“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will irritate the living crap out of my every time.

“”You’re a poopyhead!”" Little Guy shouts. I guess it could be worse.

“”It’s not nice to call your brother a ‘poopyhead.’ People feel sad when you do that.”"

“”You’re stoopit, Mommy,”" Big Guy adds.

“”Actually, I’m not.”"

“”But you just said you were stoopit.”"

“”No, I said I did something stupid. That’s different.”" And, no, I don’t expect a 5-year-old to parse that. I’ll have to strike the word from my vocabulary for the next 15 years.

I try not to overreact, and usually calm admonishment works.

Problem is, the more you ignore an annoying behavior with Big Guy, the more he escalates until it gets your attention. I learned that when several people recommended pretending not to hear his terrible twos tantrums. That led to screaming that dang near peeled the paint off the walls.

I also realize that at this point it’s not about annoying me as it is trying to one-up each other. Yes, we’ve reached that stage of sibling rivalry.

You mean!

You ugly!

Mommy, he called me mean!

Mommy, he said I’m ugly!

Great. Now we have name-calling crossed with tattling.

It’s just a phase, right?

Copyright 2008 Debra Legg. All rights reserved.

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