#NoFilter

wordswithmrsh - 10 Apr 17

And by this I mean social filter….

A week deep into the Easter holidays and our middle child has excelled himself with loud public one liners during various outings. We have tried to explain (and explain again) why sometimes we shouldn’t just shout out everything that comes into our head, but it seems there is no end in sight and every trip out is filled with excitement/anxiety wondering what will he say next, and to whom…

Highlights from just this last week include:

• Loudly describing anyone appearing to be over the 50, male or female with grey hair as a ‘Crazy Grandma’. ‘Mum, there’s a crazy Grandma on the train’. ‘Hey, that crazy Grandma walked near me’. This is made more bizarre by the fact that he calls neither of his (non grey haired) grandmothers Grandma.
• Crying is heart out and giving out way too much information when the first signs of a stomach bug made themselves known during a garden centre visit. Kind stranger (to me) – What’s the matter with the little man?  Our son – wailing – my bottom hurts because my poo is too fuzzy. I’ve done two fuzzy poos. Yep, that happened
• Bumping into a not often seen older family member, greeting them with a glare and saying ‘not you again, I don’t want to talk to you’.

My standard response is to advise him not to say these things and smile politely, hoping that everyone’s sense of humour has been boosted by the sunshine. I am pretty confident I have a 90% return smile/understanding/sympathetic response rate but there is a definite 10% who are not amused. The trouble is he is not doing it to be funny and actually he is not doing it to be rude – he’s just doing it. A loud and unfiltered stream of consciousness if you will.

So what to do?  ‘Not you again’ has been used before and I am fairly sure it will be again. I sense this one is deployed when he fears I am going to start talking to another grown up and he just wants to get on with whatever it is we were going to do – so it’s a bit of a misfire at the wrong party. However, I continue in hope that the conversations we have with him are slowly seeping in somewhere. Manners are important, end of.

We’ve negotiated on the Crazy Grandma issue – asking him to whisper to us first to check if someone of a Grandma before saying Grandma – crazy is not allowed. He has agreed in principle but this has yet to be tested.

As for the oversharing/TMI – I doubt there is much to do about that. Don’t talk to strangers about your fuzzy poo is up there for something I never thought I would have to say, in any public place, ever, let alone with a straight face (with our eldest crying with laughter just behind his brother – who has told two other people about his poo by this point).

This feels difficult – like we are trying to turn down our son but he is 4 and harmless and bears no ill intent, he’s just calling it as he sees it. I bet we all know (or are) adults who don’t sugar coat it and ‘tell it like it is’. Like with them, as with him, you know where you stand and as long as words are not harmful or rude – I like that. BUT words can hurt and offend and he does need to start to understand that he has that power too. hmmmmm….

It’s not that I really even care about the opinions of strangers – I have three kids, I haven’t got time to worry about what someone I don’t know thinks about my kids, or my parenting. I do care about my son settling into school later this year, making friends – is his lack of filter going to be a problem then? Or a steep learning curve?

His zest for saying everything out loud to everyone has also been brilliant. Seeing off some seemingly not well intentioned kids at the park when they started sniggering at our eldest – Hey go away, that’s my brother, you’re not being very nice. And supporting society by advising a train passenger with loud music that it was too loud – I don’t like that sound, it’s too loud, you should turn it down – the music was turned down and he was offered 2 high-fives by other commuters (which he declined – looking at them like they were bonkers).

That he can be fearless with his words makes me a tad envious…. My desire to just say what I think sometimes is overridden by how I know I am supposed to behave. Some of the time that’s OK but sometimes I wish I had just said IT. Whatever IT was.

In conclusion, I have no flipping clue what to do, if anything, and as this seems to fit with most of our parenting thus far, I will not over think it, as it’s probably just another phase. One that we will look back on and see as a breeze when faced with friendship difficulties, exams, self confidence issues and the rest of the minefield that is childhood and adolescence. ‘Do you remember’, we’ll laugh, ‘when our biggest worry was that he called everyone Crazy Grandma and told strangers about his fuzzy poo….’ One day these will be the glory days!

#NoFilter

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wordswithmrsh

Mum of fabulous children, wife to one very patient husband. My blogs are about anything that has popped into my head as it occurs to me. I have aspirations to write more, that are slowly turning into reality. A lover of the simple things in life - good friends, good food, good wine and of course family.

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