Dinglie Danglie Doodle!

These days, I constantly make Rolie Polie Olie references in conversation...sadly often to people who don't know what the hell I'm talking about. For those of you who have avoided being dragged kicking and screaming into the cult of the Treehouse Kids TV channel, it's about a 6 year old robot boy named Olie and his "charming" adventures growing up on the planet Polie. Charming is in quotes because the charm part is debatable.

We find this one of the more palatable cartoons for young kids so we use it for distraction purposes whenever necessary (and yes, I know some people out there are freeeeeaking out that we're purposefully exposing our young child to TV. Blah blah blah yadda yadda). I was pretty surprised the other night when I realized this show actually got me thinking about a fairly serious parenting issue: bad language at home. The episode I was watching...I mean Brynn was watching...was called Dinglie Danglie Doodle (apparently quite a swear word on the planet Polie - called "the 3D word"). Olie's 2 year old sister Zowie overheard her father say it when he hurt himself and she wandered around repeating it until finally her mother heard her and nearly popped a gasket.

This is an issue for us now because Brynn is talking. Well...more accurately, she gabbles a lot but she also actually says a few words. 'Kitty' was her first one but now she also says baby, cracker, bye bye, balloon, Claire (her daycare friend's name), and - awesomely - Mommy and Daddy. The last thing I want to have to do is to try to get her to STOP saying something, even something rude, when she's got such a limited vocabulary but a ridiculously large percentage of my vocabulary is not particularly polite and unless some serious changes happen at home, it is inevitable. I have horrible visions of sending her to daycare, only to have her blithely babble out a string of swear words I unwittingly taught her that will make everyone think I'm the most horrible mother in creation.

Yup, there's an awkward conversation to have with your child's caregiver, to be sure.

So now we have a swear jar. Well actually it is a "swear piggy" 'cause it is her piggy bank and we're charging $1 per swear. What? You think that's expensive???? Well now I'm just going to mumble something vague about inflation and the expense of sending a kid to university in a decade and a half while I slink off into the sunset.

I know she'll eventually learn something rude.
I know she'll look up at me one day, smile charmingly and chirp out something that would make a pirate blush and I know I'll have to work really hard not to laugh BUT that time should not be now. For now, our house is a Dinglie Danglie Doodle-free zone, at least between 7am and 8pm.

After that, all bets are off, dammit!