You Naughty!

When it comes to my approach to parenting, there's a lot of adjustments and going with the flow, but there's one flow that's just flowing a bit to far. Awful pun I know. I never, ever call my children, or any other child for that matter, naughty. To me that's calling for trouble because it's like a self fulfilling prophecy. If you tell a child they are a, b or c, they will think this about themselves because after all you're an adult and you know and behave appropriately. Plus I don't believe children are born naughty, they are made naughty by bad example or us expecting them to be naughty (of which using the word is one step).

So naughty? A big no no.

Shame my kids don't play game.

Cubling, you naughty! Shouts Snowflake.
No, Snowflake, you're naughty for saying I'm naughty! spits Cubling back.
Mummy, you're naughty, say both whenever I don't do exactly as they wish at exactly this exact nanosecond in time.

And repeat endlessly until they are in bed.

And after hearing about 50 times a day that I'm naughty, I'm no longer the parent who brushes it off and is strong and knows what she's doing. I feel extremely unloved, sad and frustrated.

There is no conclusion to this post, this is it. I've tried ignoring. I've tried explaining. I've told them how it makes me feel a hundred times. I've tried letting them pick a consequence for using the word and following it through. Nothing works. The word naughty is the most used word in our house and you can only guess how much I would like to see it replaced by lovely/loving (lieb).

Happy Valentine's Day, my loves, I do love you so very much, today and every other day, no matter how often you tell me I'm naughty.