D’oh! He said what?

Robbie has always been a good talker with an excellent vocabulary. He talks circles around half the kids his age and keeps up well in a preschool class a year ahead of his age.  He also tells my in-laws lots of stories about Toby and I (They are all lies. Lies, I say!) that never fail to amuse them but which they’ll never explain.

Since turning four his use of language has take a more…colorful turn. I don’t really mean swearing, though we have had to drum a few words from his ever-expanding vocabulary. By colorful, I guess I mean more imaginative, more colloquial and more sprinkled with slang.

For example, three days ago he was having a great time prentending with some friends to be a boat captain in an unfinished room of our basement. When I noticed they were beating on the walls with crescent wrenches, I pulled him aside and said “Hey babe, I think it’s time to stop playing in there.”

He, in turn, went back into the room and announced to his three friends “Sorry guys, it looks like we’re gonna have to shut down for a while.”

I was amused and amazed that he’s reached a level of linguistic maturity that he can take a message and translate it into a part of their play so effortlessly.

When he watches TV, he hears phrases and immediately “tries them on” in a half whisper. Spiderman swings through the streets and says “I’m the Incredible Spider Man!” and Robbie repeats him in a low voice. This pantomiming continues through the next few hours or days until he’s mastered the nuances and context of the phrase and then it becomes a part of his everyday conversation.

We had to start policing his television more carefully when he learned “Little Freaks” and “Loser”.

One day, while helping him put his shoes on he laid back on the floor and said “You take a dash of dad, a pinch of mom and …..Mmmm, that’s good Billy!”

I blinked. It took me a minute to place the line – it was from a Simpson’s episode we’d seen weeks before. Weeks and weeks ago and only one time.

When I considered all the other, far worse things Homer and Bart have said in twenty seasons I suddenly realized where all of his recent sarcasm was coming from; the nightly episode of Simpsons he and Toby watch together. Toby can’t stand Sponge Bob or Curious George so we TiVo Simpsons episodes as a middle ground solution to the “what to watch while dinner is being made” problem.

Time to revamp the TiVo settings.

D’oh.