"Chloe Hit Me"

As most of you know, Mitch has been in speech therapy now for 7 months. 7 months ago, we were struggling to get him to sign "more" and "please" and do anything but grunt and point. He progressed all summer in both signing and speech and this Fall he was really starting to take off. Now in just in the last month or two, his speech has exploded and he's talking in 3, 4 and even 5 word sentences like it's never been a problem.

Of course, Ben and I are thrilled with this. I know all parents always think in situations like this, "Man, I don't know why we ever wanted him to start talking- now we can't get him to be quiet!" For the most part, that is NOT true for us- we love that he can finally tell us what he wants and needs, tell us what he's thinking and feels and can say the funniest one liners that keep us laughing.

But..... there is always at least one exception to the rule. The exception in our case is that Mitchell has a favorite phrase: "Chloe hit me." Mitchell says this probably between 15-20 times a day, give or take. And those of you who know Chloe know that she doesn't really hit- if she's going to pick on you, it's going to be by screaming, yelling or bossing you around. The first few days that he started saying this all the time, it was kind of cute and funny. We were thrilled that he had come up with a new sentence and the way he said it and his body language indicated that he fully expected that Chloe would get in trouble, like he does when HE hits or misbehaves. Not good, but funny just the same.

After a few days, "Chloe hit me" was not funny anymore, not cute, but annoying. Chloe wouldn't even be in the room and he'd run up to tell me "Chloe hit me." And after a week or so of crying wolf with this exhausted phrase, it started to change into "Leah hit me," and "Papa hit me."

Even though it is getting annoying, he has cooled off saying it a bit, and it really wasn't that big of a deal- we started ignoring him when he said it and it wasn't really hurting anyone.

Well, that changed this week. Mitchell goes to a therapy playgroup twice a week with a good friend. The friend's mom comes and picks Mitchell up and takes them both to playgroup. After dropping off Mitchell yesterday after playgroup, my friend tells me, "Mitchell keeps going up to the teacher and says something like 'Mom hit me' and 'Dad hit me.' We're pretty sure he's saying 'Mom HELP me', but it kind of sounds like hit. But it's Help, right?" I was already shaking my head when she first started the story and sadly had to tell her that no, he wasn't saying Help, but that unfortunately he really was saying "Hit" like they thought it sounded most like.

The annoying little phrase heard around our house has now spread to Mitchell telling his teachers that Ben and I hit him. Awesome. So if we get a visit from CPS soon and they take Mitchell away from us, this is my version of the story. You heard it here first. I want to blame this on speech therapy, but if he hadn't learned to say it, he probably would have learned to grunt it or sign it all on his own instead. And if the judge asks us for our side of the story, I think I'm just going to look at him sadly and say, "Chloe hit me."