Sugar and Snails

Parenting is polar.  It simply is.

Tonight, Morgan decided the way to get out of bedtime was to start cleaning.  What parent can dispute that?  She didn't actually ask, but when I came up, and found her madly reorganizing and rearranging the bonus room, I just couldn't bring myself to force her to bed.  "Mom, look how much better this looks," I heard, over and over again.

Not that our bonus room looked bad, but she really did transform it.  She placed toys neatly in nooks and crannies and moved the couch to hide a bulky rescue hero station.  She even swept behind the couch, around the exercise bike, and under a couple baskets of toys.

At the end, around 10:30 p.m., she called me in, stood back, and said, "Wow.  I never knew this room could look this good."

Morgan reads this blog . . . Thanks Morgan!

So you may still be asking why I say parenting is polar.

Because on the other end right now, we've got a word problem.  It reminds me of the times when we had to remove "duh" from our house.  Anika used to do push-ups any time any of the kids said the word "duh."  That was because she taught them it.

Fortunately, Anika is not the culprit teacher of our new word.  I don't know who's the culprit.  I haven't heard the older kids or myself saying this word.  But it's here.  Like a plague.

The word is . . . stupid.  And Henry is infected with it.  He has been for a couple months.

Stupid mom.  Stupid shoes.  Stupid cereal.  Stupid you name it.

Fortunately for me (or unfortunately, depending on the way you look at it), we've had words like this in the house before.  I haven't decided if the cure is repetition--"We don't say that." Or ignoring it.  Right now I'm fairly inconsistent with a mixture of both.  I'm sure I've used some time-outs too. It's not working so well.

I can't remember what worked in the past, except that something must have worked.  Either the child gets tired of the word, or the punishment works, or something.  I'm sure that a really good preschool teacher could tell me exactly what to do with this.


But. . . . never fear.  I don't.  I just hope it passes before kindergarten next August.