One or Uno Doesn’t Matter… She’s Bi-lingual

When the Big One has pushed me to the limits, I give her a three count to knock off whatever the offending behavior is. She knows that when she hears me say, “One” that it’s time to cut to the chase and close her mouth.

Usually the counting begins when she has been whining or crying about something for too long. She also knows that on the rare occasion that I get to “three” that she will get spanked on the bottom.

Typically what happens is, I begin the counting and before I even get to “two” she is screaming “NO!, I wanna sit down” and trying desperately to sit down on her bottom. In her two-year-old brain, if she is sitting, then I cannot reach her butt and therefore she won’t get spanked.

No this tactic doesn’t work, I manage to get her butt if necessary.

So anyway, when I count to three, I always do it in English because that is the language we speak! She has heard Jason or I count in Spanish, sometimes we play around and try to teach her a few Spanish words. She also watches Dora on occasion, so she has certainly heard people counting in Spanish.

So we were at Mervyn’s the other day when a little boy was getting in trouble. His mother had repeatedly called his name and beckoned him to get over to where she was. Ignoring his mother, the little boy continued to run off. Meanwhile, Allison was a little whiney because she wanted a particular Dora bathing suit and I was on the fence about it.

I had asked the Big One to please stop whining and let me think about it. She was semi-compliant. So back to the aforementioned little boy, his mother had gotten annoyed enough to finally being the “counting.”

All the sudden we hear, “UNO… DOS….” I honestly don’t know how far she got in her counting because I was too busy laughing in hysterics at the Big One.

As soon as she heard the countdown, albeit in Spanish, she started screaming, “NO! I wanna sit down!” It was classic…. I suppose the “One…. Two…. Three” tactic of discipline is universal!!