Nowadays I feel like I have a tape/video recorder following me around monitoring everything I do and say. As the triplets continue on their journey of learning the English language, I’m starting to see why my mother sent me out of the room every time she began a conversation.
My husband and I were sitting down watching TV and he said that someone was acting stupid. No sooner than the words could leave his lips, everybody started repeating, “He’s stupid, he’s stupid.” So for the next week we were on stupid patrol. Everything and everybody was stupid.
I called my mom up to tell her what had happened and she said, “You all must now be more careful than ever.” She started to break it down for me. Be careful of the things you say around your children because they’ll repeat it, and keep kids out of adult conversation. If you and an adult are talking send them out of the room and make sure that they know this is to be done without asking every time.
She said kids will do what you do, not what you say. You will be able to tell the type of parents a child has in some cases by the way the child acts. Somethings they’ll pick up things from outside of the home and you can’t do too much about that, but control what you can and be consistent. As my mom said, just think about some of the kids you see riding the buses home from school. How many of them do you hear talkin’ loud and cussin’ up a storm. They get it from somewhere and most times it starts at home. Of course this is not the case all the time because some kids just show out for other kids but nine times out of ten it’s picked up at home.
Thankfully my husband and I are very easy-going and manage to maintain a clean vocabulary in front of the kids. Even though we are good about watching our mouths, sometimes an inappropriate phrase will slip here and there, but we are human and will have a couple slip-ups from time to time. Happily, everyone that has commented to us about the triplets has said they are very polite and mannerable. The key is to be mindful of the things we are saying in front of our children. Make sure you are sending out the best representation of yourself (your child) every time they walk out the door. It will definitely be evident in conversation.
BMWK, do you think you do a good job of “watching your mouth” when in front of the kids?