A Hard Lesson to Learn

Our oldest son leaned a very important lesson this week.  While shopping at Target, he was pushing Ben in the cart and they were playing.  John playfully said "Shut your face" and Ben happily repeated it.  So they were walking down the isle saying to each other.  We told John to stop immediately as that is not something appropriate for 4 year olds (or 13 year olds) to say, but he simply walked ahead of us and kept talking quietly to Ben. 

Once in the car Ben repeated it a couple time.  Randy and I gave John the I told you so speech, that you can not say things in front of Ben that are not appropriate, because he will repeat them and this is what happens.  We told him that for every time Ben repeated it, John would lose a day on his PS3. 

I think Ben understood exactly what I said, because just then he started to repeat it over, and over, and over and over again.  Around 200 times of repeating it, John started to get mad at him.  It was time for another I told you so moment. But after a bit it just started getting funny. Ben was saying it with the exact same inflection that John had used.   It was all I could do not to laugh every time he said it.  Luckily I was in the seat directly in front of Ben in the car, so he could not see me smiling, but John could see me and was getting very upset. 

Part of me is very proud of Ben as he is making great improvements in speech.  Reading is helping and so is his willingness to repeat what we say.  He will repeat just about everything and he was making a great f sound when he said face.  

Unfortunately we were an hour away from home and it was going to be a long drive.  About half way home we switched it to an hour of PS3 time lost for each occurrence.  I never thought it would get that far when I first laid out the punishment.  However now that he has lost it for over 600 hours, it will still be a long time before John gets to play his new game. 

We finally talked the boys into "teaching" Ben a more appropriate phrase, so every time he started to say "Shut your face" , they would both shout "knee"  I am not sure why they chose that, but it finally worked. 
Maybe next time John will listen when we tell him to not say inappropriate things to his little brother......but I doubt it.