Swearing

It’s always a shock to hear a swear word come out of the mouths of our babies.

Not that it happens often, but this latest came when I was making a delivery on the way to dropping the twins off at their nana’s.

I found the address and pulled up in the drive.

“Mum, how long are you going to be?” Jai asked from the back.

“Not long, I’m just going to knock on the door, hand something over to the lady and I’ll be right back.”

After a brief exchange with the lady I returned to the car where Jai said huffily: “I told you you would take a long time.”

“I wasn’t, I was quick.”

“No, we were worried a stranger might come and take our car and drive away with us.”

This is when Jayla, 3, piped up: “It’s alright Jai, you just tell the stranger to piss off.”

Taken aback and barely suppressing the urge to laugh I asked where she’d heard this from.

“Cadeyn told us.”

This sparked the hint of a memory which I gradually dragged from the recesses for the next part of the journey before it came to me.

A couple of months earlier there’d been a news item where a man had taken a car for a joy ride from a petrol station with a three-year-old and his baby brother inside while their dad was in the service station. Miraculously, they survived the subsequent crash and were returned to their family unharmed. The interviewer had asked the three-year-old what he said to the car thief, to which the boy replied: “I said piss off.”.

The hoots of laughter that followed caused Cadeyn, 6, who’d gone to bed, to return to the lounge to see what the commotion was about. I felt it only fair to rewind and show him while explaining it was a naughty word. But he must have later told his brother and sister.

After piecing this together I gave the same explanation to the twins who, realising they were onto something, began giggling and repeating the phrase to each other.

As their nana’s house came into sight, I hastily changed the topic thereby drawing that conversation and any blasphemes to a close.