Isaac asked me yesterday to guess how many fingers he was holding up?
And I looked up from what I was doing to stare into a beautifully formed "flipping of the bird." One that he had obviously formed before. In fact, he could do it with both hands. Perfect formation. No practice necessary. If there was a judges table, he would have received perfect 10's all the way through.
Me: Isaac, where did you learn that?
Isaac: What do you mean? I just want you to guess how many fingers I'm holding up.
Me: I know that, but you don't normally ask me that question and I think you've seen that somewhere.
Isaac: No. Just guess.
Me: You're holding up one finger. And do you know what that finger means?
Isaac: No. It's just a finger.
Me: Isaac, when you hold that finger up like that, it's the same as saying the absolutely worst word to someone. It's not nice at all and if your teacher saw that, you would get sent to the office.
Isaac: I would?
Me: yup.
Isaac: Well. What word does it mean?
Me: That's not important. You'll learn it one day before I'm ready. All you need to know right now is that finger is very very mean and we don't hold it up like that.
Much later after finally confessing that he'd seen kids playing the "guess how many fingers I'm holding up" game, he became very frustrated with me and Todd for not just telling him the bad word that it stands for........
Isaac: Mom, I figured it out. I do know what it means.
Me: Okay. What does it mean?
Isaac: GASP! I can't say it out loud. Owen's here. I'll whisper it in your ear.
Me: Okay
Isaac whispering: It means 'you're the stupidest person in the whole wide world.'
Me: Sort of, but it's even uglier than that.
Long pause...............................................................
Isaac: You're the stupidest person in the entire galaxy?!
Yes, I'm still chuckling.
I love this whole parenting thing.
One day when he's lost some of his sweet innocence and those fingers are pointed at me in retaliation, I hope I'll remember it just means that "I'm the stupidest person in the entire galaxy." To be honest, sometimes I feel that way anyways, so no harm - no foul, right?
Alrighty then! From a grandma in the outer galaxies I will keep this in mind. I never every (to my face anyway) had my sons show me that finger in their teen/"rebelious" years but I do remember a VERY long electrically charged pause given by me after the "DUH!" response to my parenting expertise! :-) Just keep laughing and life gets more and more interesting along the smiles!
ReplyDeleteThis makes all the hard times worth it, right? He cracks me up! Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteSo thankful that he is STILL Sweet Pea! And, yes, I hate it when they lose that innocence. I used to love it when a kindergarten student would come up and say so-and-so just called me a REALLY bad name. I asked "What did he call you"? And the response was usually "He called me Stupid". And I was greatly relieved that a verbal correction was all that was required. Love the young ones.
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