Hear That Ticking Clock? It’s the Countdown to “The Talk”
Last week my totally innocent, six-year-old son greeted my four-year-old daughter with a cheerful, matter-of-fact greeting: “F*** Emily.” Except he didn’t abbreviate. “What did you just say?” I asked, convinced I must have misheard amidst the noise of school pickup. “F*** Emily.” Yep, there it was, plain and clear. “That’s a really bad word. Were did you hear that?” Apparently, he had used his new decoding abilities to read the obscenity written on the bathroom wall at school. While I’m normally thrilled to see my kids reading the world around them, this is obviously not what I had in mind. “That’s not an appropriate word for you to say,” I said. “Why, what does it mean?” he asked. “You don’t need to know exactly what it means, but it’s a word some adults use when they are very angry. Let’s go home.” The next morning, I overheard my son giggling as he announced that every day when he sees his sister he will say the same thing: F*** Emily. “I t...
