Just yesterday, as I was going about my daily routine washing up and getting ready to go out with Missy A, she came up to me and began telling me about one of her soft toys. With the electric tooth brush in my mouth, her story was muffled out from the buzzing and I wasn’t able to gather the full details of what she was saying. People find it pretty hard to understand what she’s saying through her cutsy voice and broken english, but I could usually put together her stories based on her last few sentences. So as she was nearly rounding off her tale, I paused my brushing and listened attentively…

“Mum, this Mincy (her neopet soft toy) is a bloody fool…”
“Missy A!??”
“…sorry, sorry, sorry…”

I was speechless. I my midst of confusion and reaction, she knew that she wasn’t suppose to say something like that from her immediate response, and she ran away (as she does when she knows I’m thinking about how to react)…

Then I felt bad. I recalled the day before in admist of my morning drowsiness, I grumbled “Bloody fool” while changing her pee drenched pants. She is starting to copy my exact words! How scarey, and just think, I didn’t know how to react to her saying bloody fool, how will I react when she swears? (Or is bloody fool swearing? Can’t be right? Considering Australia has a whole “Where the bloody hell are you” campaign)

Well, anyhow, it has really got me thinking about how I will have to tackle bad language. Soap in the mouth (from Georgia Rules)? Ignoring it (ignore bad behaviour, reward good)? Explaining what the swear words mean? Oh dear…