Awh, isn’t he a dear?

When my son was about 2 1/2, he became aware, from listening to his siblings or hearing things on TV, of what we call bad words, like “shut up”, “stupid,” and “jerk.”  So one day when we were in the check out line at the grocery store, an elderly woman came up behind us.  She started talking to my son and smiling at him. She commented on what a darling child he was and I thanked her. Then he looked her right in the face and said, “Shut up, you stupid jerk!”

I died another in a series of deaths and apologized.  Thankfully, the woman was good-natured about it, but I was humiliated.

Kathy, mother of 5