Triumphs and Failures Tuesday - Kids Say the Darndest Things

Like sands through the hourglass, so are the Tuesdays of our lives (get it?), and that means Triumphs and Failures Tuesday. It's a weekly post where I share a parenting triumph or failure, and you get to judge me with impunity. No really, let me have it in the comments!

This week, I have a failure to report (should you really be surprised?), but Xavier had a triumph!

My failure for the week is that I didn't realize that X was in "I heard what you said, so I'm going to say it, too" mode already. Little did I know that, instead of what I said going in one ear and out the other, what I said went in one ear, found a warm napping place in his memory, and out his mouth whenever he wants. Before you assume that I cursed in front of him, I didn't.

"Go away." That's what I said. That's not that bad, right?

Okay, what I actually said was "Okay X, I've fed you your snack, so now it's Daddy's turn for a snack. Go away." in an attempt to shoo him away from the kitchen and to go play. Yet, instead of him scampering off to play with his toys, he remained seated next to me, looked deep in thought, and then half-whispered, "Go away." You know, in that cute toddler voice where not all phonemes are pronounced and you don't think he said what you think he just said so you shrug it off as toddler babble because there's absolutely no possible way that he could pick something up that fast at his age, especially something so rude as the phrase "go away."

Oh, but he said it. How do I know? Because he says it to me whenever he's mad, and he literally wants me to go away. Like when I wanted him to stop playing with his toys and come to dinner. "Go away." Or when I was strapping him in to his car seat to go to school when all he wanted to do was watch YouTube videos on my iPad. "Go away!" Or, this past evening, when he was tired, he was angry at me for making him take a bath, he was vigorously kicking me in the stomach as I dried him on the bed afterwards, and fat tears were streaming down his face. "Go away! Go away! Go away!"

His words sting a little more than I thought they would because I felt like, up until now, he's always wanted me to be around. Granted, he's a toddler. He's probably just feeling some very strong negative emotions mixed with fatigue.  He doesn't really want me to go away, right? Yet, I feel hurt (yes, I do realize that I better toughen up because he's going to say and do a lot worse than that). And I feel guilty because I'm the one who equipped him with those words.

However, X’s learning and using those words have yielded an unintended benefit. One day, as I was preparing dinner, Laya and X were sitting on the couch in the living room. X was looking through a book, and Laya was busy doing something on her cellphone. Out of the blue, he told her, "Go away!" When she asked X what he meant, he pushed her cellphone to the side of her and repeated "go away!" He wanted to spend some quality time with her without the distraction of a cellphone. Maybe it wasn't that bad that X learned that phrase after all.