Forget Spelling It Out Now

There was a time when Aaron and I could have entire conversations about things around Cordy without her knowing. We’d just have to S-P-E-L-L out the word we didn’t want her to hear and/or repeat, like C-O-O-K-I-E or I-C-E-C-R-E-A-M or the ever popular W-I-N-E.

Problem is, she’s been watching Word World and Sesame Street and Super Why, all of which are encouraging her to spell. And one in particular (I’m looking at you, Word World, with your obsessive, sweets-loving Pig) teaches kids how to spell cookie.

Do you know how hard it is to talk about cookies without being able to say or now spell cookie? We can’t even use a food code word, like lettuce, because the kid likes lettuce and nearly every other food we mention. And it’s just too weird to say to your spouse, “Hey, when you’re at the grocery, can you pick up some….uh…uhm… socks? You know, the…uhm… socks with the brown spots – one might say “chunks”- in them?”

We try to give our daughters healthy snacks, and save the sweet treats for special occasions. They normally have snacks like bananas, apple slices, fruit and cereal bars, goldfish crackers, homemade applesauce (from my mom’s apple trees) and yogurt.

But hiding in one of the cabinets, on the tippy-top shelf, are the secret goodies – cookies, candy, and those little Betty Crocker molten lava cakes that you make in the microwave in 30 seconds. Hiding in the deep freezer is the ice cream that Aaron and I love – ice cream that doesn’t exist to our children and if they ask about it we will deny-deny-deny.

It’s a little ironic that we care so much about our daughters’ eating habits, and then pull out the naughty snacks when they go to bed.

Do you have mommy/daddy snacks that you hide from the kids?

(Wine doesn’t count.)

This post was written for Parent Bloggers Network as an entry for a contest sponsored by Brothers-All-Natural.

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Comments

  1. Ooh, pig latin! Good idea! (And sorry that you’re out of options now.)

  2. I totally hide stuff from my kids.

    We have a pizza restaurant called Pizza Boy at which we have been eating far too often lately. When we’re trying to decide whether to eat there (but don’t want the kiddo to know, just in case we don’t) we call it, “young male child of the round comestible”. The first time my husband did it, I was really confused, but my daughter hasn’t caught on yet.

    We want our kids to learn, but sometimes it really is a pain in the neck. 😉

  3. That’s so weird. I just said “kids” but I only have one. WTF. That’s what kind of day it’s been.

  4. Spelling never worked in my house. My children can smell chocolate 100 feet away. Now at 17, 13 and 4, I have to buy it when they are not home and find creative places to hide it. Lately, that place is my unmentionables drawer. 🙂 Since the teenagers are boys, I figure I am safe for a few more years anyway.

  5. Hahahaha…

    I remember when my mom started trying to spell things backward, but I figured it out faster than my dad 😀

  6. oreo’s a definite hid way in the back of the pantry

  7. Hell YEAH! The expensive ice creams, the girl scout cookies, and (from Corinne) my Marie Callendar pot pies. She LOVES them…)

    Use a pad and pencil. OR sign language!

  8. We actually get out the thesaurus. Cookies become “round flat confections”. But that also goes away after a while.

  9. We spelled, then we spelled backward, then we went to pig-latin. The nine year old is now onto that. I don’t know what we’re going to do, short of taking up Latin!

  10. Totally. We often break out the ice cream or a hidden stash of chocolates after bedtime.

    Fortunately, ours haven’t caught onto spelling yet, though they do know b-e-a-c-h. I’ll have to brush up on my pig latin for down the road, though.

  11. we hide or goodies on the top shelf too, but the kiddos are on to that so we hid some halloween candy in a box of rice, he found that too!

  12. Pig Latin! LOL my kid is learning to spell to, sucks for me. We might have to start eating healthy, yikes.

  13. My husband and I used to spell things out to chat secretly in front of our son. He just started kindergarten and even before that was able to figure out some of the words. Our next step – we may start sign language 😉

    Good luck!

  14. we hide lots of stuff and she cant even get to it yet … just gettin prepared!

  15. Amanda Cowan says

    Forget hiding stuff from the kids! I gotta hide it from my husband! A bag of oreos last me a month but if my husband sniffs them out they’re gone in two days! When I was a kid, my folks were both in law enforcement. So they used their whole “alpha bravo” spelling in front of us. Worked until my dad unwittingly taught it to me.. boy was my mom mad! My kids are still young enough that spelling works just fine.. hehe

  16. I totally do hide snacks – cheese crackers, chocolate and Coke. And momo fali, I knew a couple who spoke in morse code…

  17. Definitely have to hide the goodies from my husband. Our fridge so full of junk that I hid a root beer in there last week.

  18. When I was a kid, we (kids and mom) used to hide food from my dad because he wouldn’t just have a cookie or two, he’d finish them. So we hid cookies, crackers, peanut butter, chips, all kinds of stuff. We hid them in the pan cupboard since my dad didn’t cook and it was right next to the fridge… that way we could open the fridge for cover when he was in the family room and get our secret hiding food out of the cupboard and he’d be none the wiser. : )

  19. Amelia Sprout says

    What kind of kids show teaches them to spell cookie? Really? That just isn’t fair at all.

    When I was 19 I finally found my mom’s oreo stash. She hid it good.

  20. I don’t have kids, does it count that I have to spell around my dog? Seriously. In a previous life my dog was beaten when it was brushed. When I worked with him, he began to earn a super yummy treat that he only got during a brushing. Now when I even say the word “brush” unrelated to the dog needing a “brushing” both words send my dog into a happy jumping “I’m going to earn treats!!” dance. So now I have to spell the word around my canine genius.

  21. uh, eedway?