my twelve year old son has a bit of a sailor mouth. he is not entirely to blame because his father and i are both pretty salty… and try as i might i can’t seem to reign it in too much, especially when i injure myself, which happens with shocking frequency. i am always covered in bruises from walking into corners or moving furniture around or misjudging whether my hip will hit the counter… last fall i even shut the trunk down on my OWN head and gave myself both a concussion and a contusion - my doctor was duly impressed. so most of the time i don’t get too flapped by his swearing, unless we are around grandparents or other people’s better behaved children. but we were around the grandparents A LOT this summer and i came up with a GENIUS rule (normally i would never give parenting advice, as i think the whole process is so hard and unpredictable and none of us will even know if we did a good job for decades, at which point it will be too late anyway, but this is a good little nugget i think…)
now if he swears, i give him a great big, lip glossy kiss right in the middle of his cheek so he is visibly marked. this rule applies in all situations, even if his friends are around - it’s actually most effective when his friends are around because he finds it so mortifying. the friends think it’s pretty funny and i am so delighted to have an excuse to give my increasingly independent, embarrassed of me in public, verging on teenager son, a big smooch. ironically, when we are alone at home, he will sometimes walk past me and just mutter, “f*ck” under his breath… and that’s when i know he needs some extra mama love.
popeye by elzie crisler segar
