My cousin has a baby who just turned 1.  He’s in that delicious stage where mom and dad are beginning to decipher his first sweet baby words.  I remember those days.  You listen with delight as they learn each new word and try it out, often with those adorable mispronunciations.

When they’re 6 and picking up new words, it’s not always so cute.

I’ve been a mom for almost eight years, and I’ve always had the “good” kids, more or less. Son has had his moments (such as the time when I was interviewing to teach children’s classes at the community center and he told the interviewer he would kick him in the head ... somehow I still got that job), but overall, they never hit or bit other kids, always sat so quietly when I had to take them in to work, etc.

This is all to be expected, as I was Good Kid Personified myself. I remember the moment I first said “darn”—I was playing Parcheesi with a neighbor and her aunt at about age 7, and I was so mortified that I left the game and went outside to walk around by myself.  That was about the worst I ever said until beginning to work for the campus paper in college, where I picked up a slightly sharper tongue.  (Newsrooms ...)  But it does not slip around the children.

So it was with some shock this summer that I entered the category of Mom of That Kid.

This was the first year the kids have had to go to camps all summer.  Daughter went to nature camp and all was sweetness and light.  Son went to soccer camp and came home with the beginnings of a Potty Mouth. 

It started with the jokes.  He does not understand them, but the jokes he learned from the older boys included such topics as a woman in a towel and a blind man who turns out to not be blind. Another included the phrase “Oh crap,” which he says as “Aw, crabs.” And yet another involved three characters, one of whom was named Shut Up.

A few weeks ago, I heard him saying “shut up” to the 5-year-old girl down the street.  I was horrified.  He told me he was just telling a joke and I was greatly relieved.  It took a few minutes to realize this was NOT much better. We had a discussion about polite words, and then marched back to that family and apologized. 

We had instantly earned the designation of our street’s Kid With the Bad Mouth.  Granted, there are only 7 kids on our street, two of whom cannot talk yet and all of whom are younger than mine and thus still more sheltered, but still ... I tasted deep chagrin.

More recently, son got frustrated with a toy and offhandedly said, “D%$m.”  What???  After husband got a good tongue-lashing (I know where THAT word came from), son and I had another heart-to-heart about appropriate words. Son listened wide-eyed and serious, and agreed to use appropriate words.

Until a few days later, when he heard a noise and said, again so offhandedly, “What the h%$# was that?”

Husband got another tongue-lashing (I’m not sure he was responsible for that one, but it can’t hurt), and son and mom had another heart-to-heart. 

So far, he has not used the same bad word twice. When he tells the Shut Up joke, as we agreed, the character is now named Be Quiet.  But I can see that we have entered the land of Big Kids, and there is no turning back.

All I can say is %$&^#.