I grew up in a house where the word crap was punishable by a slap across the face.
My father was a teacher and so was very conscious of never using profanity lest it escape during a class. My mother secretly swore at her sewing machine, but never within earshot of me or my sister.
So it has come as a bit of a surprise to me that even though I work with young children and have always been careful of my vocabulary, my own offspring tend to have quite the potty mouths!
This realization came about a few months ago, and as I think back has been building for about a year or so. My kids aren’t little, they’re both in their teens and we’ve let them watch PG13 since they were 5, so I really shouldn’t be surprised by their choice of words.
Our road trips with our kids are littered with profanity, from them and us! Dinner at our house can make you lose your appetite at times, with a 13 year old boy it does anyway.
It’s funny though, by removing the taboo of swearing I’m not constantly yelling at them! I will occasionally remind them to tone it down but really our family is so much more comfortable together now. My hubby and I can swear at the hockey game and not worry if the kids heard us. We did do the talk when they were little, mine went like this “people use swear words because they Aren’t creative enough to think of anything better to say”. Thus my children didn’t swear because they didn’t want anyone to think they weren’t creative. Totally worked til they were 12!
But now we are a raucous, rowdy bunch honest to the point of rude at times but only with each other. We use our good manners with company!
1 Comment
I had a slavic Grandmother. She swore like a trucker in Serbian and my poor mother was always trying to make up meanings for what came out of the old girl’s mouth. I caught her in it when the same expletive was translated for me as the third different innocuous thing in a week. Finally my mother told me what it meant.
Damn those Slovaks had some nasty sayings about what you could do with your Uncle and his goat – sideways.