That One Time I Called My Child a "Stinker"

Isaac is adorable. It is his super power. He doesn't throw tantrums. He begs sweetly instead and no one in this house can resist his signs please and sweet puppy eyes. He recently learned where we keep the free access snack and fruit. One morning he pushed a chair up and got out three bananas.

I exclaimed, "Oh my, you little stinker!" I did not do it in a scolding voice. Rather admiration. He melted. He just melted into a pile of silent and brokenhearted sadness. Holly ran to him, looked me in the eyes and scolded, "Mama, he is NOT a stinker. You should not call him names!" He looked up at me, tears rolling down his cheeks, and my heart broke a million times. I scooped him up and we sobbed together.

Children do not understand name calling as an affectionate exclamation. They only see it as someone they love is calling them something that is a bad thing.

That is when I stopped calling him my little stinker and Holly my sweet monkey butt and Lily so very impossible.

Now Isaac is my little super hero! Holly is sweet ballet dancer! and Lily is the impossible astronaut! (Her idea.) It is just as easy to use a positive name in the situation as it is to use a derogatory one.

Holly later explained to me that Isaac is a big boy trapped in a baby's body and he is so invisible sometimes that we forget how big he is inside. She's spot on. That's pretty much sums up Isaac. He is so sweet and silent too that it is easy to forget that he has these HUGE emotions going on, like all almost 3 year olds do.

I want my children to know by my words that I love them, to know by my hands that they are loved, to know by my voice that they are heard, and that they will come to know how much I love them by my writing. Someday they will find this, maybe I will be there and maybe I won't. Life is like that. I want these daily exercises in recording our activities and my thoughts to be my love letters to them. This writing can't be that if I call my children lazy or stubborn or fat or any other words out of frustration with them. They may have moments when they are tired and refusing to participate in what we are doing, but that is human. They may have breakdowns or bad days, but don't we all? I do. Less and less though the more I model for them centering myself and gaining control over my own words and actions because they see that, they hear that- not empty words but the action of my being. I am their mother after all.

So if I seem overly adoring of them, this is why, I love them so very much. I want them to know me and know that. I would not want their future employers to read this and say, "Wow, no way and I hiring that lazy brat who refused to do their spelling worksheets and take out the trash! No way!" Not that we do spelling worksheets like that. You know, unschooling. Ha!

No, this is a record of sorts, as are my public facebook pages, for all to see into our lives. Sometimes it isn't pretty, but it won't be ugly like that. It will be brilliant and sparkly and three kinds of awesome.