Photo Credit: (Creative Commons - Tobyotter)
Humorist Art Linkletter is most well known for his popular broadcast program Kids Say the Darndest Things, which ran from the 1940s through the 1960s.
However, beyond merely saying the darndest things, sometimes kids DO the darndest things that have no existing description within the English language.
How do parents convey these unexplanable antics??? Enter Eric Ruhalter’s book The Kid Dictionary – hilarious words to describe the indescribable things kids do.
Ruhalter is a father of three rambunctious kids who helped inspire the book. While, I’ve not read his collection of idioms yet here are a few funny samples from the Amazon web site:
- Wishjack: (WISH—jak) v: To blow out the candles on another child’s birthday cake.
- Brofitti: (broh-FEE-tee) v: The act of scribbling with permanent marker on the face of a younger sibling.
- Clandesdine: (klan-DES-dyne) v: To hide from one’s child while eating a cookie so he doesn’t ask for one too.
These genius examples inspired me to come up with a few of my own kid-defining phrases:
1. Kiddo-Ditto: the unending sibling game of “will you stop copying me…”
2. Food-itude: the attitude our daughters cop when dinner is something other than mac & cheese, pizza or grilled cheese.
3. Snow-Job-Description: the creative embellishment our oldest daughter displays to get extra allowance money for her chores around the house (e.g. “Shouldn’t I get paid double for washing both sides of the dinner dishes???)
4. Ava-tardiness: the time lapse between when we tell our kids to shut off the popular Nicktoons animated show Avatar and when the TV is actually turned off.
5. Fashion-Shunning: the silent treatment our youngest daughter gives when she’s not allowed to simultaneously wear fuchsia, sequins, zebra print and flip flops to school.
6. Toy-nado: the path of playtime disarray after our kids’ typical whirlwind blitz through the toy bins in their playroom.
7. Mama-Insomnia: the prolonged series of requests for nighttime drinks, snacks, songs, stories…etc. our girls direct at my wife to delay their inevitable bedtime.
8. Toothpaste-Tumors: the massive, abnormally shaped globs of toothpaste that cake our daughter’s bathroom sink, which manage to miss their respective toothbrushes and mouths somehow.
9. Street-Performer-Anxiety: the irrational dread I feel that our daughters will panhandle us after they perform one of their signature, impromptu, unscripted, combination Fashion-Puppet-Show-Dance-Routine-Sing-Song-Extravaganzas.
10. Car-Tunes-Torture: the excruciating auditory assault that parents endure on long trips listening to an unending stream of radio Disney teen singers.
Question: What parenting definitions can you add to this list?
I have been brofittied. Of course, that was before they had a real name for this activity, and I have also been on the wrong end of fashion-shunning as well. This was too funny! I just laughed.