Mama, he said a Bad Word!

I recently had a rather mortifying experience in a supermarket lift with my son Axel. And no he didn’t fart and shout ‘Mama did it!’… although I’m sure that won’t be long coming!

Squashed into the lift alongside my parents and a middle-aged Spanish couple, Axel was singing sweetly to himself. The couple looked on fondly and then the lady affectionately ruffled his hair and asked him how he was, “Hola, como estas mi niño?” To which he smiled and replied, as clear as a bell, “Bollocks?” I nearly bloody died…

The woman looked baffled, I looked aghast and my father burst out laughing.

I’m pretty sure the nervous looking Canarian couple didn’t have a clue what he said, although I’m equally sure they knew it was very, very naughty.

Slugs and Snails and Puppy Dogs Tales…

It’s generally only our boys that say bad words. Our daughter Victoria never really swears – up until recently, the strongest thing I ever heard her say was ‘stupid’!

Then one particularly stressful afternoon involving a shouty scuffle over an iPod, Victoria proper lost it!

Axel was screaming, Oskar was dragging the iPod out of his sticky fingers, I was trying to ensure the ipod didn’t get flung across the room and my beautiful perfect baby girl stomped out of her room, charged into the playroom and screamed at Ozzy, “Just give him the f**king iPod!” I nearly bloody fainted!

A is for Apple, B is for Bum-hole…

Current cussing favourites include bum-hole, poop-head, bollocks and more recently shit, shithead, shitty and variations thereof…

So why is it that my children have such potty mouths…?

Ok, I’m no angel, bloody and bollocks are my favourite words.

I need to swear, it de-stresses me and apparently it relieves pain too, I read all about it here, in this super funny article in the Guardian, so I guess it’s medical…

But I never swore at their age! My parents were of a generation that whispered the word ‘lesbian’, if I’d said the B-word to some old dear in the dairy isle of the supermarket, my father would have walloped me all around the Co-Op car park!

Telltale Tit!

As well as swearing like a bunch of troupers, our children delight in grassing each other up. My super-nanny style family meetings (groan) explaining the importance of us being a team and not telling tales, seem to fall on deaf ears at the chance to drop someone in the shit.

The other day, I picked the children up from school, and Victoria was almost busting a gut, trying to tell me about Ozzys latest misdemeanour.

After bundling everyone in the car, restraining them, err I mean fastening their seatbelt, I got the low down, as Victoria gleefully declared, “Mama, Mama, Ozzy said a bad word in school and he was arrested!”

Ozzy had been ‘arrested’ by the dinner ladies for saying a BAD WORD – the Spanish use the verb arrestar, which means arrested.

On hearing the word ‘arrestar’ I was panic-stricken, my grasp on the Spanish language meant I had visions of Ozzy being frogmarched down to the local Policia and hurled into a cell with the local banditos, all gold chains & hair gel, the banditos not Ozzy!

In actual fact, he just had to sit out a game of kiss chase!

And only the week before, Axel had been exposing himself during lunch, wiggling his willy up and down to cries of “Do you like it, do you like it!” and no they didn’t like it, they didn’t like it at all! Axel ended up sitting on the naughty sofa and missed eating his tinned peaches.

God knows what the teachers and school staff must think of us ‘bloody foreigners’ but I have developed a highly tactical way to deal with their scrutiny and head-shaking… it’s the response I indulge in whenever my children embarrass me, which they have a knack of doing quite regularly.

I sigh, smile sweetly, nod my head and then completely ignore them.

Which reminds me of my favourite line from the penguins in the movie Madagascar, “Just smile and wave boys, smile and wave!”

Tags: bad words, behaviour, boys, parenting, swearing