We're "That" Family

Wednesday when Baylie got into the van after school, I could tell something was wrong. She was about to cry. Baylie is a pleaser and the thought of disappointing someone is devastating to her. I asked her what was wrong and she was afraid to tell me. She told me to just look in her agenda.

Imagine my surprise when I looked in her agenda and learned that she had "said a very bad f-word" in class. We don't swear in our home (okay, David doesn't swear and I don't swear very often...). Neither one of us ever uses that particular word. I knew that Baylie had no idea what it meant.

We never did find out where Baylie learned the word. (We went through several versions of stories of where she learned it and discovered that we had more of an honesty problem than a language problem.) She told us that she thought it meant dirt, which led me to believe that someone must have told her it was a 'dirty' word and she took that literally.

The worst part was that she said the word out loud several times saying "F--- isn't a bad word!" I can just imagine all the little first graders who went home and asked their mommies what it meant. The first grade newsletter that came home the next day included a front page instruction to please tell your children not to use a word if they don't know what it means. Nice.

I was so sad that Baylie had this experience. She didn't even want to look in her agenda the rest of the week because she didn't want to see the note from her teacher. It was the first time she had ever brought home anything but a smiley face from school and she was crushed about that. She didn't get in trouble for saying the word, but she did get in trouble for not being honest.

She kept saying she was glad that tomorrow was a new day and she could start fresh. I think we were all happy about that.