Two days ago, Cora came home with an orange clip down. Clip down is a system that the school uses to keep track of behavior. Everyone starts off every day green and can either go up to blue or purple by behaving well or go down to yellow, orange or even red by behaving not so well. Cora has been yellow a handful of times but has been on her best behavior at school. Cora ended up as an orange due to misbehaving in music class and talking about butts. I emailed Mrs. Taylor, her teacher, to see if there was anything we should be working on at home because of the orange. She said that all of the kids were having a rough week and that Cora was an orange again. This time was for tattling on someone for doing the same thing she was and for the worst offense you can have in a catholic school…she said “What the F$#k!”
Cora has always been my sassy girl since the womb. She began cursing at home, but offhandedly and so we would try and ignore it as to not make it a big deal. She was mostly saying “Shit” as that is a word mommy uses often. She would always use the word correctly and in a situation that warranted the word, but it didn’t seem like that big of deal. In fact, it was kind of funny. Well, it’s a big deal now that she is dropping f bombs at school. We have created a monster.
Now I know that it starts at home and that Jim and I are to blame for our potty mouths which have created this adorable, little foul-mouthed daughter of ours. We definitely take responsibility for not taking it as seriously as we should have and for not nipping it in the bud when it first started. Now we have the challenge of un-potty mouthing our daughter. I look forward to days of green in the future and not orange.
I don’t know what color she will be today, but we had a long talk last night that included tears. Her heart was broken when we told her it was not right to say bad words and that it was our fault for not showing that at home. We explained that there would be no more bad words at school or at home. And we would all work on being better with our potty mouths. We also pulled the plug on Youtube. Ah yes Youtube, a parent’s best friend and worst enemy. You love it because it keeps your kid entertained, but you just cannot control what they see as even on Youtube Kids there are questionable videos. It is so frustrating because there are some interesting videos for the kids online, but there are too many bad videos that outweigh the good. My kids love Youtube and pulling the plug on it will be a real challenge for our household, but one that I think has been a longtime coming. These online videos really do affect how the kids behave and what they say. I look forward to filling the time with more positive activities and maybe more family time.
Being a parent is hard and sometimes you don’t make the right choices. We shouldn’t have let the kids watch so much questionable Youtube and we should not have used bad words in front of them. I guess you live, you learn. If anyone needs me, I’ll be cleaning up some potty mouths.
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