Nik and I have had a relatively easy time in the “how shall we parent?” department.  By relatively easy, I mean, we haven’t had a lot of conflict in our “deciding what parenting philosophy to follow”discussions.  Putting all of that into practice is, of course, a work in progress and we do always make mistakes.  Thankfully, though, we haven’t yet had to attempt to reconcile two very different ideas of how we want to raise our children.

Recently, however, we’ve come across two problem situations.

Case #1:  “Pee” vs. “pee-pee”

In potty-training Ellie, I found myself using the words, “pee” and “poopie”.  Nik chose to use “pee-pee” and “poopie”.  His version really makes more sense (at least he’s consistent with his endings) but regardless, for some reason, it feels silly to me to say “pee-pee” when I can just say, “pee”.  At first, Ellie didn’t use any of those words, but now that she’s started talking, she’s chosen to use Nik’s word and if I say “pee” to her, she says, “No, pee-pee” as if I don’t know what I’m talking about.

Case #2: “Ouchie” vs “boo-boo”

When Ellie gets hurt, I like to use the term, “ouchie”.  Nik says, “boo-boo.”  Guess which one Ellie has chosen?  Is there any doubt?  If I say, “Do you have an ouchie, Ellie?”, she will, through her tears, say, “No, boo-boo.”  I can even ask her, “What does Mama say?” and she’ll answer, “Ouchie.”  But she won’t use the word herself.

HOW IS THIS FAIR?  Who spends all day every day with this girl?  Pretty soon, she’ll be succumbing to all the other crazy East Coast English quirks, like dropping prepositions from verbs of completion (“done lunch” or “graduated high school”) and using the incorrect preposition (“by accident”).  Come on people, you’re done WITH your lunch and you graduated FROM high school!  You dropped your milk ON accident!!  If I can’t even get Ellie to use my terms when she hears me saying them all day, I know there’s probably no hope at all for keeping her from sounding like an East Coaster.

I guess that’s the price I pay for committing “until death do us part” to an East Coaster.  But hey, at least we’re in accord on how to discipline our children, right? 🙂