In the Sewer

Mouse, is a beautiful, intelligent and funny little girl, however, she also has a potty mouth that is making me C*R*A*Z*E*E right now. As in, “grounded-forever-if-you-don’t-cease-and-desist-immediately” kind of crazy. This has been going on for a number of months, but lately has been getting increasingly worse.

We’ve all been in a kind of limbo while waiting for school to start, 3 weeks after the rest of the district has started. It’s hard. We’re all kind of “done” with summer and ready to move on. Today, after teaching my Pilates class, the girls and I were feeling flat and bored. I thought it would be fun for us to go to the movie store and rent a movie, which is something we haven’t done in a while. We also planned to stop at Kohl’s on the way home.

So the girls each got to pick out a movie and though we’re not planning to be very long in Kohls, Mouse is cranking Baboo up by yelling potty talk (as in everything is prefaced with boogers, poop, poopy, pee etc at the top of her lungs) and howling hysterically at her witty word wonders 2 seconds after we walk through the door.

I state firmly that she needs to stop IMMEDIATELY, but like some form of 5 year old potty talk Turret’s syndrome, she CANNOT stop. And so it continues. It gets louder and more obnoxious. After several more warnings to stop, I threaten to rescind all movie privileges for tonight, figuring THAT would be enough to get her to stop. Well, it happened again; several times, in fact. And though I didn’t want to, I’m following through. I mean business. No movies tonight.

When I make the proclamation of my disciplinary action, which should not be a surprise by this point, I get a face full of sass-mouth, along the lines of “you can’t make me” kind of thing. And then Baboo took a DVD out of the box and started scraping it on the table. (Insert twig snapping in brain here).

So now, both girls are in their rooms. I’m bummed that our day came down to this.

I wish I could say that the potty talk is isolated, that today was just bad because we’re bored/tired/etc. I could handle it if it was just a “phase” and was one of those things she’s “testing out”. It’s not. It’s almost constant, to the point where you cannot carry on a conversation with this child without her sinking to ridiculous potty babble. It’s during play, in the car, at the table, at a restaurant, in a store, at bedtime (good grief! It escalates when she’s tired, if that’s possible), with friends, with other adults. All at top volume and followed by gales of giggles, naturally. And of course, Baboo reacts and mimics it all, egging Mouse on.

I understand that she likes the power that comes with making people laugh and that most kids go through this kind of thing, but seriously, it has gone too far. To be honest though, I’m not sure what to do about it. I think we’re past the point of being able to ignore it. While it used to be that back in the day, you got your mouth washed out with soap, I don’t know if I really want to do that. I’m going to have to brainstorm up some consequences to get the message through that this is not ok. I don’t expect or want her to be a “delicate, polite, sugar-and-spice, little princess”, but I do think that she needs to understand that this is not appropriate at the level she’s been carrying on.

So cover your ears against the potty talk and share your tips. Help me! Please!