Glass of Poop

George is such a little fireball. Lately he's been amusing himself by saying, fuck, a lot. I tried ignoring it, time outs, yelling and anger, but he doesn't give, well to put it in his words, two fucks.

The kid is always looking for a reaction. I tried to explain to him that he will get more attention and praise for saying nice things, and that's helped a little.

Our babysitter said she thinks he has derived the word from Trucks-and-bridges because most often when he says it he shouts, "fucks and bridges!"

My husband did some reading up on this, and today we implemented a new strategy. Every time he said fuck, we'd bring him a truck and say, "oh, a Truck! Here's your Truck!"

He actually was quite amused by it. We'd come up to him and speak very slowly, "Did you say Truck?!" And he'd smile. He's used to getting a negative reaction, but a reaction nonetheless, so when we weren't hauling him off to his room for time out but mimicking him by saying, "oh, truck, of course a truck," he felt satiated. 
Tonight we went over to our friends for dinner and George started giving me indications of being a noncompliant turd. He started by wandering around aimlessly whining. Then he looked at me with clenched fists. I walked over to him and kneeled in front of him. My strategy was to talk really loudly right when he goes to say it, so no one would be able to fully identify what he said. He shouted, "fuck," spit flinging from his mouth. I tried to sooth him, "Please, George, can you just relax?"
After a bout of demonstrating his power, he calmed down, and spent the last 45 minutes singing into a toy microphone by himself. I apologized to my friend before we left, and sent another sorry text from home.
We are not going on anymore playdates until George is set straight. Tomorrow were dedicating ourselves to reformation. I will not pretend I don't hear him saying "Fuck" so I don't have to drag his ass down to his room for a time out. He only does it for attention, and there are plenty of other things he can do instead that won't make my face turn beet red, and make me want to hit him upside the head.

We watched If You Give A Mouse A Cookie on Amazon Prime. There's only one episode, so of course they wanted to watch it four times in a row. We were singing the intro song together and then George came in for the chorus with, "If you give a mouse a poop, he's going to ask for a glass of poop." I reacted just as anyone would, laughing so hard my head hurt. He was beaming and I was happy he performed without relying on excessive shock value, just mild shock value. Making people laugh is his favorite thing. Whoever laughed whenever he said fuck for the first time, is on my shit list for life.