I admit that I love the color pink (although my favorite is yellow), and every Easter I like to walk by the toddler clothing section and admire the frilly little dresses with an ever-so-brief moment of longing because I don’t have any girls. However, seeing that my tolerance threshold for whining/baby talk/squealing is pretty low, I guess God – in his wisdom – thought it best to entrust me with boys, instead.

 

Most of their disciplinary needs are stereotypical “boy” things: scuffling with each other, running in the house, taking a running leap onto the couch, putting stinky socks in each others’ faces, etc. Lately, though, the Baby Talk Monster has infiltrated our home, and it’s driving me bonkers!

 

No. 5 was playing Mario Kart on the Wii when I overheard him exclaim, “Me Bowser! Me in first place!” (Bowser is a character in the game.) Later on at dinner, he said, “Me want more, please.” These recent substitutions of “me” for “I” came on the heels of No. 4 barely saying three words in a row that weren’t whIIIIInnnniiinnnnng. I feel a twitch coming on, just thinking about it.

 

Something had to be done to squelch this behavior before my 6yos reverted to 2yos!

 

Our house rule for running indoors is push-ups (5 for the little ones, 10 for the big kids). The rule applies in our home, someone else’s home … even at church. Yes, they’ve had to do push-ups in the hallway at church. We’ve had this rule for well over a year now, and they even enforce it on each other. Occasionally, they’ll even stop in their tracks and start doing push-ups without being reminded, LOL! Their karate instructor once said that our boys will have the strongest arms in the county. 😉

 

Along those same lines, I thought that jumping jacks would be a reasonable enforcement tool for baby talk. We started it yesterday, and so far, No. 5 has had to do two sets of 15 jumping jacks (last night after dinner and this morning). No. 4 got a warning this morning at breakfast, but he got a reprieve the first time.

 

We’ll see how it goes, but so far, I think it’s working out well. It gets them moving (“gets their energy out,” as I like to say), and it’s a quick & easy correction for a fairly mild (albeit very annoying) habit.