Parenting Police Language

Parenting Police Language
Written by Stephen Altrogge

Parents and police have a lot in common. Both have to contend with individuals who do strange and random things. Both see the value in donuts (I’m sure the donut thing is a police stereotype, but work with me). Both are skilled in the art of negotiating.

But the police have one distinct advantage over parents: lots of code words. When something big “goes down” (that’s police lingo for “happens”), a police man can grab his radio and scream something like, “We’ve got a 115 in progress. We need back up immediately!” The police can communicate a lot of important information to each other through a simple number system.

As far as I know, unless someone has really been holding out on me, we parents don’t have any sort of universal code language for communicating with each other. The other night, Jen was giving our girls a bath when I suddenly heard her saying, “Oh no! Charis, stand up, quick!” Then lots of screaming and laughing. Now, because of past experience, I knew right away what had happened: Ella, our adorable one year old, had pooped in the tub. I quickly ran in to the bathroom and was able to lend my assistance.

But what if this had been my first encounter with poop in the tub? I wouldn’t have known what what was happening, and I wouldn’t have known what to do, and I might have frozen with terror and panic. Things could have gotten real bad. Real fast. That’s why I’m proposing that we, as parents, create a universal number system to be used in parenting.

For example, a 503 would be code for “Turd in the tub, send backup.” A 115 would be code for, “Empty juice cup, potentially volatile child”. A 111 would be code for, “Domestic disturbance, stuffed monkey involved”. A 914 would be code for, “Child armed with permanent marker, proceed with caution”.

Do you see how useful this would be? This simple number system could literally revolutionize parenting!

So what do you think? Am I on to something?