Dad stuff | Dare to swear...the rebuttal

Hi All...Andrew here, Lisa's hubby. After Lisa’s recent blog post which gave the impression that I encouraged Seth to swear for no other reason than to get him to do so, I thought that I had better clear the air (particularly with him turning it so blue). The sequence of events started with Seth coming inside with his shorts soaked which he told me came about because he had been dared to by his sister (it’s always the girls that start trouble IMHO :-). We then had a talk about not taking dares because there are usually consequences. This however, didn’t seem to sink in. He sometimes needs an example to pick up a lesson, so I then dared him to do something so remarkably disgusting that he would refuse (eating dog poo).

He didn’t get the concept of consequences straight away, but he is quite quick to display he’s a smart arse, so he headed out the back door & brought some poo inside (which was actually white & not brown). Lesson still not learnt, I raised the stakes when he came back from washing his hands which lead us to the ‘swear dare’. I thought that he might try & push the boundaries by saying shit or f*%k, but being a smart arse, he dropped the c-bomb.

He got sent to his room quickly & after a few minutes we had a talk where he showed me that he had now learned the lesson that I had tried to teach him. He apologised to me & his Mum and still a week later has not accepted a dare, even though I’ve thrown a few at him over the last couple of days to test him out.

I still can’t believe that he said it & can’t imagine the thought processes he went through to use it and although I’m not condoning what he said, I’m proud of him for having the intestinal fortitude to push his limits. Afterall, where would we be if someone hadn't pushed the boundaries and tried drinking milk for the first time?