In my last post, I mentioned a new term I learned (Man words) to refer to profanity. Profanity is a regular topic of conversation in my house since my four year old daughter wants to expand her vocabulary and gobbles up new words and reuses them as soon as possible. And since I have a terrible potty mouth, I’m trying to curb my profane ways. Potty mouth, by the way, is a term I learned in parenting classes. Yes, I actually took classes since I have no natural skills. My potty mouth proves it on a regular basis.
So my daughter and I are sitting at the kitchen table playing Uno, a card game. She can’t decide which card to play and she uses my most often-used four letter word. She says it under her breath and slurs it. Imagine a funky accent from Australia and you get the idea. My mind doesn’t grasp what monumental moment just occurred. My attention-starved daughter was probably disappointed I didn’t congratulate her on her once-again in-context correct word usage. So she says it again, louder, without the funky accent. I heard it this time as if it were yelled in my ears at top volume. But I’m calm, since I’ve had parenting classes.
I ask her to repeat the word. She does, happy now to be recognized. There is no point asking her where she heard it. I inform her she isn’t allowed to use this particular word. She frowns and asks why. I let her know the school will call me and I’ll have to pick her up and won’t she miss her friends, all over saying the wrong word. So I brainstorm with her for inoffensive words to use in its place: shoot, darn, drat. You get the idea.
My husband comes home after work and he and I discuss other possible words we could suggest that wouldn’t get her sent home from school. He decides “dog licker” is an acceptable term to use for frustration or anger in the moment, without being offensive. I must say, I disagreed. However, it wasn’t covered in class so what do you think? Acceptable or no?
THAT is pretty hysterical. My older daughter showed off her “vocabulary” for the first time when she was about that same age – saying to my mom “SH**! Oh, I mean Patooie. I’m not allowed to say sh**.”
I like dog licker.
I like dog licker, although I think it would still raise eyebrows.
Of course, I work with college-age kids, so my thought on kids swearing is that they’ll hear worse than that soon enough. Rather than forbidding the words, maybe explain to her that those words crass and will make other people think less of her. Then mention that once a person gets into the habit of swearing, it’s very hard to stop, and the only way to avoid that is to just never swear at all.
I don’t know if she’d be old enough to grasp all that yet, but it might be worth a try.