Children are brutally honest, my mother says. And she’s right, especially on the brutal part.

How do you teach them, then, that sometimes it’s better just to keep their thoughts to themselves even if they don’t think what they are saying is mean? Can you teach a 4-year-old what’s rude and what’s not?

A few times lately I’ve wished I could have somehow caught my son’s words just before they spilled out for everyone to hear. A few times I’ve had to resist the urge to slap my hand over Guillermo’s mouth to muffle anything else from coming out of it.

For example, last week Guillermo and my mother were sitting at a table at a restaurant (while I was changing my daughter’s diaper in the bathroom) when an older, heavyset waitress shuffled around the corner and headed to our table, balancing the food on a tray.

“Why her waddle like a penguin?” Guillermo asked my mother, just a bit too loudly.

Surprised, embarrassed and not sure what to say, my mother ignored him, but that, of course, just encouraged him.

“Her waddle like a penguin,” he repeated. “Her waddle like a penguin. Her waddle like a penguin.” My mother finally cut him off by announcing, “Look, our sandwiches are here.” My mother is slightly hopeful that the waitress didn’t hear.

Another time, Guillermo and I were swimming when a chunky boy, probably 8 or 9, climbed up a nearby ladder and exited the pool.

“He’s a bully, you know?” Guillermo told me.

My heart sank. The poor kid must have heard Guillermo. I made the situation worse when I insisted the boy surely wasn’t a bully and we didn’t even know him. “Yes, he is. He’s a bully,” Guillermo said.

Without asking, I knew why Guillermo thought that. In a children’s book we had just read, the bully was bigger and bulkier than the rest of the kids and sadly, I think this is a consistent stereotype in many books and programming for kids.

After that incident, I quietly explained that it’s not nice to call people bullies, or any names for that matter, and though Guillermo insisted that boy was a bully, he didn’t say it again for the rest of the day.

Several times when we’ve walked past people smoking cigarettes, Guillermo has declared loudly that smoking is bad, though I admit in those instances, I don’t ask him to lower his voice.

When I asked my mother for advice on how to stop my kids from saying such embarrassing, or sometimes painful, things she didn’t have much to say, but she reminded me of an infamous family story about my sister when she was younger.

She and my mother were shopping when my sister loudly asked why the saleswoman’s teeth were yellow. At the time, my mother had no answer either.

So, what are some embarrassing things your children have said in public and how did you handle them?

Natalie appears every Sunday on TriangleMom2Mom. Read more about Natalie at her blog A Day at the Park.