Oh be careful little ears what you hear . . .

Let me start by apologizing in advance to anyone who may be offended by this post . . . (You're curious now, aren't you?)

One day last week the whole family was in the living room. Grant tends to get hyper in the evenings, so he had been bouncing around the room. He stopped abruptly and walked over to me. I could tell he had something on his mind. He looked me in the eye with a questioning look. "Fick." I waited, as sometimes it takes Grant a few tries to articulate what he's trying to say. Grant, looking pensive, tried again, "Feck. Fick. F*ck." I didn't say anything, hoping he had just landed on that last one accidentally. But Grant's look now indicated he had landed on the word he was looking for. "F*ck. F*ck. F*ck." Yep. That's the word he was looking for. You can imagine my surprise, as I can assure you that is not a word we use around our home. I thought about what to say. Grant's look was now one that clearly indicated he wanted an explanation. I explained that that word was not a kind word and that we don't say it. That was it. Grant smiled and ran off to play. Apparently he had heard that word somewhere and it had been met with a strong reaction so he wanted to know where "f*ck" stood in our family vocabulary. He seemed content with the explanation that it wasn't one that we were going to use.

I thought we were past it. Last Friday Grant was talking about school. He mentioned that a little boy in his class, Brett, had had to sit in the "safe seat". For those of you who are not aware, "safe seats" are today's version of a "time out" in schools. When a student is not making good or "safe" choices he or she is asked to sit in the "safe seat" until he or she is ready to make better choices. So apparently Brett had to sit in the safe seat. Forgetting about our previous conversation, I asked Grant why Brett had to sit in the safe seat. Grant's very matter of fact response was, "He said f*ck." Great. At least we know who to blame. I told Grant that I thought the safe seat was probably a good place for someone who chooses to use that word. Again Grant seemed satisfied. I, too, was satisfied because the thought of sitting in the safe seat is mortifying to Grant.

Again I thought we were over it. If you had visited our house this afternoon you would have seen that we are not over it. Grant was playing with sidewalk chalk. More experimentation with the forbidden word. Rather than a nice welcome picture on the front porch visitors to our home this afternoon would have been greeted with vulgarity written in a child's script. I really hope we're over it now.

Oh be careful little ears what you hear . . .