I hate crude and curse words so much, especially from the mouths of children, that in my house my kids are not allowed to say even say the words “fart” or “farted.” I don’t know about you but this particular word is one of the most detestable ones in my book because I’ve actually been present when kids have outed their parents in public for “farting.”
Ok, so this story’s a bit racy and unexpected for a parenting web site like mine but this stuff is true so let’s keep it real. Dads, myself excluded OF COURSE, pass gas and they do it often. It’s a dad thing mostly because although moms do this more often than is scientifically detected, men have a hard time concealing gas problems because, well, we’re guys. We eat more.
Before you think this is a gratuitous story about passing gas, it’s really not. There’s a method to this smelly madness. I actually have developed a system to prevent my kids from using the dreaded F-word (the fart one) in public and especially from embarassing me if I happen to not be feeling so good in the stomach one day. The trick is that in our family, whenever we’re going to joke with someone or about someone passing gas ,the code word we use is “cocodrilo”/crocodile.
“Cocodrilo” works like a charm and is practically fool proof because if you’re around a bunch of people and you and/or your kids are accusing each other of blowing it, all you will hear them say is “you did cocodrilo”, which in English sounds even more ridiculous because it terribly translates to “You did Crocodile.” Imagine how cool this creative parenting trick is right? Who in the world is ever going to know that if one of your kids (or one of us adults for that matter) is kidding with the other about “cocodrilo” they are actually accusing each other about dropping a stinker.
No one will EVER know what “cocodrilo” means, of course, unless you read this story. Come to think of it, now that you know our family’s codeword for stinker I’m going to have to change it. Maybe the new code word will be the Spanish-language word for owl.
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