Learning New Words

I trust my husband to check movie reviews carefully before we let Lauren and Jonah watch a movie with him, and usually he does a great job. So, when we sat down with all three kids to watch Land of the Lost, I ignored the niggling sense of misgiving I felt as I seemed to recall hearing that this movie wasn't entirely family friendly.
Funny? Certainly. But it had its fair share of Will Ferrell crudeness. We all laughed, I'm not going to lie, but I felt a twinge of discomfort. I was reassured, though, thinking that most of the raunchy jokes passed far above Jared's head--and probably Jonah's too. I figured Jared was just interested in it for the dinosaurs. It didn't even cross my mind that he would pick up anything else.
Then a few hours later, he climbed onto the couch next to me and turned to face me seriously. "Mom," he said with a little furrow between his eyebrows, "we don't say 'What the hell?' do we?" What the ----?? How could he have picked up on that? But I swallowed my disbelief long enough to nod back just as seriously and remind him of the other words we do not say. Jared solemnly told me that we don't say stupid or fat or shut up or coconut-head (which is, of course, his favorite). Now he's added a new phrase.
Guess we're going to have to be a lot more serious in our censoring now. And really, we haven't let him watch anything he shouldn't. It just surprised me deeply that he figured out the phrase and--even more surprising--realized it was something he shouldn't say. What a kid.