We never know what is the next word that the child is going to pick up from the TV. That day, we were watching TV together, but she wasn’t really paying attention to the movie, but when someone in the show mentioned the word “sex”, she immediately captured the word and got it registered. And then she went “sex, sex, sex”. Of the hundreds and thousands of different sounds and words projected from the speaker, that is the only word she learnt that night.

And then on many other days, I have been too careless and exclaimed “Oh shit!” when my character got slained by some nasty virtual mobs. She must have heard me loud and clear, probably noticed my upset expression and decided that it would be nice to repeat after me. That’s how she learnt “Oh shit!” from her mother. We tried our best to refrain from that exclamation when the kid is around. We also try to teach her to say “oh no” instead of “oh shit”. Yeah, she is rather cooperative. Nowadays, she would say, “Oh shit! No ‘oh shit’, oh no!”

Children pick up actions from people around them or from TV too. I was dumbfounded one day when I saw her standing beside the wall, one hand holding on the wall, right leg balancing herself, and lifted her left leg up. Then she said “shhhh shhhh shhh”. Oh man, of all things nice and sweet, she decided to imitate the doggie urinating.

Most of the time, I couldn’t help but want to have a good laugh when I hear or see those expressions and funny actions coming out of her. I find them extremely amusing, although I see them as undesirable. Controlling my laughter is probably as difficult as getting Yauyau to unlearn them. So now, we have to be mindful of our language, our action, our behaviour, and it can get kind of tiring trying hard to set a good example.