Daddy's Fish BowlA Clear View Of A Father's Family Experiences

So Innocent, Or So It Seems

*Disclaimer: This post will contain a higher level of profanity than previously witnessed here on the Fish Bowl.  So if you have small children around, don’t read this post out loud.  Also, if you have an aversion to profanity, just cover your eyes and scroll down to the bottom and leave a happy comment.

It appears that children, especially young ones were all born with an ever listening ear.  This uncanny ability allows them to hear things that they shouldn’t when you think that they can’t.  Because of this devilish mutated ear that all toddlers possess, we’ve found ourselves in a bit of a pickle.  We are now stuck with a 2 year old boy who finds it amusing to use the word FUCK.  Not only does he use it, but he also has the proper context of the word down pat.  Now you may be thinking, who would teach your child a horrible word at such a young age?  Based on my last post, I think you guys already know the answer to that. I am literally lowering my head and slowly raising my hand to take responsibility for being the culprit.  But before you guys break out the pitch forks and form an angry mob, let me explain, it’s not my fault, and I shouldn’t be persecuted.  I’m even going to throw in a few tips on how to deal with the situation to try and make amends.

Back in high school, I set out on a mission; a mission to prove my will power and dedication, a mission that was utterly stupid and pointless, one which I have no idea of its purpose.  My mission was to stop cursing and I succeeded, depending on how you look at it.  I say depending on how you look at it because instead of saying Fuck, Shit, Ass, etc. I would just say the first letter of the word, e.g. “If you ‘F’ with me, I’ll slap the ‘S’ out of your ‘A’.”  Pretty stupid huh? Yeah, well for some reason, I felt that I was making a true impact on society by not actually cursing. The reason I tell you this story is because it took a lot of will power to say only the first letter of a curse word instead of the entire word and it took a toll on me.  I think surpressing my natural desire to curse like a sailor wounded me mentally.  So much so that after two years of profanity sobriety, I just caved in, gave up on my mission and became a cursaholic.

Fast forward to present time, I have children; I have a responsibility to those kids, so I’m a lot tamer than I was in my younger years.  Therefore, I make a sound effort not to curse around them and I’m actually pretty good at it (a lot better than the other role model in our family).  However, once they’ve been put to bed, all bets are off! When the kids are sleep, I transform back into an adult and spit out a few rapid fire shits, fucks, and bitches, ala tourettes as if I’m making up for lost time. Earlier this week after we put the kids to bed, Fefe and I fired out RockBand 3 and began to play our plastic instruments like never before.  Well on quite a few songs (I’m a bit rusty) I messed up big and I’d let out a huge FUCK, whenever I screwed up.  RockBand competition is fierce and mistakes will not be tolerated in our band!!!  Since the little ones were in their bed and all was quiet, I assumed it was safe to express my displeasure in an adult manner.  However, the ever listening ear of Tre was alive and well, functioning better than ever, absorbing every little FUCK I uttered.  This brings us to our current predicament and if you have an ounce of humanity in your soul, you will now know that it’s not my fault DAMMIT!!!

The next day, Fefe tells me that she told Tre to go pee pee and his response was “Mommy, I not go pee pee, FUCK”.  I have yet to hear him say this word, but the way she explained it was hilarious.  She said that she had to turn her head to keep from smiling at how humorous our two year old sounded saying such a horrific word.  Tre did end up going to pee without further protest.  The rest of the day went on without a hitch and we thought the “fuck crisis” had been averted.  But as I’ve learned, nothing is ever simple in our household.  The next day, Tre decided to utilize his new found vocabulary on his older brother.  Apparently, they were playing and Ty wanted to play a different game, Tre responds with “Okay, FUCK IT”.  This was bad, because Ty laughed, essentially validating Tre and his use of the term. After giggling a bit, Ty promptly came and told on his little brother.  That’s just wrong, so you laugh at the kid, and then go snitch on him? I have no clue how Tre figured out to add an ‘IT’ to the end of his new found favorite word, maybe after hearing me scream out FUCK in frustration, he logged onto dictionary.com and discovered that the word is actually a noun, verb, adverb, adjective, etc.  At least he’s getting an early lesson in grammar.  At any rate, due to Ty’s laughter, the word now had power and more drastic measures needed to be taken (Thanks a lot Ty).

So far, so good, we’ve been fuck free for the past few days.  Who knows how long it’ll last, but because of this mishap, I think I’m going to be reverting back to my high school days for safe measure.

So here are some ‘F’ing tips to teach you some ‘S’ about handling a little ‘F’er that curses too ‘D’ much

• Obviously, the first tip is to not curse within an earshot of your children (if you’ve already failed tip one, please move the ‘F’ on to the next tip)

• If you do find that you or someone else has cursed in front of your child, do not chastise that person while the child is still around (at least not in an obvious fashion). It shows them that there’s something special about the word, which will soon have your ‘A’ in deep ‘S’

• If your child starts to use a curse word, IGNORE IGNORE IGNORE.  Don’t laugh, don’t tell them not to use the word, don’t get upset. Refrain from taking any action at all and the issue should go away on it’s own.  As long as you don’t give the word any ‘F’ing power, your child won’t be inclined to use it

• If the problem does not go away, sit them down and have a talk, explaining that it is a bad word and you will not respond to bad words because they don’t make you happy. 

• If the above tips didn’t work, I’m sorry but you’re ‘F’ed