If you brought a child to a toy store, would you expect the child to simply look around or start grabbing things off the shelves and playing with them?

In today’s story, one toy store employee shares what happened when a little boy and his hippie mother entered the store. The little boy wasn’t doing anything unusual, but the mother’s reaction was truly unique!

Let’s see what happened.

I refuse to say ‘no’ to my child so I’ll use ‘octopus’

A few years ago, I worked at a toy store. It’s in area where conservative meets alternative so it’s a mishmash of parenting styles and behaviours from the kids.

One interaction that stuck in my mind was a mother who looked like she rubbed a magical bong three times, and wished for the Greenie Genie to teleport her and her beatnik-looking kid from Woodstock ’69 to the 21st century.

Within 2 seconds of entering, the kid flies to the front counter where keep all of the dollar-toys. Stamps, rubber balls, fidget spinners, slinkies, those kinds of toys.

He starts pulling out a pair of wooden aeroplanes from the shelf and begins a pretend dogfight.

The mom was upset but handled the situation in a weird way.

The mother flips out and I can tell she wants to take the toys off him but is restraining herself.

Instead she just says “Octopus! Octopus!” over and over again. It sounded like a command.

At first I assumed she named her kid Octopus, she was ‘alternative’ after all.

However, after she then said the name ‘Snoopy’ (not real name), I realised the kids name was not Octopus but we also didn’t stock any aquatic animal toys where Snoopy was playing.

The mother explains why she’s upset.

The mother notices me watching from behind the register and she looks at me apologetically.

Octomum: “I’m sorry, he keeps touching the toys when I told him he could look around only.”

I wasn’t mad, kids are kids and plenty of them go nuts when they enter a toy store.

Me: “Oh…was he looking for an octopus toy?”

The mother explained why she was saying octopus.

Snoopy stops playing, just looks up at me and the mother quickly hushes me and gets real close.

Octomum: “I’m trying to raise my boy with positive words. The real word is so negative so I’m substituting it for octopus.”

Me: “What real word?”

She lowers her voice to a whisper. She is panicking that her answer might be overheard and undo 5 years of parenting and transform her son into a rebel that protects the Establishment.

She won’t even say the word outloud.

Octomum: “Fourteenth letter followed by fifteenth letter”

It took me a bit to realise ‘octopus’ was used instead of ‘no’.

This kid is going to have a weird time at the marine section in the zoo.

That is so weird. Basically, the mom is reassigning the meaning of the word “no” to another word, but it still has the same meaning. “No” isn’t a bad word. Sometimes it’s essential in parenting.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

Yes, this is exactly what the mom is doing.

This person has some good questions.

A daycare worker couldn’t say “no” either.

I hope this person really does this! It’d be hilarious!

Another parent weighs in.

“No” is not a bad word.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a rude customer who got exactly what they wanted in their pizza.