Do you use "bad language" in front of children?

[Dreamer_D]

Cehra I actually agree with you about swearing and also about Faux swears. But I am very liberaly when it comes to language and expressing myself. I like bold humour, dry humour, swearing. But I know many... perhaps even most... other people do not appreciate that type of wit or communication. And I especially know that kids do not understand that type of communication either. So my preference is for my 2 year old not to know those words, because unlike me, he cannot pick and choose a time and place to say them. When he is older, I don't care is he swears, but I would hope I can teach him how to pick and choose when to do it, just as I hope he will be sensitive enough to augment all his forms of communication depending on his audience.

 

[mrs jam]

While I was growing up, my mom, a complete and total Southern belle, was horrified by the word "fart." Whenever she had to refer to an act of flatulence, she referred to it as "tooting." It would crack me up whenever she would turn to one of my brothers and tell him to please stop tooting. I always knew she had reached her frustrational limit whenever I heard her use the phrase "Jesus Mary Joseph!" That was about as profane as she got. Anyway, it still makes me laugh whenever I hear a kid use the word toot.

One pet peeve of mine is the phrase "that sucks." When I was teaching, it seemed that just about everything "sucked" in my students' opinion. I think that's a phrase that demonstrates a laziness in vocabulary.

 

[MichelleCarmen]

I do swear in front of my kids. If I bump my elbow, the "sh" word will automatically pop out. But, from what I've seen, thus far my kids will say stuff like, "F WORD," but not f***. They know it's inappropriate for their age and they also know when/where it's especially inappropriate to say bad words so they have abbreviated versions. One kid my son plays with says sh*t all the time and I've had to ask him to stop and then he DENIES it! So, he's learned to not only swear, but lie. Huh. I do know if my son did get caught saying something, he'd come clean and say sorry.

 

[Cehrabehra]

This isn't criticism directed at anyone, just an attempt to understand the reasoning behind the use. Is it really "appropriate" to drop the f-bomb just for stubbing your toe? Seriously? It's just a stubbed toe!

It's not something that you think about, it's just automatic.

Interestingly, if you are becoming bilingual in another language, the last remaining parts of your mother tongue are counting out money and the swear-words you use when you stub your toe or similar. I spoke fluent Italian after living there for 2 years but it wasn't till I'd been there nearly 5 before I'd count money out in Italian and say Cazzo instead of Bugger when stubbing my toes.

funny, I count money in chinese but I don't know any chinese swear words... I say fengle a lot though lol Numbers (money) was the first thing I learned after hello and thank you