Cleaning Up That Potty Mouth!

Parental advisory: Parents, if you are faint-hearted about discipline, do not read this post. If you are positive, controlled, and kind to your children, please go elsewhere. If your children respond well to non-violent parenting, best you hot-click out of here.

Whatever you do, please don't post any negative feedback regarding how I am "crossing the line" with the forthcoming tale of Crabtot crime and punishment. As with the sometime spanking, I do some things that some readers don't like. I know I'm not nice. That's the whole bloody point of this blahg. And as you will see, Crabtot can take it. But if you can't please do buzz off rather than leave me the sort of comment that you know is going to tweak my vibe. Remember, I never promised you a rose garden. I promised you a crabby mommy and those are two very different things, roses and crabmommies.

If you prefer to feel cozy, go elsewhere. Like, to Babble.com where they discuss their top 5 baby blankets of all time. Maybe you will find it cozier than I did. Their favorite blankie? Dwellbaby's cashmere offering at $137 per lovey. Talk about predisposing your kid to the finer things in life! Not to mention how sad Mom would be if she lost that dang Bangy. Forget baby's tears, if it were me I'd be gnashing my teeth at that $137 lying somewhere out there...Jay-sus. Honestly. Bloody. Ridiculous.

So. Thank you for staying, you hale and hearty moms and dads, and for accepting me though I may be a little less cuddly than some. Cheap and mean mommy-o? Why, thank you for saying so!

Okay enough prattle. To the point: Crabtot has of late become demonstrably more impossible by the second and has taken not only to delivering constant streams of wiseass-ery, but also to delivering very articulate and highly detailed accounts of what she plans to do with her parents for being, well, her parents (put you in the garbage, in the toilet, gonna poop on your head, blah blah blah). Three is indeed a little different from two and in our case a tad tougher, right now at any rate. Anyhoo, Crabtot has learned quite a few sassy words and is also enjoying the pleasures of parental name-calling (Poophead, Stupidhead).

We all know this is normal and maybe even funny to those with undeveloped senses of humor, but it is also utterly tedious to listen to and downright irksome for the fiftieth time in a day. We have tried it all: punishment, bribery, reward, spank, no spank, positive talking, careful explanations of feelings, shouting, blithely ignoring, etc. etc. And then we tried something new yesterday.

Tot and I were having a tricky morning and so, out of the blue, I just suddenly said "Let's share a donut at Albertson's today." Now, I am never the mom who lets the kid have the bloody donut at the grocery store. I am a Fruit Leather kind of gal. So this was big. I was just so tired of the miserable Mom-Tot kvetching and carping and crabbing! I thought maybe I would mess with her mind and lighten the mood by offering something as insane and delicious and just plain out of place in our day as a big, fat, trans-fatty, totally-yummy donut.

Response: [whiny voice] "I don't want a donut. Donuts are stupid." Followed by some name-calling and potty talk. I tell her if she wants to talk about poops and so forth that she can do it in the bathroom. I tell her if she calls me one more name one more time then we are going to wash that dirty little mouth out with soap (something I have threatened before, but never done). Then we go to Albertson's.

At the supermarket she behaves very well. And while I had decided not to purchase proposed donut on account of rude reception to the idea, I decided for once that consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, and since she was behaving, and I wanted a donut, I decided to just get the damn donut. So we had it. And it was good.

On the way home, the name-calling began. And the hobgoblin in me said that it would be plain wrong not to follow-through on the long-threatened soaping of the mouth. And so, summoning my inner cruelmom (not hard, trust me), I followed through.

Going into the house she began to cry in anticipation and I told her that Mom felt sad and awful about it too, but that we had to clean up that potty mouth. We went into the bathroom. She stood on her stool. I lathered my hands and asked her to open her mouth. I lathered her tongue and cheeks. The tears suddenly disappeared and she smiled and smacked her gums. I waited, hoping the soap would sting or make her cry again. Idle dreams, people, idle dreams. She smiled. I waited. Added a bit more soap. She rinsed. She left the bathroom happy as a clam. "I've got a nice clean mouth now," she said.

Yeah, right. Poopyhead.

(New post today at the bloglet. Puhleeze come over. You know you want to.)