My son has gone through a lot of iterations on how to express his anger and frustration. He initially used the phrase, “walk away” which was taken so far out of context from how it was intended to be used it too on a life of its own. He would tell his pants to walk away if he couldn’t get them on. He would tell the food to walk away if it wasn’t what he wanted to eat and most importantly, he’d tell us to walk away all the time, because as it turns out, small children don’t get their way as much as they’d like to.
He moved into a killing phase after that. He wanted to kill people when they didn’t do what he said. That one got squashed fairly quickly for obvious reasons. But he still had strong feelings and he needed to express them in a way that didn’t involve hitting, kicking or biting (which was the first thing he learned to control.) It was at that point that we became bad guys.
“Bad guy” comes and goes now with both my son and daughter. They don’t use it regularly, but when they don’t get something they want or are bitterly upset (which happens a lot with young children) the “mom is a bag guy!” comes out.
My daughter has decided “poopy” is her new replacement for bad guy. After that one day when we came home from the hospital where she was having an extremely difficult time getting over the anesthesia and proclaimed everyone ‘poopy’ the label hasn’t ever gone away. Just this morning I got called “poopy mom” because, well, I don’t rightly remember, but I’m sure it was super important to her at the time.
My son on the other hand just plain hates everything. In any given day he probably lets us know he hates at least fifteen things. This morning when he was very upset at my husband because of some breakfast slight he said, “do you want me to hate you?” This was after he had expressly stated his hatred of my husband, the food, the plate, the time of day and the trash can into which his food had been placed.
So it’s hateful poopy all around the house these days. Surely you want to come and visit for a spell?
The Big Boy Update: My son was hiding pieces of cereal in one hand and asking me to guess which hand it was in. After a few times he found me in the living room and told me to guess. Before I could say anything he gave me a hint it started with, “buh buh”. I guessed the left hand, thinking I wasn’t hearing him clearly. He smiled and opened both of his hands to reveal a piece of cereal in each. He said, “I said ‘buh buh’ because ‘both’ starts with ‘buh’”.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: Yesterday I was talking about family and how we were looking forward seeing some of our family over the holidays. My daughter mused out loud, “I really miss uncle bob and uncle Brian and I miss Aunt A too.” She then went on to tell me quite the involved story of what Zipper (Uncle Bob and Uncle Brian’s cat) does while they’re here visiting us.
Tell her I miss her too! Aunt A
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