A 3 Year Old’s Satisfaction

Did you know that swearing can actually relieve stress?

No?

Well my three year old does.

I should preface this with the fact that I can count on one hand how many times I’ve sworn out loud with my three year old close enough to hear. With that said, I do say “dang” a lot. More specifically, I say “dang it”. You see I was raised in a house with few swear words. Mom occasionally said “damn it”, but most other four letter words were left out of the house. I’ve had friends tell me my mom is like a kindergarten teacher. She’s kind, soft spoken, and tolerates anything you can throw at her. It’s no wonder that she led our churches youth programs. I’ll never forget the day she said “damn” during a youth group meeting. I wish I could remember the context, whatever it had been that caused her to swear, but I can’t. A teenager named Jared stared in awe, “You just swore in God’s house”. She leaned in and right to his face said, “Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.” Yup folks, that happened. My mom, ladies and gentlemen. So now when people tell me how sweet she is I make sure to share this inspiring story. 

I digress. 

My darling three year old, Vera, has always been quite the sponge. Her love of Peppa has left her with a slight British accent and she may always call mail “post”. For the most part she repeats things that I think are funny or really clever. If you walk in the door she’ll ask you, “How was your day?”  Or if she knows where you’ve been she’ll apply that and say, “How was your work?”. Her choice of words is adorable (for the most part). If you offer her an extra helping at dinner or ask if she wants to watch a movie, rather than saying no she’ll reply, “I fine”. She spends more time than I’d like to admit talking to Elisabeth on her “phone”, and her conversations have always been animated. Her imagination is seemingly endless and her capacity for words matches it. So the other day when she dropped one of her Peppa figures and yelled out “Dame it!”, I was surprised but certainly not shocked. It was the perfect combination of dang and damn. Her satisfaction must’ve been immediate because she quickly repeated herself. I did my best to not react, turning around before she could see the laughter on my face. Then last night it happened again, “Dame it! Dame it! Dame it!”.  This time my mom was there to witness it. She too did a pretty good job of masking her laughter. How could this happen? No one swears around her, aside from once or twice, and this came out of nowhere!

So this morning, at 5am, when Vera wandered to my bed and said, “Dame it! I forgot my doll downstairs.” I knew I had to share. I’m still not reactive, hoping that she’ll forget it and stop using it. Hoping that if she doesn’t forget it she’ll only use it at home. And ultimately, glad that she knows how to use it properly and in context.

Immediately after I finished typing this I heard a “Dame it!” from the living room.

Needless to say- she hasn’t forgotten the satisfaction of swearing.