Hello, Substack readers. I’m going to be making a soft return, with occasional sporadic posts. No promises of sticking to a publishing schedule, just a mom sharing a few stories in hopes of bringing some honesty and slight comedic relief to the parenting world. That being said, I’m going to keep paid subscriptions off for a few months, since the nature of this page is changing. I’m giving you fair warning to run if you no longer want to support my work. Also, a very warm welcome to the new subscribers that have trickled in during my long and much-needed absence. I’m back.
“Hey, stop that, poopy!”
“Heyyy, don’t say that, poopy!”
“No, you’re poopy.”
“No, you’re poopy!”
I attempt to block out this back and forth interaction from the kitchen where I am making a cup of coffee. I observe the boys with increasing annoyance, but also with a bit of relief because, well, they are technically entertaining themselves in this moment.
I have a hard time knowing when to intervene in situations like this. Sometimes I experiment with my own mother’s mantra and “let them figure it out for themselves,” because I think it’s a good lesson in conflict resolution, and it’s also f*cking exhausting to step in every single time they start to bicker.
The downside of this theory is that the boys are probably too young for it to have any real effect on their behavior. Maybe next year? At this point, if I don’t intervene, the scenario builds and ends in some sort of “red choice,” which is what the kids have taken to calling hitting, pushing, spitting, or any other unkind choice. We’re fairly certain this originated from daycare—both the influx of hitting and the term “red choice.”
The kettle starts to whistle as I grab it from the stove.
“Boys, we do not call names,” I offer in my calmest gentle parenting voice from the kitchen. It’s only 6:05 a.m., so I’m still capable of gentle parenting at this point. “Please use kind words,” I add, remembering to focus on what they can do instead of what they can’t do.
They boys are screaming at each other now, a fairly common exchange, and I know they’re only minutes away from one or both of them melting down into tears.
“Make green choices,” I call from the kitchen, trying to mask a surge of anger and annoyance.
I lean in close to the robot and growl my command amidst the rising chaos in the background. “Echo, set a four minute timer,” I say, as I pour the water over the grounds in my French press. And two seconds later, just as the coffee grounds begin to bubble and pop, so do the kids.
After weeks of daily exchanges just like this, I lose my shit with the kids and swiftly implement a “no potty talk or time out” rule. Do I believe in the effectiveness of time outs? Am I proud that we are a time out household? Do I think time outs as a discipline are making any lasting change in my kids’ behavior for better or worse? I don’t know.
What I do know is that I get four minutes of peace and quiet when Loren is in a time out, and two minutes of peace and quiet when Kai is in a timeout—a one minute timeout for each year of their precious little lives. Imagine how quiet it will be when they’re 13—or 15! Gah!
In full transparency, it’s the only thing that works sometimes.
In the first few days after the “no potty talk” rule was decreed, the boys tested their limits, trying out the occasional “poopy” here and there, and learning very quickly that Mommy and Daddy were going to do what they said they were going to do (something we’re both working on). That’s where it got fun.
Instead of eliminating the word “poopy” altogether, like I thought they would, and saying something like, “Hey, stop that!” my kids got creative.
“Hey, kiki. Stop that!”
“Hey, don’t say that, kiki.”
“Kiki kiki kiki nini.”
“Heeeyyy, kiki nini wawa.”
And so it goes, until both boys end up screaming or in tears.
After a solid month or two of no potty talk in our house (I’ll call that a win), the boys have settled on “kiki wawa” as the ultimate insult. I believe Kai, my 2.5 year old, gets all the credit for this one.
As parents, we think this is hilarious, but we also realize that “kiki wawa” is the new “poopy,” which makes me wonder if anything has actually changed. Regardless, “kiki wawa” is here for the time being, and that makes us smile. If nothing else, it seems like a kinder “red choice,” and that’s one step in the right direction. I’ll take what we can get.