My son is nothing if not polite. (He’s not potty trained either, but I’m waiting for his kindergarten teacher to do that in a couple years, no worries.) He always asks “Can I be excused?” at mealtimes, “Can I play on the computer?” during the day, and “Can I play outside?” should it be a nice day, or rainy day, or snowy day, or basically if he’s awake.  He likes outside.

Last week, in sacrament meeting, he turned to us and said “Can I cry?”   DH and I looked at each other.  I thought,”Well, given the option…” and we shrugged and said “No.”  He went back to his regularly scheduled disruption of all people sitting around us.

I began to picture his therapy “My parents taught me at an early age that crying was not OK.  I’ve never cried since.  All emotions are repressed, and THAT’S why I’m now a serial killer who chops up bodies and serves them in BBQ sandwiches. It’s all their fault.”

At which point the therapist would nod wisely, and my husband and I would be serving life sentences for ‘murder by bad parenting,’ a crime which currently does not exist, but it very well may by the time my son is an adult.

So when he turned to me about 20 minutes later and asked again “Can I cry?”  I saw redemption offered and said ‘yes.’ He desperately tried to squeeze out a few tears and whimpered a little.  It was soon replaced with “Can I go get a drink of water?” 

The next night, he was saying the prayer over the food, which normally consists of “Father in Heaven, please excuse, amen.”  We have been working to get him to say “Bless the food” and “In the name of Jesus Christ”.  So he said the prayer, which consisted of “Father in Heaven, please excuse, bless food, name of Jesus Christ…”then he stopped. 

“Can I say amen?” 

We whispered to him, “yes…say amen.” 

Later he came running up to us…”Can I be careful?”

“Yes, by all means, be careful…always.”

“Can I go potty?”

“YES!  Absolutely!  GO!”

“Can I get a diaper? Babies wear underwear. I wear diaper.”

Sigh….

But my personal favorite is still the “can I cry?”  Yes, my kid is stinkin’ cute, and I don’t care who knows it.