Watching his mouth

My son tends to get stuck on certain phrases and repeat them over and over. Most of the time they're just mildly annoying; lately variations on "I'm old," with "ooold" getting a stretched out rolling sort of sound, have fallen firmly into this category, and "I'm not in the mood" was around for a long while but is now phasing out. Every now and then, though, he gets stuck on something that's not so okay to say -- never a bad word, thankfully, but something like, "I'm going to pound you! Are you going to pound me?" Last night, when we went to pick up a new pair of glasses for him (never having found the lost ones), he came out with "Don't lose these or I'll beat you!" The words "I'll beat you!" were heard any number of times during our visit to the optometrist, and I can't honestly say whether folks were looking at us with concern because I was so busy trying to get him to stop saying that, or to explain to all and sundry that it was his invisible friend Scooby who was threatening to beat him, and not his gentle loving Mom and Dad. He hasn't said anything like that since we left the eye doctor, so I have hopes "I'll beat you!" isn't going into heavy repetitive rotation. Getting ooold doesn't seem so bad compared to that.