to my children. I wouldn’t tolerate a lack of respect or kindness.

I taught them this since they were toddlers.

Of course, kindness at this age is a fairly comprehensible lesson. If you don’t include Sam while you’re playing he will be sad. If you don’t share your toy that will make someone sad.

But respect is a harder concept for a small child.

It’s not like I dug deep looking for an answer. I didn’t put a lot of thought into this. My children were too young for that. And I was still far too young a mother to have it all together. But I did have a pressure point of something I didn’t like, despite an individual's age.

I hated one single word that I felt was indicative of a lack of respect. And my boys knew it.

One day, I pick my four-year-old up from pre-school.

“I said a bad word today mommy,” he says.

“What?” I ask.

“I don’t want to tell you,” he says.

Now here’s the moment a mother goes overboard with her oldest child. Because we get way smarter and way more laid-back with each subsequent one.

“Just tell me what you said,” I say.

“I can’t it started with an ‘S,’ he says.

Here is where any intelligent seasoned mother would stop the questioning. After all, he’s a toddler. But remember, I’m an overzealous‘ technically still first-time mom since he’s my oldest.’

He and I are huge experiments of first-time parenting.

So I proceed.

“Did you say Sh*t?” I gasp.

“Oh no, mommy I said shut up.”

I drive the car with uncharacteristic silence. Until I get home and call my sister.

“Are you out of your mind?” laughs my wiser and older sister. “What were you thinking giving him choices of “S” words?”

“I was worried and I wanted to know what he said,” I say.

Suffice it to say I can still hear the roar of her laughter through the phone.

The other day, my twenty-two-year-old son said ‘shut up.’ Immediately he apologized and shook his head.

He’s my youngest so evidently, I carried the “S” word torch.

“When we were growing up,” he says. “You made us think that was the worst thing possible. I could have called someone this or that, and it would have been okay, as long as I didn’t tell them to shut up.”

“I was trying to teach you about respect,” I say. “And nothing is more disrespectful than telling someone to shut up.”

I laughed realizing a childhood lesson withstood the test of time.

As well as a young mother’s stupidity trying to endorse it.

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