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by Won Kim

Insert your favorite metaphor, but when it comes to kids, they're like sponges, vacuums, mirrors or parrots. In other words, they soak in, pick up, reflect and repeat anything that you do. That's why all the more reason to be careful what you say around your children.  

For almost two full weeks, my three-year-old son kept on saying, "crap" at random times. It all occurred because I got cut-off on the highway.  

Here I am driving at the nice cruising speed of 62 mph (okay, maybe it was more like 68) when out of nowhere a car cuts across two lanes to make a last-second exit onto a ramp. Without thinking, I yelled out "Crap! What the ... heck." Five seconds later, I hear the soft voice of my 3-year-old son, as he mutters, "Crap! What the heck." The first time he said those words, he got a little chuckle out of me. That was mistake number one. Now, having encouraged him, my son was soon saying the word during meal time, in the shower and during our strolls in the mall. 

After two weeks went by, he just stopped saying the word cold turkey. I was hoping he stopped because the word wasn't eliciting any reactions from me, but unfortunately, he picked up some other words to replace "crap." Whether it was "darn it," "that sucks," "shoot" or "freak," my son was a few syllables away from fully deserving a bar of soap in his mouth. However, it dawned on me (as it's probably obvious to you by now) that the real culprit in all of this was me. It was my constant spewing of words (PG and some not so PG) that suddenly made my son's vocabulary sound like he was born in the backwoods of a dusty town where all they taught was chewing tobacco and shooting squirrels off trees with a slingshot.  

A couple times his ability to recite my utterances produced some embarrassing moments. For example, we were once at a restaurant when our waitress ended up dropping some utensils onto our table. Without missing a beat, my son exclaims, "What the heck?" Not only did this shock our waitress, but she shot me a quick look as if to say, and you call yourself a father. Of course, I was motivated to deter my son from saying such words and phrases, so I made it a nightly ritual to remind my son that certain words shouldn't be said in certain situations and that there's a context for everything-but that last statement doesn't really make sense to a kid who's trying to figure out why Lightning McQueen has a tongue and our Volvo doesn't.  

Then I started to really address the source. In other words, I took a quick inventory on my actions and how in the spontaneity of life, your real character shines through. I know, I'm being a little hard on myself, but these specific episodes taught me an amazing lesson: a child is oftentimes a reflection of his dad.  

There's nothing wrong with kids roughhousing or acting as imaginary superheroes, but if your kid starts to reflect the worse performance of who you are, then it might be time to work on what he's watching ... in this case, me. Lately, I've been more careful to how I respond to slow service, non-signaling cars, rude cashiers, questionable coaching, spam, etc.

As for my son, he just realized that crap and poop mean the same thing. He just called me a poopy head. The journey continues. This begs the question, how do you all handle your kid's questionable choice of words?