Things you find yourself saying to your kids that you never thought you'd say.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Having kids changes your life. I know I really didn’t know what to expect, and the reality didn’t conform to what I thought it would be like. The biggest difference is that you are suddenly responsible for another human being who has absolutely no idea how to do the simplest things for themselves. Your full time job now, 24 hours a day seven days a week, is to turn this little person into a functioning adult (someday).

Getting from here to there can be interesting, and you find yourself saying and doing things you never thought you would, like discussing the details of your kids bowel movements with virtual strangers, or searching the bushes outside the house with a flashlight at bedtime for a lost favorite toy.

In the “things you say” category, my sister in law told us a good one that she actually found herself saying to her young son:

“When you wear your underwear on your head, please make sure it’s CLEAN underwear!”

Any other parental pearls of wisdom you want to share?

2

Wow…I was just thinking about the underwear one.

Here’re a few…

“Don’t hit people with Superman!”
“Honey, people don’t LIKE their heads in the toilet.”
“Are you bleeding? No? Then I can’t hear you right now.”
“You can’t swing that fish around in the house!”

And, in this wonderful age of technology…
“I don’t KNOW the code to get the Millenium Falcon…you’re going to have to ask your brother.”

There are billions more. As soon as I started trying to remember them, my brain emptied. Another side-effect of child-rearing.

Oh, here’s a charming exchange from a public bathroom.
J - “Mommy, why are those your underwear?”
Me - “Uh, because I’m wearing them.”
J - “Momma! The guy in the next one just farted!”
Me - blushing horribly “That happens, honey.”
Next stall over - hysterical laughter

3

BWAA HAAA HAAA!

I forgot about becoming stupider. I believe I lost about 20-30 IQ points since my son was born.

4

3 yr. old boy and 2 yr. old girl have an action figure that, because its wearing military style clothes and vaguely resembles their father, they call Daddy. Anyway, a common phrase said around here is, “Don’t eat Daddy!”

Other memorable ones:

“Don’t throw Kitty across the room. Be NICE to your kitty.” (it’s a stuffed cat, not a real one!)
“I don’t think your baby wants to be sat on.”
“Stop taking your diaper off!”
“Good job! You pooped in the potty!”

3yr. old boy passionately loves his Buzz Lightyear doll, because it has movable arms and legs and best of all, wings. He calls it his “Flying Buzz”. However, Flying Buzz is missing its HEAD! A conversation:
Boy: Flying Buzz has no head.
Me: Yes, I know.
Boy: You gotta go buy him a new one.
Me: They don’t usually sell just heads.
Boy: I said you gotta buy him a new head. At the toy store. And put it on for me.

(He asks for a lot. What he wants for christmas are, in this order: “A christmas tree. Batman guys. To go to America. To be eight. A shirt with dragons on it.” I understand all of these except why he wants to be 8 is beyond me…)

5

“Watch your &%$#@ language in front of your grandmother.”

“Cool it NOW… or I tell your boyfriend the butter story. Push me, and I’ll throw in the cat food story, too.”

6

It’s not so much what I say as how many times I find myself saying the same thing over and over and over and over and…

My personal favorites:

“Don’t talk with food in your mouth.” I have a 10 year old child, to whom I save said this at least 5 times per meal every day for her entire life. You’d think she’d catch on at some point.

“Flush the toilet.” FOR THE SAKE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY, FLUSH THE G**D****D TOILET!!! Really, I don’t get this one. Don’t get it at all. Why can’t you flush the friggin toilet? Do you like going back in a few hours later to find your combined wastes bubbling over like some horrid vat of toxic sludge? FLUSH!!!

7

Hahah the thing about the butter story reminded me of another one. When 3 yr. old boy was 2 yr. old boy, our favorite threat to get him to be good was, “Stop doing _______ or I’ll butter your nose!” I made this one up and because it used to actually work, it made Boy stop being bad and cry and say “PLEASE don’t butter my nose! Oh no don’t do that!” as if it was the worst thing in the world, we always used that when he was bad. Once he actually got his nose buttered…just a teeny tiny harmless little dab of butter on it…and it scared him into picking his toys up. : )

(It no longer works. Now he says, “Please can you butter my nose?”)

8

I find myself saying things like ‘please don’t climb the fridge’ or ‘no licking the stove.’ Parallax has been compiling a list of the moronic things we say to her. Out of context some of them are really bizarre.

Then there is the potty training thing. She’s a little over two and ‘helping’ mommy pee seems to be the highlight of her little day. She basically comes into the bathroom with me and mimics everything I do. And she gives commentary on the whole thing. ‘Mommy pee’ ‘Mommy poo’ ‘Mommy flush’ and there I am as a dutiful mommy saying ‘yes mommy pees in the potty.’

Oh to go to the bathroom all alone with no peanut gallery!!! :slight_smile:

9

Can you tell us the butter story and the cat food story? :smiley:

10

Yeah, well, that’s parenthood. You never need pee alone again.

And there’s not too much to the butter and cat food stories… I mean, nothing epic. I have a wife (Chaosia) and a kid (Michiru).

When my daughter was around three or four, she developed a taste for cat food. The crunchy kind. Meow Mix in particular. My wife was horrified, and attempted to break her of this habit… but the kid was sneaky, and quite fond of the stuff, and would try to sneak into the kitchen where the cat dish was and scarfle it down. Apparently, one of the cuter moments in my daughter’s life that I missed was one of several times when my wife would realize that the baby wasn’t in the room with her… and she’d stroll straight to the kitchen and find the baby lying on her stomach in front of the cat dish, nibbling idly at bits of cat food…

…and she’d shout, “MICHIRU!”

…and Michiru would glance up at her, get an “uh-oh,” look on her face, and then IMMEDIATELY grab a handful of cat food and jam it into her mouth, because it was plainly going to be while before she could get any more…

We never did figure out why she did this. Or why she quit. It’s not like there was any shortage of HUMAN food in the house. The only thing Chaosia could figure was maybe it was the convenience factor… after all, you didn’t have to ask a Big Person to get you the cat food. It was already out…

Another time, around that same time frame, the two of them decided to take a nap, Michiru on one side of the big bed, and Chaosia on the other. Before long, Chaosia was dead asleep, but Michiru couldn’t sleep. She was hot. The whole house was hot; we didn’t have air conditioning, and it was high summer in Texas.

Michiru got up and went to see if there was anything cool in the refrigerator. Sure enough… there was a five pound tub of butter (margarine, actually), fresh from the store. Not even opened, yet…

Before long, Chaosia woke up, and noticed that Michiru was not in bed. She immediately got up, called, “Michiru!” and, getting no answer, went to look for her.

She found Michiru in the living room. Mostly naked, stripped down to her little Winnie The Pooh panties. And coated in butter. Michiru had dragged the tub of butter out into the middle of the living room for some reason, stripped down, and coated herself, head to toe, with the cool butter. Probably felt pretty good, actually. She had then shampooed her hair with the stuff, quite thorougly, and had then decided to shampoo the RUG with it, as far out as she could reach without stepping off the dry spot.

She was having a FINE time. So much so that Chaosia had a bit of a trick getting the not-entirely-willing child to the bathtub. Remember the old saying about greased pigs? Greased three-year-olds are about the same thing.

Chaosia still talks about the weird oil slick that arose on top of the bath water. She spent the entire rest of the DAY cleaning the oil off that kid, and well into the night cleaning the rug. That section of the living room carpet was still a little… um… off, when the lease expired. Fortunately, the landlord didn’t notice…

11

Thanks for the story - that was great! =) At least we aren’t the only ones with a kid who eats dry cat food.

I finally put up our list of wacky quotes - go to our web page (in my profile) and check out the “Crazy Quotes” link. :smiley:

12

ROFL @ the butter story!

I frequently hear myself saying things like:
“don’t put the shoe in your mouth”
“aim when you go peepee!”
“don’t point there!” (yes, this and the one prior are related)

I can’t think of anything really humorous, but I’m sure I’ll say something later that I could post. LOL

13

The butter story reminded me of one time my TV habits make me feel like a bad dad.

My 3 year old had all of a sudden started eating butter. She would grab a hand full out of the tub, then run away while shoving the buttery goodness into her mouth. At first it was kinda funny, but after the 3rd or 4th time it was really old. Finally, I yelled at her “Gillian, don’t eat the butter! Why do you think it’s ok to eat butter like that?” She answers: “But Homer Simpson eats it…”
D’oh!

14

Oh.

Well.

At least I haven’t COMPLETELY hijacked a “things you say to your children” thread into a “funny things your kids did” thread…

15

I kick myself everytime I hear myself say…
“As long as you live under my roof…”
“Because I’m the grown up that’s why…”
“Don’t make me come in there…”

and other assorted things when I’m angry and don’t have a valid answer.

16

“Because I said so.” I don’t think you understand the logic behind that one until you’re a parent.

I’ve also told my daughter not to clean her feet with her brother’s toothbrush.

17

“you must put on underwear, a shirt and shorts, and shoes before you go outside” - said daily to my 5 year old boy

'you can’t have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat" - yes, we think it’s funny.

we often sing the ‘chopping broccolli’ song.

close the door, close the door, close the door, close the door.

no, no, no, no, no, no no,

stop, stop, stop, stop, stop.

get your finger out of your nose. NO, don’t put it in your mouth!

to the baby:
“no no, don’t eat that --insert any type of nasty bug here-- !!”

oh, and anytime i scream like a girl because the baby has picked up a cockroach or something, she bawls. it’s so sad :frowning:

18

Yeah, I say that a lot too.

19

“Im trying to go potty, please let mommy go potty, I dont bother you do I?”

“Please stop tying your animals together” my son makes his stuffed animals walk the plank.

“get off my computer, you have your own now!”

20

When my girls were 5 and 2, respectively, the older one used to hug the younger one until she cried, in her own special way of being aggressive (“What? I’m just hugging her!”). As a result, I always used to say, “If you hug your sister even once, we will leave immediately!” whenever we went to the playground. I’m sure more than one other mom assumed I was just insane. I’ve also said, in all seriousness, “Do you want me to stop this car?” and “You could put somebody’s eye out!”

Mr. Legend once heard himself saying, “Don’t throw the dog at your sister!”