Inevitably as you get older your life changes and the majority of these changes won't be of your own volition, so you have to change and go with it. When you hit your late twenties/early thirties the biggest change will be the sudden influx of children in to your life. My opinion on children is the same as my opinion on adults - some I like, some are awful. Luckily my friends and family are really good at producing excellent children who, as long as you make it look vaguely like a game, are happy to run around and bring you things. There is however one thing I have had to change... my language.
Well more specifically my swearing, no one is insisting I only speak to their children in Norse or anything.
Given that I became an aunt for the first time at 23 you think I would have cracked it by now. I really, really haven't. It doesn't help that some of words I think are benign replacements are also off limits so I inadvertently correct myself by replacing the bad word with a worse one. However I have managed to curb the worst of my excesses and so can concentrate on teaching them bad stuff whilst using PG language (I spent a whole day teaching my nephew how to cheat at cards. We were only foiled by the fact that his hands were too small to hold all the cards he kept winning and so he kept dropping them and showing us all he'd been cheating). Then came lunch...
There were nine of us to lunch. Myself, my parents, my brother and his wife and their four children. I am not sure how we got to this point but my Mother (who is not know for her filthy mouth, she once set herself on fire and said 'Oh shoot') told my Dad (under her breath) to 'eat your bloody sandwiches'. This passed by. Then a small boy (7) said 'bum' and was sent to the naughty step. A few minutes passed and he was told he could come back. But in a shock move he refused as 'No one had told Grandma off for her language'. Which was a fair point.
Unfortunately at that point I used the word 'crap' to describe something (it would appear my family is a bunch of potty mouths). The only people who heard my were oldest nephew (8) and my niece (10) who I both managed to convince that they should over look it. This didn't work, and even more unfortunately this led to the description of 'Auntie Laura said the C word".
Now there are many ways to not swear in front of children. Repeatedly bleating 'I said crap, I said crap, I didn't say the C word, I said crap'. Isn't it.
Well more specifically my swearing, no one is insisting I only speak to their children in Norse or anything.
Given that I became an aunt for the first time at 23 you think I would have cracked it by now. I really, really haven't. It doesn't help that some of words I think are benign replacements are also off limits so I inadvertently correct myself by replacing the bad word with a worse one. However I have managed to curb the worst of my excesses and so can concentrate on teaching them bad stuff whilst using PG language (I spent a whole day teaching my nephew how to cheat at cards. We were only foiled by the fact that his hands were too small to hold all the cards he kept winning and so he kept dropping them and showing us all he'd been cheating). Then came lunch...
There were nine of us to lunch. Myself, my parents, my brother and his wife and their four children. I am not sure how we got to this point but my Mother (who is not know for her filthy mouth, she once set herself on fire and said 'Oh shoot') told my Dad (under her breath) to 'eat your bloody sandwiches'. This passed by. Then a small boy (7) said 'bum' and was sent to the naughty step. A few minutes passed and he was told he could come back. But in a shock move he refused as 'No one had told Grandma off for her language'. Which was a fair point.
Unfortunately at that point I used the word 'crap' to describe something (it would appear my family is a bunch of potty mouths). The only people who heard my were oldest nephew (8) and my niece (10) who I both managed to convince that they should over look it. This didn't work, and even more unfortunately this led to the description of 'Auntie Laura said the C word".
Now there are many ways to not swear in front of children. Repeatedly bleating 'I said crap, I said crap, I didn't say the C word, I said crap'. Isn't it.
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