Should We Stop Swearing In Front of the Kid?

Fucking shit. I think we've made a mistake.

Basile Morin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

My grandma accidentally taught my siblings and I how to swear.

Her favorite swear word, by far, was “shit.” She loved “shit.” She’d mumble “shit, shit, shit” under her breath as she cleaned, she’d respond to bad jokes my grandpa said by rolling her eyes and saying “Oh shit.” It’s the perfect swear word to be whispered– despite its scatalogical origins, the word “shit” is delicate, a little wisp of sound that cleans up after itself. “Fuck” is a world meant to be yelled; “shit” is meant to be whispered. That’s probably why my grandma thought that it was an okay thing to say in front of her grandchildren when they were small. Until my sister, then a toddler, started yelling SHIT! SHIT! SHIT! for fun. 

Swear words were not okay for kids to say in my house. My parents were colorful cussers with the exception of some of the multisyllabics and the F-word, which I didn’t even know existed until I saw it scratched on a school bus seat in first grade. They had zero tolerance for child swearing; we couldn’t even say “stupid,” “Geez,” or “Oh my God” without getting in trouble. I think that’s part of the reason that I grew up to enjoy foul language as much as I do. As parents, the best way to make your kids fascinated by something is to get incredibly worked up over it. 

I don’t see the harm in swearing in most contexts (I don’t think it’s ever okay to swear at children, colleagues, or service workers). But in most non-fight contexts, even if it’s rude or uncalled for, swear words are just words. I don’t think anybody has ever gone to a life of scamming old ladies out of their life savings because once when they were four they heard an unbleeped version of a PG-13 movie. (If anybody can find evidence of this happening, I’ll issue a correction.) Nobody’s taken up serial killing because they saw the word “COCK” spray painted on a road sign. Besides, adults who are across-the-board offended by cussing are almost always religious, the world’s biggest dorks, or both. 

Unfortunately, dorks often hold positions of power in places like schools and neighborhood organizations. Sometimes they’ve got kids that are your kid’s age. I don’t want my daughter, at a very young age, thinking it’s okay to yell FUCKING GO! when somebody in front of her in line for the slide is taking too long; not only is it rude, it could subject her to one of childhood’s greatest humiliations: getting reprimanded by an adult who isn’t one of your parents. 

My daughter never stops talking and endlessly seeks praise, which she gets in response to talking. (This makes sense, since both her dad and I are the same way in both respects, for better or worse.)

Juniper understands a startling amount. She makes up names for things– Josh loves South Park, and she thinks, from passing glimpses of her dad watching it, that the show is called Uh Oh, Cartman! Spiders are “itsy bitsies,” because of the Itsy Bitsy spider song. Bats are “batty batty batty,” due to Count von Count. Disney’s Hocus Pocus is Go Go Witches. If one of her parents laughs or reacts positively to one of her portmanteaus, she’ll probably repeat it. 

On a hike the other day, Josh characterized something as “wacky shit.” Juniper repeated “wacky shit! Mama! Wacky shit!” I looked at Josh. He looked at me. “Wacky shit!” Juniper repeated. We tried our hardest not to laugh and reinforce that phrase, but come on. That’s funny.

Luckily I don’t think Juniper knows what “shit”-- of the wacky or non-wacky variety–actually means. Otherwise she would have deployed it during one of her frequent mini-meltdowns.

But I looked into research on this, and it turns out my husband and I should probably develop a plan to manage Juniper’s quickly-developing vocabulary. According to this 2014 research paper, babies between 6-9 months old can’t understand conceptual words, but once they hit 14 months old, their ability to understand more complicated language “increases substantially.” And this study found that 24-month-olds can “efficiently learn novel words just by listening to the conversations around them.” Juniper is about to turn two years old. 

Goddamn it. 

Maybe Juniper will recognize boundaries around where swear words are or aren’t okay. Maybe I won’t have to totally reprogram my response to frustration to exclude swear words entirely. Maybe we’ll have to make up an alternate vulgar lexicon, like replacing “fucking” with “ducking” and “shit” with “ship.” It could be a fun family project.

And maybe it’s not even that big a deal. While my little sister loved yelling SHIT SHIT SHIT in the confines of home, to my knowledge she didn’t take it outside.

That was just a special treat from our family, courtesy of my grandma. Somewhere, in heaven, she is whispering shit under her breath as she mops spilled apple juice from a linoleum floor.