The day I called the guy who cut me off on the freeway a name and my older child, who was two-ish at the time said "Mama, why you call dat man a juicebox?" was the day I realized I better reign in my pottymouth. But I'm kind of a procrastinator and never got around to it, and now come September I'm going to be the trashiest mom in kindergarten.
Aside from my little profanity problem, my husband and I both have a penchant for namecalling. The tone is generally affectionate, but the words themselves can be loaded. And that, interestingly enough, is what the kids have picked up on. A stray f-bomb gets no reaction at all, but call your spouse a dork just one time, even as a joke, and the next thing you know the kids are screaming "dork" at one another as they fight over Polly Pockets. And it's hard as hell (uh, heck) to break yourself of the habit of lovingly calling your toddler a "goof" or your mom "weirdo", but even harder to explain the difference between that and real, hurtful namecalling to little kids.
iBeth blogged about preschool insults recently, and her daughter came up with a few great ones (I'm partial to "cuckoohead"). But her daughter's list was short, and it kind of reinforced my suspicions that I'm going about this talking out loud thing all wrong. I am pretty sure that if you asked my kids to list all the mean names and words they know, they'd curl your hair. And that would be before they even got around to the really bad stuff. I really gotta clean it up around here.
Meanwhile, "juicebox" is a pretty satisfying name to call someone whose driving you feel deserves commentary.
