Sometimes, reading CAN be dangerous…
I was chatting with my mom today, and she reminded me of a story about Miss Sassy Pants. I decided I had to share it.
Over the summer, Miss SP was having multiple bouts with sass (hence the name). I don’t know how much of it surrounded not being in school with structure or how much centered around the birth of her baby brother. Regardless, we were really struggling on a daily basis to teach her how to speak correctly to adults and not have meltdowns.
My parents always host a 4th of July celebration. Miss SP decided she was going to go help Nana clean tables, straighten up, and otherwise keep herself busy. Nana asked her to please spray this table, wipe that table, the usual.
As is typical for a 6 year old, Miss SP decided that she would do it her own way. She knows, after all, how to do things better than a woman who raised five children, had a career, and is happily retired.
When Nana approached the sassy moment, Miss SP looked at her and emphatically said, “Well, just don’t ask me to do a DAMN thing!” and then stormed into Nana’s house.
As the report goes, my mother was flabbergasted, but pulled herself together enough to follow Miss Sassy Pants into the house and ask her what-in-the-world she just said.
Miss SP looked sheepishly at Nana and wouldn’t repeat herself. Nana explained that it was a very bad thing to say, and you especially didn’t speak to adults with that kind of language or attitude. Miss SP understood she had done something wrong, and she apologized.
All of this occurred, and no one had told me yet. The party with all of our friends went off without a hitch, Miss SP played with her buddy, there were fireworks and sparklers, and all of us went to bed for the night.
It wasn’t until the next day that I heard the story and GASPED at the thought of my sweet daughter cursing! Where in the world had she learned that word? Let alone that very adult phrase?
Then it hit me. It was my parents’ fault.
As you walk into their house, hanging right beside the door is a sign that says, “RETIRED: Don’t ask me to do a damn thing.” (It looks something like this:)
Well, Miss Sassy Pants can read. And she can read VERY well. No doubt she had been reading this sign and trying to decide which word to stress and to which situation it would apply. And here we were blasting her for cursing…when all along, her grandparents had provided her with the horrific phrase.
My parents definitely heard it from me. Alas, the sign is still there, but Miss SP and I have had conversations about words that little girls don’t use and how we should talk to people politely. She only attempted to use the word a couple more times. Once, it was with Aaron – and he corrected her. She begged him not to tell me. Of course he did, but I didn’t let her know that he’d let on.
The other time, she used it instead of saying, “darn” or “dang it” after falling or bumping herself. When I raised my eyebrows in disapproval, she said, “Oh no. That was mine and Aaron’s word.” Ha!
Life provides a lot of lessons: how to choose our words carefully, how to chastise a child fairly, how to laugh at the moments that are just funny.
Maybe someday, I’ll tell you the story of how we found a way to laugh when she flipped us the bird in the middle of the mall. But, that’s another story. 😉
