Pants-Free Parenting: Speaking the language of a parent

By Lyz Lenz, correspondent

Before I was a parent, I talked like a normal human being. But somehow in the last five years, I've completely lost the ability to communicate with people over the age of six. 'We don't say bad words in our home,” I tell a visiting sibling.

'Is that a nice way to talk to your wife?” I ask my husband.

I vowed this would never happen to me. But after nearly five years of reminding small humans not to lick my arms, I just forgot. So much advice suggests that parents ought to treat their children like adults. But they aren't. They are barely even human and I say that in the nicest way possible, because I love them, but no grown human thinks it is OK to smack someone else in the face with pants and then yell 'poopy face.” I mean, sure it happens in fraternities and really long marriages, but no one thinks its actually OK.

Parenting is just one long mind-control experiment, where you children just gaslight you into believing that talking about urine, wearing undies on your head and talking in the third person is not just OK, but socially acceptable.

I recently had someone write to me, expressing a desire for me to stop talking about poop in this column. I had to go back to the column and check to see where I had mentioned poop. It's become so second nature to me that I don't even realize when I am doing it. That is how far I have fallen.

And yet, I think that the language of parenthood is no different than any other specialized language for a particular occupation. As a writer, I'm used to talking about 'ledes”, 'grafs”, 'nut grafs” and doing things 'on spec”. When I was a copy editor for a marketing company, I frequently fought with my manager over using the word 'incentivize” which I thought they used too often in copy and she though they didn't use enough. Also, I frequently tried to take our words like 'utilize”, 'optimize” and 'influencer” from copy because they had been used, excuse me, utilized so often they were rendered virtually meaningless.

One day, I am sure, I will talk more like I a human being and stop thinking it is OK to use the Royal 'we” when addressing objectionable behavior. There is hope for me. But marketers? I'm afraid they are a lost cause.