***Note: This post is not appropriate for all readers. Also, it features a huge mistake we made as parents. Zak and I own this mistake and will NOT make it again. Guaranteed. ***
When Zoe says frog, it sounds like f&@^. We first discovered this one night as she was drying off with her frog towel. Naturally, Zak and I found this hilarious, because deep down we have the sense of humor of eighth graders. We knew Zoe didn’t get why we were laughing so hard, but being her entertaining self, she kept saying frog. We didn’t let it go, as we should have. Instead, we had her say all these totally inappropriate phrases.
No frog, dad.
Froggin’ towel.
Frog this.
Frog you, mom.
Yeah, we suck as parents. But it was so darn funny. For some reason, the last phrase mentioned above really stuck with Zoe. She randomly said it the next day while quietly working on a puzzle. It so came out of nowhere, that I couldn’t help myself but laugh like mad. She repeated it. Countless times. Then that lightbulb that should have gone off the previous day, finally went off in my head and I knew this couldn’t go on. I had a nice long talk about how it’s not nice to talk about frogs that way, it hurts my feelings, and if she says it again she’d have to have a time-out. Three minutes later she said it again. Doh. She’s had about eight time-outs in her whole life, and half are because she said, “F#%* you, mom.” She’s two and a half. Now, she says it to herself repeatedly as she is falling asleep (when she’s not talking about dogs’ bodily functions) and we’ve decided that we’re not going to stop her when she’s in the privacy of her own room when we can only hear her because of the monitor. Most recently, she’s started to substitute other people’s names for “mom.” Great. At dinner tonight it was, “F^@# you, Miss Cathy.” Yep, you remembered right, Miss Cathy is her speech therapist. Irony?
Clearly, the time-out method is not working, so I guess we’re going to have to just ignore this behavior and hope she just drops it soon. In the meanwhile, we’ll triple cross our fingers that she doesn’t say it in front of old ladies with cute kittens. If she does, I’m giving myself a time-out.
Like I said we totally f$^#ed up.
