<p>Brain and mouth were a little out of synch recently when middle-school D asked S if he was going to get his prom date a Corset. Imagine date’s parents’ faces when he walks in to put THAT on her.</p>
<p>DH thought it was perfectly fine to let DS, age 6, repeatedly listen to the musical score from A Chorus Line. I told him that given the lyrics I wasn’t sure it was a good idea. DH insisted that the lyrics would go over DS’s head. That worked out well until DS sang, PUBLICLY, “T*ts and *ss, bought myself a fancy pair.” :eek:</p>
<p>Back in his toddler years DS had to accompany me to the bathroom or he would get into all sorts of mischief while I was indisposed. One unfortunate side effect was that he learned more than most young children about female issues.
One day around this time, DS and I were waiting in a small but very crowded local children’s shoe store for our turn to be helped. While we waited, DS amused himself by rummaging through my purse. Suddenly (and before I could stop him) he pulled out a tampon, jumped onto a chair and screamed at the top of his lungs…HERE MOM, FOR YOUR TUSHY! The store was quiet in an instant…followed by peals of laughter.</p>
<p>D1, 5, with D2, 2, in the big chair watching Sesame Street. I hear a thump, find D2 crying on the floor. </p>
<p>Dad: Did you push your sister? </p>
<p>D1: I don’t call that pushing.</p>
<p>Speaking of nursing…</p>
<p>Mathson nursed last thing at night and first thing in the morning well into toddlerhood. The year he was three I thought it might be time to stop. He always responded to suggestions that he quit with “When I am four.” So along comes his birthday and he hops into our bed to have his little nurse. I said, “It’s your birthday, you’re four now,” to which he replied (accurately) “Not till 9:06.” He had his last nursing and never asked again.</p>
<p>vossron, I actually did something similar. My mom tells this story everywhere:</p>
<p>My mom hears my brother yell “OW,” and comes running. My older brother (6 or 7) is sitting on the floor behind the couch crying, with a water bottle half-filled with ice (my mom used to fill water bottles halfway up and freeze them instead of filling them all the way up) on the floor next to him. I (5 or 6) am standing on the back of the couch looking down at him.</p>
<p>Mom: Did you throw that at your brother?
Zamzam: Factually*, I dropped it.</p>
<p>*I didn’t know the difference between factually and actually until I was around 10.</p>
<p>S1, 12, was at his orthodontist appointment. S2, 6, accompanied him. The orthodontist is a great guy, really funny. He tries to involve S2. “Do you see S1’s 12 year old molars?” S2 excitedly, “Yes I do! I do!” Ortho, “That’s funny. I don’t see them yet.” S1, “That’s because he’s a better orthodontist than you!”</p>
<p>This is why I will not win. I should be disciplining for not showing respect, but I am a sucker for a good line.</p>
<p>My girlfriend has two teenagers and a 6 yr old D. Just recently I watched the 6 year old and had to pick her up from after school care. Her little friend took one look at me and said " Are you her grandmutter?" Yes kids say the darnest things and just for the record my girlfriend is older than me.
My S played on a losing soccer team when he was about 8. It seemed like their team lost every game they played. At the end of the year, the coach announced after the last game for all the kids to huddle together. The coach was attempting to making the season end on a positive note. My S told the coach " Great we get to hear another speech about what a great team we are, when we really stink."
My S also went to daycare that was run by a nun. One day I went to pick up S and he was sitting in time out outside under a tree. I can’t remember what he did (there were many things that resulted in time outs) but I remembered I yelled at him and told him to go get in the car. He took one look at me and announced " Who are you going to believe me or the nun?" It was a long car ride home.</p>
<p>when S was being potty trained, he went under the glass top table and started squatting down. I immediately asked him if he had to use the bathroom. To which he replied, “it’s just going to be big fart”</p>
<p>when S was 3-4 yo, he was losing gloves at a rapid pace. I said to him “put your gloves in your coat pocket when you take them off”, to which he instantly replied, “they are mittens and this is a jacket, not a coat”. 15 years later, I still don’t know his distinction btw a coat and a jacket. He was correct about the mittens part.</p>
<p>I always say that S learned to talk one day, and the next day he learned how to talk back.</p>
<p>S2 was, and still is, at 17, the kind of kid who doesn’t like to try new things unless he’s absolutely sure he’s going to succeed at them (walking, riding a bike, swimming, schoolwork – some things never change). When he was about 8, I was harrassing him about not reading enough – a problem we still have today. He looked me square in the eyes, and said, “why should I, I already know how”. Clearly, at 8, he’d developed all the academic skills he’d ever need.<br>
Fast Forward to this spring. He & I were planning a road trip to see some colleges. Our goals were Northeastern & BU… but figured we’d stop at Univ. of Rhode Island along the way. We’d talked about this a few times, including one visit with his counselor, who pulled out a map, and plotted the best route for us! So… a few nights before we were to leave, I said, “ok, we’ll go to Northeaster & BU, and see URI along the way”. Again, square in the eyes, and said, “what’s CURI”? All I could say, was “Oy. And this is going to college”?</p>
<p>I think the fact that your son interpreted “see URI” as CURI says something about how his eyes ears and brain works. </p>
<p>I think all the acronyms, abbreviations and text msging have affected our brains.</p>
<p>The best one that comes to mind from my kids revolved around protective sports equipment for young men. If you’ve had boys that played contact sports, then you know how hard it can be to get them to wear a cup. </p>
<p>We were at the dinner table one night, discussing my father. He’d played football at Michigan in the late 20s and had had a football injury that left him unable to father children. Unable, until an prominent urologist at NYU performed some groundbreaking and delicate surgery in the mid-50s that resulted in my being born a year later.</p>
<p>S1’s eyes got really big and he said, “So THAT’s why the weenie protector is so important!”</p>
<p>We had much less trouble getting him to wear the weenie protector after that!</p>
<p>Younger son, about age 3, was sitting on the couch, very relaxed, watching TV and fondling his nether parts. He asked “What are these football-shaped things called?” I told him the proper name, to which he responded, “No, Mom, those are those pointy ice cubes that hang off the house in the wintertime.”</p>
<p>My neighbor was telling me recently that her young teenage D was going with a friend’s family to Daytona this summer. The D overheard the conversation and yelled from the next room…" We’re NOT going to Daytona. We’re going to Florida!"</p>
<p>Very persistent D cornered me into telling her the correct answer to “where do babies come from” when she was four. There was no getting out of it. So I did. Her response? "It’s good to know the p***s is good for something!</p>
<p>I kid you not.</p>
<p>S at 2: I had to drive him 40 miles to work. He came with me. On site daycare, which I adored. One day he was bitterly complaining about having just gone in his diaper and needing to be changed. He was completely graphic: “It’s oozing down my leg. It feels horrible. I don’t want to sit here like this,” etc etc.</p>
<p>Needless to say, I was crying. Couldn’t pull of on shoulder of highway, was going to be late. The full catastrophe, I am such a bad mother.</p>
<p>Me soothingly apologizing, “sorry baby, we’ll be there soon.”</p>
<p>When we got to school he walked to the Center as if he had the biggest load you’ve ever seen in his diaper, toddling trying to avoid smooshing it more.</p>
<p>I decided I’d be late for class, but I’d be the one to change this diaper. So, had him on the changing table, opened his diaper and it was . . . . completely dry!!!</p>
<p>He had the affrontery to burst our laughing. Which of course, I did too. One of my proudest moments. I have no idea that a two year old could sustain a language based fantasy like that for 40 minutes. Yup. That’s my boy.</p>
<p>mythmom, it’s going to take me days to recover from both of those.</p>
<p>My friend’s son, at 3, was horrified by his new baby sister’s lack of a p<strong><em>s. He asked hopefully if she was going to grow one - now, or maybe after a while? And he didn’t like my friend’s answer that this was just the way it was, that she had a v</em></strong>*a instead. “Poor thing!” he said.</p>
<p>He disappeared for a while and returned with a plastic film canister, some clay, and some tape. “What’s that for?” my friend asked, happy that he had moved on to something else. </p>
<p>“I’m making her a p***s,” he replied. “She’s just got to have one.”</p>
<hr>
<p>This one’s for the dads:</p>
<p>Same kid, maybe a year later, insisted on an explanation of where babies come from (like your D, mythmom), but responded to his mom’s careful, age-appropriate explanation by bursting into tears. “But MOM!” he sobbed. “that’s TERRIBLE!” At this moment, dad walked into the room, out of sight of the son, but facing mom, so he was on-site for the grand finale: “I can’t BELIEVE that! It’s impossible. Daddy’s is so . . . BIG!”<br>
Fifteen years later, my friend still can’t say how she managed to keep her composure, while her H - out of view of the son - completely lost it.</p>
<p>Hm. Remember feeling that way myself, and not at four!</p>
<p>Haha. Soooooooo funny.</p>
<p>When S1 was about 10 he was tormenting his two little brothers. I was trying to get him to be nice to them so I told him that there was a good chance they were going to grow up to be bigger than him and what should he do about that. I had in mind being nice so they would remember him fondly. His reply: “Take advantage of it while I can?”</p>
<p>(I have to add as an aside that I am fortunate at this time that I do not permit myself to consume either food or drink in the vicinity of my computer.)</p>
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<p>I have to respectfully disagree – spoken language has been around for much longer than written language. A different phenomenon is involved here. I’ll spare you all the psycholinguistic details. 
(But a related link is found here : [Language</a> Log Avoiding ambiguity: a pattern](<a href=“Language Log » Avoiding ambiguity: a pattern”>Language Log » Avoiding ambiguity: a pattern))</p>