Mind what you say!

Never is it more important to choose your words carefully than when you are addressing a child. I'll give you a very good example.

There are times to act the mature adult, the knowledgeable father and there are times when it's ok to act less grown up. I have to admit acting childishly for a greater percentage of the time but hey, that's how I like it and, I believe, so do Joseph and Annabel.

Anyway, while in Greece, we had to wait for a maintenance chap to sort out the blocked bath drain. J was messing about and so I told him that the guys fixing the plug hole had a box of tools containing a pair of "pecker snippers" for whipping off the peckers of little boys that were misbehaving and ran towards him with two fingers imitating a pair of scissors. He screamed and laughed at the same time but over the next 10 minutes or so, I had to ask J several times if he wanted to go to the toilet as he was standing there holding his hand over his bits and pieces. "No" was the answer each time.

Finally the two guys attempting to fix the bath drain (dumb and dumber), announced they had fixed the problem (they hadn't by the way) and J screamed out, "Daddy" and threw himself on the bed face down.

I thanked the guys for their efforts and upon closing the door, J got up and finally relaxed his grip on his nether region. When I asked him what was wrong, he reminded me that as he was being naughty, the guys with the pecker snippers wouldn't be able to cut off his pecker if he had a hand over it!!

"You thought they were going to cut off your pecker?" I asked, half laughing, half ashamed of my threat, albeit a joke.

"Yes", he laughed, realising I was never being serious!!

It was one of those, 'can't get close enough for a big hug' type moments.

Be careful what you say to a child. Their amazing minds and imaginations are capable of visualising just about anything.

Even pecker snips!