aren't they too young for this?

One of my earliest memory clips is around age 4. I was with my dad in the hardware store. Kids at my preschool had been throwing around the term "dog doo." I had a guess what it meant, but I wasn't sure and I wasn't about to ask anyone. So as Dad was looking at whatever-it-was, I turned to him, said, "You're dog doo!" and ran to the next aisle over. He followed me and calmly asked if I knew what that meant, what I thought it meant, where I'd heard it, etc. I wasn't in trouble, but he told me not to use words I didn't understand. I don't remember the exact content of the lecture, but it was certainly not the last one I ever got.

This afternoon we were all goofing around singing alphabet songs and stuff, when Drew came out with, "Mom, you are a fag." I thought I'd mis-heard until he said it again: "You are a fag."

Okay. That one, he did not get from us. It's way, WAY worse than dog doo, but also more complex. And 2.75 is a lot younger than 4. He was clearly watching me to see how I'd react.

"What did you say?"
"Nothing. Let's make the popcorn, Mom."
"Did you say 'fag'?"
"Umyeah"
"Where did you hear that?"
"You said it."
"Nope, I don't say that. That's even meaner than 'fuck.' Who did you hear say it?"
"Daddy said it. Can we make popcorn now?"

Eventually he told me he'd heard it from the nanny's older (13-year-old) daughter, which I can believe. I tried to explain in simple terms: "It's a word that really hurts people's feelings, especially [a whole bunch of our friends]. Okay?"

"Okay."

And then we made popcorn.

The nanny will be back on Friday. Watch out.