Potty Mouth

Colossians 3:20 Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.

The last couple of weeks have been rough for Korben. Emotionally, I think he's hitting a transition in life where he is learning about the world around him and how often, things are unfair. He hasn't quite developed the emotional vocabulary to express all of his huge, 4 1/2 year old feelings, so recently, he has been kind of explosive. We've been able to sort through a lot of it, and this week has been much better. Brody and I have learned just to stay calm, be extremely patient and allow Korben some space to work though the moment.

One day last week, though, he had a major meltdown-- the biggest I have EVER seen. I couldn't believe this was coming from him! We were outside playing in the sprinkler and he broke a toy after I had told him that if he wasn't careful, it would break! When he saw the unintended destruction, he lost it and demanded I go to the store that instant and buy a new one. WHOA Buddy! He had to go inside to calm down while Eli, hazel and I finished playing. When we came inside, this is what we found:





Obviously, I was quite angry!! I moved him to the naughty spot to calm down and told him he would be responsible for cleaning up the mess. He then decided to use mean, mean, mean words to me. I had had enough! I grabbed two glasses from the kitchen. One I filled with tap water, the other, toilet water. I asked Korben if he wanted a drink from either cup. He yelled "That one smells like poop and pee!". "You're right, " I told him, "It's potty water. This is what is coming out of your mouth right now. It is not clean, healthy or God-pleasing." I launched into a sermon about clean words, loving one another how God wants us to, no matter how upset we may feel... Eli even came over and sat down to listen. It was quite entertaining! I then added food coloring to the potty water (so we'd know which one it was!) and sat the two glasses in front of Korben for the remainder of his time-out.



Eventually, calmed down enough, apologized and cleaned up his mess. We all took a drink of the clean water and poured the potty water back into the toilet and flushed it. The results were not immediate, but his attitude has much improved since. We just simply need to ask if his words are becoming unclean, or "potty" words, and that seems to make him rethink what he is about to say next.