You would think having 10+ years of parenting experience under my belt I would know better than to say stuff I don’t want repeated at inappropriate times. Or that having said amount of years experience, that it would lead me to at least lessen the ways for my children to embarrass me in public. Not so.

Here are some examples:

After hearing me tell Phil that the chick who smashed my car and did a runner was giving me death stares and was a "loop", Sam asked her the next day on the way into school: “Are you out of the lunatic asylum?”

Today, I purchased a pack of 4 tennis balls for Jack. “I can’t wait to show Sam my big balls” Jack bellowed in the Reject shops corridor.

Sam, after hearing his father had a vasectomy, walked up to him mid-conversation at a BBQ about a week later, in front of our friends, and said “So, Dad, how are your nuts?”

In the ABC shop today, Jack started saying, “Ow, Ow”. I asked him what was wrong (sitting in his stroller). Jack: “My doodle is just too big mummy”. You need to understand, none of this is whispered.

My daughter apparently told her teacher, when questioned, that her parents wouldn’t be attending the religious assemblies because they aren’t “Jeezos”. Shit.

What about the time Maddie decided to tell her facebook community that she was Booooorrrreedd and her mother couldn’t take her to Zumba because she had “had too much alcohol last night”.

What about when Jack used to substitute the Tr in Truck with a F? When he would crack it in Kmart and yell “But I want a big fuck mummy!” Run Mystery Mum, don’t walk, Run.

Or Sam, telling off the orthopaedic doctors when checking his brothers broken arms “Geez Doc, don’t give him a Chinese Burn, he’s already got broken arms”.

Today I took a trip to Pacific Fair with Jack the 3yo demon. He was actually fairly contained, quite good. Oh except for when he “accidently” dropped his iced chocolate and it exploded like an A-bomb inside the coffee shop. His immediate declaration of “Awww bloody hell, Stupid aciddent”.

The thing is, sometimes, we just forget that they are the absorbent sponges they are.

Today Sam, who is nearly 8, asked me what I would do if he couldn’t remember his reading words tonight for homework. I said, "Um, well, nothing; we’ll just keep reading them, til you get them". He visibly wiped his brow. I looked at him in the rear view mirror and asked “Why do you ask mate?” Sam replied

“Oh, it’s just that Dad said he’d use the phonebook if I didn’t concentrate tonight”. What? Is my husband’s last name Soprano all of a sudden? I rang my husband in somewhat of a pissed off state.

“Did you tell Sam he would be whacked with a telephone book because he was having trouble reading?”

Phil: “What? No, no, we were playing last night before bed, Mafioso. It was his game!!!! And I said I would arrest him and he would be meeting my friend the telephone book, if he didn’t co-operate”. Right.

Imagine if he of gone to school and told his teacher his dad was going to “telephone book” him. Hello DOCS.

What about the time my 7yo daughter (at the time) was telling her teacher she stayed with her dad each weekend and her mother during the week and even wrote her school journal accordingly? All of this, even though we’ve never even been out of the same house for one night, let alone separated? Where in the fuck did that come from?

So what have we learned?

I've learned if we want to whinge, bitch, scratch nuts, say the word fuck, threaten anyone mafia style or speak about delicate genital operations, we do it out of earshot of the little people. Or gag em.