Well, at least she got the point in the end. During a recent episode of Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s Bless Your Hardt podcast which he does with his wife, Amy, she told a hilarious story about their youngest daughter, Nicole, and how she’s started to say some cuss words here and there.
And recently, she dropped a new one out of nowhere, while Amy was at home with the girls eating dinner:
“We had another cuss word from Nicole. She had just done a really good job eating dinner, like eating dinner is an Olympic sport. How many bites how, how many numbers of bites, they’re always asking. I’m like, just eat.
They smash dinner, she’s got like three sweet potato tots left on her plate then they were going to get some ice cream. Yes, I bribe the kids with ice cream, there’s no shame in that. She gets close to the end, and she looks over at Isla and she goes, ‘What the hell?’ Just without any reason.”
Granted, I don’t know if “hell” is really a cuss word per se, but you probably don’t want your 5-year-old saying “what the hell” on the regular. Of course, Dale started busting out in laughter, dropping his own cuss word in the process:
“Holy s***.”
I mean, it’s not too hard to imagine where they get it…
Amy continued, saying she needed to come up with a creative punishment:
“I just look up, and I’m like, ‘What what did you just say?’ She goes, ‘I mean…’ I was like, ‘You know what you said. Why did you do that? You know we don’t talk like that.’ And I’m trying to go through the whole thing calmly, trying to get her to tell me something. And Isla didn’t even hear it. She’s like, ‘What did she say?’ I’m like, ‘I’m not going to repeat it for her.
And I was like, ‘No ice cream, you don’t get ice cream anymore.’ She got really upset, she’s like, ‘No, I’m sorry, I want ice cream.’ I was like, ‘Nope, no ice cream.’ And we sat there for a few more minutes, she’s fighting urges to eat those last three tater tots, and I thought about it. I’m like, I gotta punish her somehow for this so that she knows she can’t do it.
So I tell her she can earn back the ice cream, but she has to do a chore. And she’s like, ‘Okay,’ and she kinda lights up. The kid likes to clean. She has her own little vacuum, she likes to wipe things down.”
So she came up with a very creative solution… making Nicole eat a spoonful of honey:
“So I Google chores for kids, and they’re all cleaning things like that. I’m like, that’s not gonna work for her. That’s gonna make her feel validated, like she can’t do any of those chores. So I’m gonna do something that’s gonna gross her.
I told her she had to eat a spoonful of honey to earn the ice cream back, because the texture, that makes her wanna gag. The purpose was to piss her off, or make her understand.”
Of course, as you can imagine if you have any little girls in your life, it came with a ton of dramatics, and Amy was afraid Nicole was going to throw up at one point:
“I put a good dollop of honey on a tiny little kid spoon, and Isla’s dying laughing because she’s like, this is gonna be awesome. So we’re sitting in the kitchen floor, she’s like on her knees, trying to talk herself into doing this. I was like, ‘Just turn it up and lick it.’ And she starts to gag herself…
She finally gets the courage to just stick her finger in there and take a bite, and she goes, ‘Ew, this is disgusting.’ I was like, ‘You gotta eat whole thing.’ She was like, ‘I don’t want it.’ I was like, ‘Well then you don’t get any ice cream.’ She goes, ‘I want the ice cream.’ I was like, ‘Well then you have to eat the honey. This is for that cuss word, remember? This isn’t really about the ice cream.’
So eventually, she takes a lick of it then truly starts to gag, like, I thought she was gonna vomit. So I take the spoon from her and she goes, ‘I won’t do it again.’ I was like, ‘The next time it’s gonna be mayonnaise, kid.'”
It’s not a typical punishment by any means, but it sounds like Amy had her daughter regretting that word slip, and Dale Jr. responded that he didn’t know “what they were going to do,” adding that he was “heartbroken” about her doing that:
“What are we going to do? I am heartbroken about her…”
Amy jumped in to clarify that she simply did it for attention:
“She did it for attention. There was no context, no conversation happening.”
But just like a typical dad, Jr. explained that it wasn’t the cussing he was talking about… it was the fact that his daughter doesn’t like condiments. Such a dad thing to say, honestly:
“I’m heartbroken about the condiment issue.”
I feel like she’s never going to want to eat any condiments again after that. Lesson learned, I guess…
You can watch the full video here, it’s pretty funny:
