In retrospect, maybe my previously judgmental attitude regarding the type of parents who would allow their children to swear wasn’t entirely my fault.
I grew up in an extremely religious home in which swearing was equated with blasphemy. Since my dad was a Protestant preacher, my siblings and I were expected to epitomize the ideal offspring of such a respectable individual. We could never consider doing anything to cause my father to lose face in the community. As such, there were many things in my childhood that were forbidden to us, chief among the remarkably lengthy list was the use of profanity; the use of which would cause my mother to locate and then apply the bar of lye soap which had been set aside for the specified purpose of cleansing offending mouths of the filth that had emerged.
Since I was the oldest child, and therefore a cross between a guinea pig and a trained circus monkey, this meant that my mouth was cleaned of filth with greater frequency than that of my siblings. This method of operant conditioning, similar to B.F. Skinner’s famous work on rats, resulted in a marked lack of profane speech in me, as well as a faux-superior mentality that good parenting resulted in children whose mouths were free of more colourful language.
This false hypothesis was realized several years later when I had children of my own.
Karma is…well, you know.
One day when I went to pick up my 4 year-old son from Sunday School, I was met with an irate teacher. Apparently, when the little children were asked what their parents said to them when they helped around the house, instead of parroting the other parent’s words of “thank you,” or “you are my big helper,” my son loudly chirped, “F-cking door!” He then proceeded to turn that phrase into a boisterous, rhythmic chant to which he then added dance moves, rocking those lyrics with all of the energy contained in that frenetic little body as the other children decided to join in with the new dance craze.
Despite my attempts to tell the teacher that my son had learned that phrase from his dad during a particularly unfruitful door building exercise–and not from me since I did not allow my children to swear– the damage had been done. Other little children had been tainted by the filth from my profane, but now extremely popular, child.
This was not well received by any of the parents of the other children or the involved church staff. At all.
If this had been an isolated incident, it might have smoothed over quickly. Unfortunately, it was not. There were apparently many choice phrases spoken by my dear spouse which my son latched onto with unexpected acuity and even more unfortunate clarity of repeated speech. His repertoire of profanity soon grew to include a wide variety of swear words, some of which were strung together with unique and creative (at least I thought!) combinations, all of which were then shared with great delight with his peers at church.
Although a large portion of my mom-self cringed at the words spewing forth from my adorable little son’s mouth, a surprisingly large portion was impressed with my son’s innovative use of some four-letter words as coordinating conjunctions in already rather colourfully descriptive sentences.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, he was soon asked to not attend Sunday School until he learned to not swear around the other children.
So I have now learned that parenting is far more complicated than I had previously realized, and that little children will parrot back what they hear at home with great precision. The most important lesson that I learned is that even the best intentioned parents will have children who act or speak in a manner inconsistent with how they are raised.
So yes, I am now locally known, for all perpetuity, as the mom of the little kid who swears in church.
As such, I deeply apologize to any parent out there whom I had previously judged. I was completely and utterly wrong in my supposition, and humbly beg your forgiveness.
Now off to grab a bar of soap and find my husband…
Marybeth Mitcham holds a BS in Biology, is completing her MPH in nutrition, and currently works as a tutor for Liberty University’s Online Writing Center. In addition to being a regular contributor to The Mighty website, she is a freelance author whose writings have been published online, in Celebrate Life Magazine, and in several anthologies. Marybeth lives with her family in the Southern Adirondack region of New York, where she can often be found hiking mountains, riding motorcycles, or hovering near the woodstove in her spare time.