La Vida Loca De Flores

I'd like to take some time to thank the makers of Hot Cheetos, Red Hot, Hot Tamales, and all other hot, spicy, burning, flamin' snacks for rendering one of my greatest tools of child rearing essentially useless!

When Sierra was little, even mild nacho cheese would send her running to the kitchen scrambling for a drink. So when, at the ripe age of 2, she began cussing like a sailor and screaming bloody murder each time she would not get her way, I discovered what we in our family now call "hot peppers." Each time she would cuss or scream, I would tell her that is not allowed and give her a small swipe of "hot peppers" on her tongue (which is actually just regular tabasco sauce dressed in this cute little crocheted Mexican outfit). This of course was not something she liked, so very quickly she stopped cussing and screaming. Mr. Hot Peppers has moved with us for the last 16 years and has always found his home in a prominent location in the kitchen, so that if the kids saw me stretching towards him, they would promptly stop whatever "mouthy" behavior they were doing (and more times than not, cover their mouth and run away!). The funny thing is that they have each probably only actually tasted the stuff once or twice and just the mere motion towards the little man on the shelf was enough to stop them in their tracks! So this "behavior modification tool" has been utilized for bad words, mean words, talking back, and even lying with an effective result until recent years.

Unfortunately, the current food trend of "hot" everything has made the threat of putting something hot in my child's mouth in order to stop a certain behavior MUCH less of a deterrent than it used to be. Sierra now puts Red Hot on just about everything she eats and her favorite snack is "Flamin' Hot Cheetos" (which are supposedly twice as hot as regular Hot Cheetos). Blaze and Jett also love Hot Cheetos and a few items with Red Hot, and they both love my salsa which I usually make pretty hot because I like it that way too. So I had virtually phased out the hot peppers treatment.

However, my little Kolt (as do most second, third, fourth, and so on children) has picked up all of the not-so-nice things the older kids say. Lately, he is very fond of saying things like "I don't like you" "Stupid" and my personal (anti)fav "You poopoo!" whenever someone does something that he doesn't like.

So this morning as we are getting ready for school, Jett and Kolt are in their bedroom and, obviously believing that I was not within earshot, Kolt spouts off to Jett "You stupid!" I quickly respond, "Kolt, if you say anything like that to your brother again, you will be getting the hot peppers!" To which he responds...."Yummy Yummy!"

Looks like it's time to retire Mr. Hot Peppers....maybe I'll have to switch to soap!