The One Where I Said The F-Word To My Eight-Year-Old

By Anna Quinlan
@quinlananna

Let me start by saying that it was my one morning all week to sleep in. I am up before 5 a.m. most days, and not with a chipper attitude about it. But I had made it to Saturday, and in the bigger picture I had made it to having kids who are old enough to stay in their beds until the digital clock in their room reads 7 a.m.; old enough to pour their own cereal and turn on their own cartoons. I had waited seven days—well, seven years and seven days—for this morning. No alarm. No high alert for a crying baby. I had gone to sleep with a smile on my face just imagining the luxury of sleeping through the sound of distant cartoons while sunlight crept in through the slats of the shutters and every inch of my sheets were already body temperature. I am a simple woman, and this was the simple pleasure I had looked forward to all week.

Instead, at 6 a.m., I heard the vague thumping of feet making their way down a bunk bed ladder. Only my subconscious registered this sound through my earplugs, an insurance policy I am not too proud to implement when the rare gift of a Sleep In Saturday is available. The bedroom door flung open and my eight-year-old announced that, “Since it’s Saturday and it’s the one day we get to watch TV in the morning I think we should be allowed to get up early and besides we’re already awake so can we turn the TV on? Please Mom? Please Dad?”

I struggled to register what was happening through a heavy veil of slumber, but I think my husband said “fine” and I think I heard feet scamper back down the hallway and I stayed mostly asleep and chalked it up as a fever dream. Not today, Satan. 

But then, a short while later, the feet came scampering back. The door flung open again. “Mom!” he blurts out, almost as if he knows I’m wearing ear plugs and that he’ll need to be extra loud to get my attention. “Dad! I looked in the pantry for cereal and I saw Honey Nut Cheerios! Can we have them for breakfast? Please?!”

I was no longer under a veil of slumber now, but blinking awake as the gears in my brain creaked and groaned into motion as I struggled to process this fervent plea. I remembered that I had gone grocery shopping the night before, and that I had splurged on a box of Honey Nut Cheerios, which was unloaded into the pantry after my kids were in bed. Honey Nut Cheerios is categorized as a “treat cereal” in our house, deemed too sugary for breakfast but available as an alternative for dessert when earned. My kids know this. “Treat cereal” is mostly for me, which I don’t think they’ve figured out yet, but it’s been my favorite late night indulgence since I was a teenager, and Honey Nut Cheerios are actually so dear to me that I am not kidding when I tell you that I wrote these words about them, published for all to see on my Blogspot blog on March 7, 2008:

“If Cheerios are your girlfriend, Honey-Nut Cheerios are your girlfriend on a special date night, all glammed out in her cutest outfit and make-up. With each bite you revel in the specialness of this dressed up moment, but taste the everyday goodness that drew you together in the first place.”

That is 100% real and I although I have some questions about my content choices during my experiment in personal blogging, I stand by those words eleven years and two children later. If there’s one thing I love more than sleeping in, it just might be treat cereal. 

As all those thoughts clunked through my not-totally-awake brain, my husband said something that resembled “no” but involved more words. Whatever it was, it got my eight year old to abandon the plea and return to the cartoons, and I squinted an eye open to see 6:04 a.m. on the clock before rolling over and letting my brain return to stillness. Finally. 

Just as I was sinking back into a fully asleep state, though, the door flung open a third time. My eyes did not open, but an exasperated rage washed over me and became the only emotion present, taking control of the creaky gears in my head without my conscious consent. 

My eight-year-old, the kid the daycare lady predicted would grow up to be a politician when he was not yet three, was back, and he might as well have had a necktie and a clipboard this time. “I have two reasons why I should get to have Honey Nut Cheerios for breakfast,” he started, calmly. “The first is that it’s Saturday,” but my rage took over before he could finish. 

Without thinking, and without moving from my comfortable fetal sleeping position, I snapped. “Yeah well I can think of eight reasons that I want to have Honey Nut Cheerios for breakfast and the first five are that they’re f*cking delicious.”

Silence. All three of us were stunned. 

I am no stranger to a well-placed swear word, but until that moment I’m quite positive I had never cursed in front of my children. Maybe an accidental “hell” once or twice, but never one of the varsity words. I’ve raised my voice more times than I’d like to admit, and I’ve even slammed a hand on the kitchen counter in an unproud moment or two, but please believe that I had never, ever uttered the f-word in front of my children. 

But it had been such a long week. There had already been so many negotiations with this child. So many reminders of lessons already taught. I was so very tired. I had pined for this sleep for so long. I was holding onto it so desperately that I wasn’t even in a fully conscious state yet.  

My outburst hung in the air for a second and I felt like I was coming out of a hypnotic state, aware of what I had done but unable to explain or defend it. I grabbed my husband’s arm under the covers and whispered, “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what happened. I was still asleep. I … I’m so sorry.” He just chuckled, still stunned.

I lifted my head and addressed my eight-year-old, standing slack-jawed in the doorway. “I’m sorry,” I said, “I shouldn’t have used that language. But the answer is no. Now please let us sleep until at least 7 o’clock.” He scampered back down the hallway without a reply as my husband and I melted into laughter, both together and apart; me out of embarrassment and him out of shock, and both of us at the ridiculousness of all of it. 

There was no going back to sleep now. I stayed in bed a while longer, dozing and chuckling and fretting, not totally unlike all the early morning hours I had spent doing the same with infants snuggled up next to me all those years ago. 

I used to fret about how long I should let them cry, or what the right toys were, or when to switch the car seat from rear-facing to front facing. I used to regret days with too much stimulation, forgetting to pack snacks, or not doing a thorough enough job burping them after their feedings. Those were such real feelings then, but I chuckle at them now. They are like words from a blog post written by a previous version of myself: So very true, and so wholly my own, yet so distant that I no longer feel like the same girl who wrote them, or felt them, as the case may be. 

As I dozed in bed that morning, my f-word mingling with the sunlight that was beginning to dance above my bed, I assuaged my regret with those memories. I would apologize again when we were all properly awake, and I would vow to never curse in front of my kids again, but I would also forgive myself. I would also laugh about it. I would believe now, with much more certainty than I ever did about over-stimulation and burping techniques, that I had not completely ruined my child with one misstep.    

There will never be enough sleep. We will always make mistakes. There will always be something to fret over, and hopefully we can see that there is usually also always something to chuckle over too.