I came home the other day to quite the show. Ironically enough, it wasn't on tv... but it was over one. Two teenagers with one tv and I had zero patience left. You do the math. I don't care where you went to school, this wasn't adding up.
These two were arguing and simply could not see the other's point of view. The one thing they did have in common though was the name-calling.
Don't get me wrong, I have two brothers and two sisters and we had our fair share of name-calling over the years and being that my mother is a teacher, this irritated her more than most. Not only did we get in trouble for calling each other names but apparently our poor use of the English Language was a real insult to her parenting skills.
I thought about using my Mom's approach to name-calling but I'm not sure it was really fitting any more. She used to correct the grammar of whoever was doing the name-calling, so much so that it actually got too frustrating to bother with your little sister anymore. Nowadays, teenagers speak in code. They say things like OMG, K, YOLO, TTYL and LOL. The only way to know if your child is calling their sibling a name is by the tone. So, they have gone past the point of no return when it comes to proper use of the English Language. They have created a language all of their own. So, I decided it was time to teach them how to speak mine. I told them, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."
Well, my house got quiet. Real quiet.
I made each of them write a list of nice things about the other. This is a few of the things they came up with.
My son said:
1. She's athletic because she does gym, sometimes
2. She's stylish, sometimes
3. She's funny, sometimes (have you seen her golf)
He wasn't exactly getting the idea of saying something nice. I know this much about the English language. When you give someone a compliment, you do not usually include "sometimes" after it and don't think that his sister wasn't catching on.
So next was her turn and she said:
1. He's nice because he always shares his TV with me.
Well played.
