This year my fourth grade son Tyler has gotten into trouble four times for using profane language. He’s had to miss recess a few times because of it.
Truth be told (I know, I’m a horrible mom), Tyler has been swearing since he was probably five years old. Hearing it on the school bus, and yes, from my ex and I. While we’ve always tried to correct him, cussing didn’t rank much on the scale of raising my child to be a good human.
Indeed there are several studies that say cursing can be good for you and that it even is a sign of intelligence, showing that people who swear more tend to have extended vocabularies.
But now it’s a different ball game as he doesn’t seem able to control where he uses profanity, so we have a declared swearing to be off limits for ALL of us. The only one who I have never heard utter a cuss word is Jacques who can’t even say “He*l”. I’m doing it for him too as I know it bothers him when he hears me say a bad word.
The punishment for using profanity at home (at school they punish him) is a one minute time out on the porch stairs, again for all of us. So far I’ve only had to send Tyler out once.
The hardest time to avoid cursing is when you stub your toe or something similar. That “Oh sh*t!” just pops right out. That happened to Tyler the other day at school and as he started to spew that “s-curse” he said, “I mean oh shoot!”
Words like “shoot”, “darn”, and “heck” sound really strange to me but that will be what will be flying out of our mouths from now on.
How do you deal with bad language in your own home?
(Photo credit: quickanddirtytips.com)
