Bless My Little Heart

2.5 Years: “Awww, I hurt my poor little knee. Bless my little heart.”

I’ll embarrass myself for a moment by confessing that I was steeped in “bless your heart” as much as I was steeped in sweet tea. It was such a ubiquitous part of the language of my region that it never occurred to me until I was in my mid-twenties that the phrase wasn’t used nationwide. Someone’s heart was always being blessed when (and where) I was growing up, and, although I’ve heard many people from outside the area say that it’s always an insult, it’s really not.

As far as I can see, there are three main reasons to bless someone’s heart. The most common and famous, of course, is to excuse a vicious insult. I’m not above the time-honored habit of saying something unflattering about a friend or relative, then following the remark with, “Bless his heart,” to make it okay. It makes sense from my perspective: once you’ve blessed someone’s heart, you’ve shown that you care, and that you’re sympathetic, and that anything you said just an expression of concern rather than an attack on the person’s character.

The other motivation behind “bless your heart” is to let someone know that he’s making a fool of himself without flatly saying as much. I still recall a bachelorette party where I was loudly singing along to Elton John after having a few too many fuzzy navels, and didn’t realize how much I was humiliating myself until a friend leaned close to me and whispered, “Bless your heart.” Yes, ma’am. I’ll be quiet, then. Thank you for letting me know. This use of “Bless your heart” is especially useful for telling flirtatious men and drunk chatters that they need to pipe down to avoid any further embarrassment.

Although the other two uses are probably better-known, I’m more likely to hear and use the old phrase as a genuine expression of sympathy, especially toward someone who is weak or small, like a child or animal. If a friend’s kid is sick, well, bless her little heart. I hope she feels better. If a baby is born prematurely, bless his heart. I’ll make sure to give his parents a call. If someone’s dog was hit by a car, well, bless that poor puppy’s heart. He was a good dog. To me, “Bless your heart,” is just what you say to, or about, someone whose heart needs blessing.

I’m sure that these unintentional displays of my roots are why my daughter quickly learned to bless her own heart when she was hurt or sick. For years, every slip, trip, stumble, and scratch was followed by the declaration, “Bless my little heart!”-- often followed with, “It’ll be alright, sweetie. It’s okay,” or “Shhhh, Cuddle Bean, it’s okay!”

Parenting books frequently talk about self-soothing—often critically, since it’s the driving philosophy behind controversial parenting techniques like the Ferber method. But, in my experience, there’s no need to teach kids to self-soothe. You just need to let them spend enough time around Southern women to learn how to bless their own hearts in a moment of crisis. It’s the simplest and most effective self-soothing method I know of.

See-These

2.5 Years: “These are called See-These, but you can’t see these because they might get scratched.”

Back in the Dark Ages, when listening to music—at least for me—still meant popping a disk into a circa 1999 CD player, my folder full of disks was a constant source of fascination to my daughter. What were those mysterious instruments of sorcery, and how on Earth did they work? Why were they so shiny? Were they as fragile as they looked? What would happen if you put one in the player upside down? What did all the pictures and letters on them mean? And, perhaps the greatest mystery of all: why were they called See These, if an inquisitive toddler wasn’t supposed to take them out to examine them?

Potty Mouth

2.5 Years: “Shhhhhiii… Darnit! This is some effing bee ess, this is!

I have a potty mouth. I always have. I probably always will. There was a time, in my earlier days as a mom, when I actually thought that this was an unforgivable flaw, and that cursing in front of my kid was an act tantamount to child abuse. But, after over a decade of swearing like a sailor, simply weeding these naughty words out of my vocabulary didn’t work so well. What was I supposed to say instead?

For those of us who say the F-word as freely as “the,” self-censorship becomes a constant game of self-correcting and substitution. Someone who has cursed for decades can’t just not say something when she stubs her toe, so, instead, she has to turn to euphemisms to fill that empty space. In theory, it’s better for kids than hearing parents loudly yell a string of four-letter-words. The only problem comes when they start repeating the euphemisms, and when everyone knows what they actually represent.