"Say dammit, Daddy," A Preschooler's Knows When To Swear

I’m only sort of late getting our Christmas tree up. Considering all what’s happening, it’s not bad.

I get the tree out of the box and start to put it together. And drop something. My four-year-old, Beta-chan, looks up and says “Say dammit, Daddy.” Except it’s “dannit” so I’m not quite sure what she means. I give her an enquiringly look and she says, “You dropped it, so say ‘dannit.’”

Ah, yes. One must swear when one drops things. At least Grandma wasn’t there to overhear.

A colleague of mine had an adorable three-year-old daughter who learned, from Daddy, that when you trip you say “puta” (the family is Spanish-speaking). I thought it was hilarious. Mommy did not.

My friend’s daughter calls other kids “grass mole” when they do things she doesn’t like.

I made sure to teach my kids how to curse properly. I didn’t want them picking it up on a street corner.

I curse way too much around my kids and I’m surprised that they haven’t picked it up themselves.

The 7 yo knows what’s up. And he’s really good about not swearing. The 2 yo - still too young to understand. She mimics me sometimes, but not all that often.

When Fang was three, he had a toy work bench. He would bang on the nails and shout, “Crap!”

<bang> <bang> <bang> Crap!
<bang> <bang> <bang> Crap!
<bang> <bang> <bang> Crap!

He mother and I still chuckle about it.

I recall my younger sister playing in the sandbox at about 3. Her castle fell over. In the sweetest My-Little-Pony voice imaginable came, “Oh, shit.” Perfect cadence and inflection. My dad got to practice his poker face on that one.

Then, of course, there’s the old joke where the mother drives the little kids to school one day, something the father usually does. After a few minutes, one pipes up, “Mommy, where are all the sunsabitches that are on the road when daddy drives?”

There’s a story claiming that a friend of a friend’s kid was five before he figured out that the think that Mommy used a lot was really called a sewing machine and not whore.

My son says “Oh Shoot Nuggets!” when he is frustrated about something. He’s 5. I think it’s cute. Him and his twin sister started saying “Oh My Gawd” a while back and we told them we didn’t like them saying that, so they can say “Oh my Gosh” They said they would say “Oh Motherbear!” instead. They got that one from their dad, LOL.

My wife is fond of saying that she was 12 years old before she realized that her father’s first name was not “Dammit George.”

My mother had to correct me before I started school because I thought they were called ‘damnflies’.

When my sister was little she would get mad and say oh h-i-t. She thought she was spelling shit. My mother forgot to correct that before my sister started school.

At four, Beta-chan is starting to put the world together better and better. We can talk loudly in the park but not the restaurant. We need to wash hands because there are germs and we don’t like germs because they make us sick.

She doesn’t always follow it, but the world is getting logical.

So if you drop something, you need to say “Dannit.” Makes sense to me.

Yeah, but have any of you been notified by your daycare that your 6yo daughter called someone a motherfucker?

Straightfaced, I asked if she used it correctly, while mom just buried her face in her hands.

A friend of mine had an eight-year-old who had a class fieldtrip to Safety City–where the kids get to “drive” around and obey traffic lights.

Child got at least one cooling off period, “added” a horn to her vehicle, and said a number of amusing and generally not quite profane things --“the light isn’t getting any greener, lady”.

Teacher tells friend, trying not to laugh. Friend says “I’ll have to talk to my husband about that”–trying hard to imply that the husband was the impatient driver in the family.

Teacher “Oh, does daddy have a New Yawk accent, too?”

Um, No. Mom’s busted.

Same friend’s younger son figured out the perfect cussword–Jackhole. You see, you take the front half of jackass and add it to the back half of asshole, and there are no actual cusswords, so you won’t get in trouble for saying it.

He was quickly disabused of this notion. Mom’s allowed to cuss, the kids aren’t.

When my son was three he got in my truck and said “this place is a fucking mess!” I wish I could blame someone else for that one. :eek:

My mom was babysitting my four-year-old niece. Niece wanted sausage for breakfast but Mom didn’t have any.

Niece lets out a dramatic sigh and says, “No sausage? Dammit!”

Mom’s trying not to laugh. Mom says, “Only grownups can say dammit.”

Niece: “No dammit?”

Mom: “No, no dammit 'til you’re older.”

Niece: (another dramatic sigh) “OK…”

When our son was born we lived in Chicago. We visited his grandmother in Wisconsin quite a bit. We moved to Connecticut coast when he was five where the winters are quite a bit milder. He informed his classmates that winter wasn’t “freezin’ ass cold” like back at his old home.

Family story, at least four generations old now, of an adorable little girl who often wandered over to a nearby construction site. The workers there made a pet of her, and she ran small errands for them. The foreman even cut her a very small check, which she and her mother took to the bank to deposit for her.

The teller struck up a conversation with the little girl.

“You must be a big help.”
“Oh, I am!”
“Do you think they’ll finished the building soon?”
“Sure! As soon as they get the fucking bricks!”

I’ll never forget the Christmas Eve when my two-year-old cousin spilled her drink and said, “Aw thit!”
And I never heard my dad say “dammit!” when he was putting up the Christmas tree. It was more like, “Motherfucking piece of shit! Why won’t this fucking thing stay up, dammit!”

[sub]Of course, when I repeated what he said, I got my mouth washed out with soap.[/sub]

My cousin was in the backseat of the car & said, “Damburs, look at the damburs”. Trouble is no one could figure out what damburs were. Eventually realized they were those things that you might feed some seed in the back yard, fly in the sky & oh, yeah, crap on your car.