where did you hear that

One day, when I was around three years of age, I got out of the car and slammed the door. As I slammed it, I looked at my mom and said, with pride in my voice, "I shut that door damn hard." Mom thought she must have misheard me and asked me to repeat myself. I said it again with a little less confidence and quickly learned that was something we didn't say. Meanwhile, my mom went inside to call her mom and talk to her about watching her language around us kids.
Sometimes your kids say something and you're left trying to figure out where they picked it up from. Did they hear it on tv? Did someone say it at preschool? Did they hear it from a friend or another family member?
Then there are the times when the answer is obvious. My mom didn't need to think about it. She knew where I had heard that word.
The other night, Sam was putting the boys to bed and came across a large mess. Tru had dumped legos out in the upstairs hallway. Sam asked Tru to pick them up and Truett responded by yelling, "You're the worst Daddy! You're the worst!"
As you can imagine, that didn't go over well and there were some consequences. I spent some time thinking about it and wondering where Truett had heard that phrase. Then, the next morning as I was ironing a rather tricky sweater, I heard myself say, "Ugh, this sweater is the worst." As soon as it came out of my mouth I knew. I knew that I was the one who had introduced that phrase to my boy. It can be pretty wild to listen to your kids talk. They pick up on so much. And there are things that I say out of habit that aren't good things. I don't even realize it until I hear it coming out of their mouths. And then, suddenly, it isn't okay to say. I don't swear around my kids so I sort of assume that I'm doing good. But this showed me that I need to have more care with all of my words. It is so easy to call something stupid or say that it's the worst. It can be second nature to throw out a sarcastic, "really?" when something isn't going the way I want. And my kids pick up on it and echo it and use it in hurtful ways. So here's hoping that I can model some beautiful words for my kids to help replace the not so great ones I've already given them.

photo from:  cutecopy.com.au