Fixing our Bad Language Habit

I swear (except that I try not to) that this post isn’t about swear words. It is about the bad language habit that resulted in Little Man being scared of the ocean. As the waves crashed and the water came in we used the unfortunate phrase “the water’s going to get you”. Well that scared Little Man into thinking that the water was going to get him and do something bad to him, and rightly so. I mean, how else do we use that phrase. The tickle monster is going to get you – and then we attack him. So today when he was whining that he wanted to go back to the beach house I walked down to the water and sat right about where the water was washing up. I took a shovel and a bucket and just started playing. Sure enough, Little Man wanted to join me. So he sat on my lap and when the water started to come near us I checked my bad language at the door and said “come here water, come here” and when it rolled over us I proclaimed “Yay, the water came here and now it is going back to the ocean, bye-bye water”. Well don’t you know, it made all the difference. Within a half hour he went from screaming if the water came near him to being chest deep in the water holding my hand and jumping the waves that came near us yelling “come here water, come here” or alternately “bye-bye water come again soon”. He told me that he had so much fun playing with the ocean today and he wanted to go and play with it again tomorrow. I love looking at the world through my toddler’s eyes and realizing that he really thinks the ocean was playing a game with him.

Oh and have I ever mentioned that I have a deep dark fear of the ocean. I mean, I love the beach, the sand, the sun, the fresh air. But I don’t like to go in the water past my ankles, I am terrified of the things that live in the ocean that I can’t see. But today, I didn’t have the option of giving into my fear because I was concentrating of ridding my 2 year old of his fear. Even as I looked down and saw a giant ( there might be some exaggeration in the size description) crab walking in the water just a few inches (slight exaggeration in the distance too) from my feet. I didn’t scream, or jump up and down or run back to the safety of the dry sand. I just looked away and took a deep breath and said “come here water, come here” with Little Man holding my hand. I figured if he could face his fear, so could I!