Man Rule: Never Try to Talk with a Child Under the Age of 10

Toddlers and kids have their own language, and their own name for things. What's really funny is when you realize you've picked up their language, rather than teaching them yours. You start calling a pacifier a "pappy" or a "boo-boo" or whatever the kid calls it, and all sense of Manliness has been thrown out the window. A blankie can become a "binky" or a "lanky" or an "80/20 cotton/poly blend with ducks." Except, of course, the child will pronounce all d's as f's and when he tries to say “ducks” he gets you thrown out of the church service.

I have a four-year-old son, Colin, and a couple of personal examples of toddler-speak will illustrate why you should never try to talk with a child if you expect to retain any sense of Manliness, or your sanity. I have hundreds of these examples, you understand; these are just two of the more recent ones.

We have a find-the-hidden-items book that contains pictures from well-known fairy tales. One night, Colin wanted me to “read” this book with him, and rather than call it “the find-the-hidden items book,” he called it by the name of the picture on the front of the book – Puss in Boots. Only Colin can’t say “Puss in Boots” very well, and he didn’t understand why Daddy was laughing hysterically when he said, “Daddy, look at Poots in Butts with me.” Now, of course, I have a hard time calling Puss in Boots by his normal name -- he is Poots in Butts to me. It's only a matter of time before I slip up when I'm dropping him off at daycare and say it. I'm sure that will go over REALLY well with Colin's daycare teacher.

A few weeks ago, Colin was telling me about a dream he’d had. He and a friend of his from daycare were superheroes (or maybe they weren’t – it wasn’t ever really made clear) and were fighting some bad guys. I was able to understand him perfectly, until he said, “And then we fell off the bitch.”

That stopped me cold. I thought I’d been listening to him fairly well, but I didn’t remember Colin saying anything about a bitch, much less him being on top of one. And while I'm not a perfect father, I think I'd have noticed if my four-year-old started talking about a bitch. So I said, “You fell off what, now?”

“The bitch. We fell off the bitch.”

I’ve read a lot of parenting manuals, but I don’t recall ever seeing this particular situation described before. How do you handle your son dreaming about him and his friend, both of whom might be superheroes, fighting bad guys while they’re riding a bitch? So I feigned ignorance, which I’m pretty good at, if I do say so myself.

“You fell off the witch?” I said.

“BITCH! BITCH! We fell off the BITCH!”

Things could have gotten out of hand at this point, but thankfully my wife Kristin was nearby, and she heard the whole thing. “He’s saying ‘bridge,’” she said. “They were fighting bad guys on a bridge, and they fell off.”

“Ohhh,” I said. “A BRIDGE. Thank the Lord.”

Colin: “Das what I SAID. You don’ lissen, Daddy.”

And one last anecdote: While I was typing this, Colin ran into the room, wiggled his little bottom, and said, "I'm gon' have gas. Take cover."

Really, your best bet if you have kids is to hire someone to raise them until they're 10. Or maybe 30. I'm still trying to decide.

(c) 2012 John Puckett