Homecoming Chickens
Having dinner a couple nights ago, I noticed my daughter making strange faces from her high chair as she stuffed her face with carrots, potatoes and a few left over Trix bits she found somewhere. I was reading the news and caught her out of the corner of my eye but soon enough she had my total focus. For immediately upon my focus upon her, her face turned to one of bewilderment too.
She was mimicking me.
For a few moments we sat there making odd faces at each other and giggling. It’s cute when it’s spontaneous and in the privacy of your own home.
Not so adorable when your child squeals an obscenity in the middle of a wedding. And kids are the masters of inappropriate timing. Translated, this means they don’t care when or where they say/do anything. There is a tendency to save those things that will embarrass or humiliate you for those strategic times in which they can cost you face, money or the next local election.
It is easy to forget that you have a tiny photocopier following you around that simply reproduces what you do, and the more intently you try to focus on not doing or saying something they more apt you are to do or say something that will come back to haunt you in the future.
Whisper? Don’t be ridiculous. Their ears were just installed and work at frequencies that you can no longer dream of. A toddler can hear a chip bag open further than your dog, and suprisingly, arrive with greater speed. Plus whispering signals to them that what you’re saying is important and therefore take notice.
Obviously, the biggest threat is cursing. I learned this with my first two. Being a sailor, I am required to have salty language, therefore it can get a bit colorful at times. Now, I clamp down on it in the company of small children but that cannot be done for extended amounts of time, especially when the aforementioned walking recorders are following you 24/7. You’re going to trip up, sometimes physically, and utter something you shouldn’t. Children are genetically programmed to seize upon these words. Nothing you can do. And again, they strategically repeat them at moments that will ensure the maximum damage to you.
Another threat is gossip. They cannot remember where their shoes, toys, brush, your watch, iPad, head is, but if you are gossiping about someone, they will catalog this. This will include any and all information about said target of gossip until such as time as that person shows up in front of them where it will be repeated verbatim. You shouldn’t gossip anyway. This is a cosmic reprisal. Karma if you will.
Do NOT do the pull my finger joke with a young child. You have been warned. If I need to elaborate then you’re not listening.
They’ll learn you phone pins, your passcodes, your bank wiring information, everything. Kids are tiny, adorable security risks as well. You’ll think I’m exaggerating until that first strange charge from iTunes or that moment when the S.W.A.T. team kicks in your door because a call was made from a screaming child.
The threat is real, folks. Pretty soon, that darling little child of yours will be mimicking everything that makes you laugh and more than a few things that make you cringe. It bears reminding that some of the things your child do will make you immensely proud, but some will make you crawl under a rock and want to disappear.
It’s easy to get aggravated and be upset. It’s easy to snap to that disciplinarian role snd scold or want to correct our child. Correction is fine, as long as you recognize your hypocrisy in it in some scenarios, because your little one certainly will. The do as I say, not as as I do crap never washed with me as a child and it won’t with yours either. Just be careful when you’re weighing your reaction to these things.
Because them’s your chickens. And they came dancing home.
