We were all sitting at a restaurant when it happened. We had ordered our food, found our table, and I was trying to think of a fun way to keep the kids distracted while we waited for our dinner (without having to resort to using my iPhone to zombify them).
We had thoroughly explored the basic condiments on the table and the kids were on the verge of mutiny in the form of throwing sweetener packets, when I had a stroke of genius.
"Kids, let's play an alphabet game!!" I suggested in the semi-hysterical kindergarten teacher voice that I use when I'm nearing the end of my rope: "Jack, can you tell me a word that begins with 'A?'"
To help him recognize the phonetics, I started making the "A" sound for him: "aaa... Aaa..."
He looked thoughtful, then all three kids started echoing me like the sweetly obedient children I knew they were deep down inside: "aaa... Aaa..."
Jack was the first to come up with a word. "Aaa, aaa.... I know! A** (censored)!!"
He smiled, proud of himself for coming up with such a good word, as Maggie repeated him innocently-- "A**! A**!"
I tried to make sure I'd heard him correctly, so I carefully asked, "Jack, what did you say?"
He repeated his "A-word," and Maggie continued to echo him as, biting my lip to keep from laughing, I asked him, "Where did you hear that word?"
His big, innocent blue eyes looked up at me curiously as he answered with a question of his own: "Isn't it Chinese?"
At that point, Steve was guffawing openly, and I was hard-pressed to explain without snickering that no, that word is not, in fact, Chinese, and although some people might refer to it as their "French," it is not a nice word, and we don't use that word in our family.
The whole rest of the game, I was especially nervous on some of the other letters (namely "F" and "S,"), lest he try to speak "Chinese" again.
At least it turned out to be an educational experience, even if it wasn't quite the one I had in mind, right?
Hopefully he doesn't try to speak Chinese during school alphabet games--I'd hate to try to explain that to his teacher!
Hopefully he doesn't try to speak Chinese during school alphabet games--I'd hate to try to explain that to his teacher!
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