Mommy Words

My son. My five year old son. Called me a penis this evening. 

Now. You may have noticed my lack of censorship. I am greatly lacking in that department.

Let’s back up a little. We’ll get back to the penis name calling momentarily.

I was raised primarily by my father. I assume that everyone just knows this about me at this point, but facts are my WordPress followers do not know me. So. My father raised me, with very little assistance from women. I also did not have sister’s, only my big brother and dad’s buddies as examples. My dad was in the Army during Vietnam and grew up in the sixties. He worked on vehicles and in factories and ran an antiquing busines as well as a landscaping business. He was a very smart man, one who assigned me new dictionary words on nights I didn’t have homework to define and use in a sentence. He had a large vocabulary but was the blue collar type just the same. I inherited my vocabulary so to speak from him. Including my lack of censorship and ability to swear like a truck driver.  There are worse things. 

I do have the ability to censor however. I never swore in front of my dad unless I was in great distress or relaying a story of what someone else said. I very rarely slip up at work or in front of customers or residents or supervisors. 

I don’t censor in front of my kids, however.

Facts are this. If they aren’t hearing it from me, they’re hearing it on the playground. Maybe not in kindergarten necessarily, but then again – where did chase pick up the word penis? It’s not a commonly used word in my house. Anyway. Off topic a little. So, I do swear in front of my kids. Moms not perfect and life is a bitch and I’m human and shit pisses me off. As previously stated, gosh darn just doesn’t cover everything. The pasta boils over best believe it’s son of a bitch I’m saying, not gosh darn it. I did however let them know that there is an age where it is appropriate to swear and they are not there yet. Chase ran around saying “ahhh, shit.” For awhile when he was first learning to talk and would drop something. Matt once pushed a Scooby Doo mystery machine off of my bookshelf and yelled, “OHHHH SHIT! WE’RE FALLING!” as they presumably fell to their deaths. . . I took those opportunities to explain mommy words and for the most part have had little to no push back from either of them.  They accepted this as life. Mom can vent her frustration in the form of four letter words, and they can’t. 

I’ve always also been if the philosophy that if, for example, Matt has a bad day and someone pisses him off and he wants to come home and complain about it and use descriptive language, I understand and would not be overly upset about it. Just don’t swear at me and we’re good. But I think there’s an age where I would find this acceptable and we haven’t reached it yet.

So. Back to being called a penis by my five year old.

Penis is not generally a swear word. I’m aware. It is a technical term for the male genitalia. He was jumping on my bed and yelled to me as I stood in the doorway, “COME HERE, PENIS!” In that context it most certainly is a swear word.

I don’t say penis. I very rarely even say anything referring to male or female genitalia. Every great once in a while something may be a pain in the dick, but not often.  

My prediciment was not the word, it was the use of the word. I couldn’t say it was a mommy word, because it isn’t. I couldn’t very well tell him to not say penis, and how do you explain proper context?

“Probably shouldn’t call your mom a penis, kid. It’s not nice.”

“Okay!” 

Well.  That was simpler than I thought. No why not, no explanation needed.

That means he knew what he was saying, however.

I have a feeling there’s more to this story. I’ll keep you posted.