Many years ago I was teaching in a special needs school. I had a rad class of about seven high functioning, 10 year old boys with behaviour management difficulties. They were an absolute scream but very hot tempered and within seconds the class room could dissolve into a full scale brawl with all seven them beating the ever loving crap out of each other.
Needless to say as their teacher, I spent a lot of time distracting the boys from each other so they wouldn’t fight. Whenever we played a game they’d all scream at me that they wanted to go first and would subsequently belt anyone who got in their way. So I invented a rule. Carly always gets to go first. After a few days of me always being the one who got to go first one of the boys politely asked.
‘Why do you always get to go first?‘
My response wasn’t amazing, but when you spend all day talking to pre-teens sometimes your brain goest to strange places. It literally fell out of my mouth before I even had time to think about it.
‘Because I’m the prettiest.‘
I was in a room of boys who thought ‘pretty’ was the worst thing you could be so they were all satisfied with my response and never mentioned it again. Later that week a kid from another school got transferred into my classroom. When we went to play Uno he jumped up and down and shouted ‘I want to go first! I want to go first!‘
One of the other boys stood up, thrust a pointed finger in the other kids face and said…
‘SIT DOWN! Carly ALWAYS gets to go first because SHE’S the prettiest!‘
I don’t think I’ve ever stifled a laugh that hard in my life. This kid was beautiful, staunchly protecting my honour because of this bizarre reason I gave him that he took straight to his heart. He didn’t even question it. It made me realise how easily influenced kids are and how important it is to teach them the right things.
It was still a pretty amazing moment though. Having this rat bag kid, with a crazy temper, get up in front of all his friends and shout at the top of his lungs that his teacher is the prettiest, without any prompting. I officially win at life.
What’s the best or worst thing you’ve taught a child to say?
14 Comments
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Awh that’s really sweet – but also kinda a shame that it happened to be prettiest. So so gorgeous at how they defended you. I love it.
I haven’t taught any children naughty words or anything – but I was baby sitting a friends daughter and she loved Katy Perry! I didn’t know that the Mum didn’t allow her to listen to her songs and so misguidedly taught her all the song lyrics to ‘Teenage Dream’ because it was her favourite. I wasn’t asked to babysit again that’s for sure!
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I know! I thought the same thing when he said it… I was like ‘Did I say that???’. Rest assured I would NEVER say that in front of girls! EVER!
I have a history of saying weird things in front of kids though. My niece was about 1 year old, barely talking, and she toddled past me and I said to my mum ‘Oh my GOD SHE’S SO CUTE! I just want to punch her in the face!’ (like she’s Smaggly!) and my niece whipped her head, pointed a chubby little finger at me and said ‘Don’t you punch ME in the face!’.
Hopefully she’s not scarred for life.
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That is the most hilarious thing I have read all day. What a sassy little cherub!
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CUTE. But it’s frightening how we can influence, isn’t it?
I was watching ’80s clips on YouTube, and unbeknownst to me, boy Lex (six), was listening. Later in the day, at the supermarket, he started singing, “Boom, boom, boom, let’s go back to my room, so we can do it all night, and you can make me feel right.’ DIED. ON. THE. SPOT. And I struggled not to laugh.
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ARGH! Love it! It’s so funny when they bust stuff out like that!
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We taught my niece to sing “fish heads, fish heads, tiny little fish heads. Fish heads, fish head eat them up, yum!” And to do it in a funny voice…
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Oh, and she was about 2 at the time….hehe
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Ha ha! Love it.
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My friends were visiting from out of town and we were relaxing by the TV. Their son was fascinated with Doctor Who and I found out his aunt was too. We taught hum how to say Tardis, the name of the doctors ship.
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That’s so cute! One of the first things my niece said was ‘Judge Judy’
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I was an English teacher in Japan for a few years, and was teaching there up until I was seven months pregnant. I’d been asked by the area manager not to discuss my pregnancy with the kids on account of not being married, so my pregnancy wasn’t widely known about among the students.
When I was around four or five months and starting to really bulge out of my clothes (without actually looking pregnant), a group of my 10 year old kids came into the classroom and started rapidly talking – it was very obvious they were talking about me, but I had no idea what they were saying. They kept trying to tell me what they were talking about, but just didn’t have the language skills. One of them tentatively said ‘big style, big style’, and for a moment I was like, is this kid commenting on how fabulously stylish I am? But then another kid gets up and drawers a picture of me on the white board. With a really fucking distinctive muffin top hanging over my skirt. ‘Big style!’ he says.
At which point I cracked up laughing and yelled out ‘OH PISS OFF!’
It didn’t even need to be translated, they knew exactly what I was saying.
One guess what they were all yelling when their parents came to pick them up at the end of class.
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I coached my little boy to say mummy is a ‘foxy lady’. When one day I got marvellously dressed up for a rare night out, I asked him if mummy was looking like a foxy lady, he – obsessed with Madagascar (the movie) replied “no mummy, you’re not a foxy lady, you’re a hippo”
Apparently a compliment in reference to the very sassy Gloria character!Ugh, I can assure you I did look totally foxy though. mmmhmmmn.
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When my daughter was six, she came home from school and said she thought she needed to go on a diet. I said okay, we would just ramp up the diet we were already on – the “Sonoma Strong and Healthy Diet” – and she was perfectly satisfied to eat a few more vegetables. Having a name for what we were already doing made all the difference, and I’m rather proud of diverting the emphasis from looks to health.
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Bahhhaaa! Love it! You are HILARIOUS! I hope you did a hair flip when they said it 😉
