Just wondering if doper parents try not to swear around their children? I remember in the late 70’s my father trying his hardest not to swear around us. And he would go off on rants like the title of this thread: ** Darn it! Gosh Dang it! ** And any other such combination inbetween. It was funny because he would be trying his hardest when we were around, but then he accidentally shoved a screwdriver through his 67’ Ford Galaxy’s radiator, all we heard from the Garage was… “** AHH FUCK**” 
OK, I am a terrible parent. Yes, I swear in front of (not at) my children. My kids occasionally let “shit” slip out if they spill something but I haven’t had a problem with them cursing at school or in front of anyone else.
I told them that sometimes I say grown-up words and that other grown-ups do not like to hear children say those things. I never yell or punish them for saying words they hear me say, I just remind them that some things are not for kids to say.
My six-year-old has taken it upon himself to chart at which age he will be able to say what word. At six, he has decided that he is up to the level of being able to say “crap” and “oh my god”
My future MIL uses the word “jeepers” a lot. It’s comical. She is, however, very good at not swearing, even in front of adults. One day in the past couple of years, she let out a “shit” when something major happened and turned completely red and tried to deny it. From hearing the story, it was hilarious to actually hear her swear.
IANAP, but I’m around my 5-year-old “nephew” quite a lot: I’m good about remembering not to swear around him, but horrible about remembering not to jokingly use phrases like “shut up” or “stupid” (both of which are always directed at his father, my best friend, who is often both stupid and deserving of being told to shut up). The boy is too young to grasp the difference between teasing someone with those phrases and not being nice, and his folks and I agree that it’s not nice to tell people to shut up or to call them stupid, so I often find myself getting busted (“Mom, Aunt Jenny just told Daddy to shut up!!”).
My parents never swore in front of us. They did say “goddammit” or “dammit” a lot (mom more than dad heh) but I’d never really heard them say “shit” until I was well into adulthood and I can’t say I’ve ever heard them say “fuck.” Although I will say that stuff in front of them now.
I’ve never heard them say any funny “curse replacements” either. I think they’re just not the kind of people who think about swearing - unlike me…I have a very foul mouth.
All the time. I call them home words and try to draw the line at cunt although all bets are off in traffic. My husband is not with me on this one but sometimes when he’s not around we’ll say fuck alot. I feel VERY strongly that it’s ridiculous to demonize words that way.
Yeah but you’re a Rhode Islander right?
Heh… just kidding
Just a few months ago my 11 year old was shocked, shocked I say, to hear me exclaim “What the hell is that?” after hearing rap on my favorite station, and the 8 year old still collapses in peals of laughter remembering me cussing out another driver in Spanish (which they don’t understand, but they got the general idea).
Even as a teenager I tried to avoid cussing around children, and frankly find it much more entertaining to try to come up with something that expresses my true feelings without ever straying into the realm of obscenity. Once worked with a mechanic who had kids, and from his bay we heard a “clang” sound followed by “Gosh darn mother lovin’ poopy-headed son of a fucking bitch” - That’s class right there 
At work or around friends I cuss like a syphilitic sailor on speed.
I remember well the moment I stopped swearing in front of my children (well, child then as I only had one at the time). whiterabbit was about 3 years old and dropped something, and from her sweet baby mouth I heard, “Oh, cwap!”
It wasn’t until she was a teenager and driving, where cursing is required, that we all relaxed the rules.
We were recently bringin our 3 year old nephew to a local museum he had never been to and he said when we got there…“Where da hell are we”
I’m trying, but not overly successfully. I have more trouble with stupid, shut up etc., and my nearly 3-yr old picks up everything. I’m pretty bad in the car and yelled out shit one time. From the back seat all I started hearing was “shit, shit, shit, shit…”. My wife has a habit of saying “Oh My God” a lot which my daughter now uses quite a bit. I personally don’t care about that one but she does go to a church daycare it’s probably not a good idea for that to slip out. I haven’t heard about any problems yet.
My daughter fines me for bad words- 25 cents a pop!
She says she’s gonna be rich!
(OK, not rich, but she claims I do owe her about $17.00, which I guess is rich for an 11 y.o.)
I don’t worry about casual swearing - what bothers me is angry swearing. And that’s because I don’t deal well with expressed anger because of my own parents, married 14 years, divorced, and raised voices twice in that time. Not “didn’t fight in front of me” - they never argued. Of course, they never communicated, either. Repression all the way!
But I get that has to do with my issues around anger, and not the words themselves. My husband could pseudo-swear when he’s mad and I’d be just as uncomfortable with it. So I’m trying not to cringe so badly when he loses the checkbook and yells, “Goddamit, motherfucker this is BULLSHIT!” because that’s what he needs to do to blow off steam. And those are all words I might say in other contexts in front of the kids.
When they’re little, I tell them that there are grown-up words, just like grown-up drinks and grown-up activities, and when they’re older they can choose to use them. We had a family meeting once to figure out if “suck” is a swear when the boy was about 8 (we decided no, it wasn’t, but it was not to be used in front of Grandma or teachers). I did tell the then-11 year old that I wasn’t shocked or impressed by his gratuitous use of the word “fuck” and that he should save it for his friends. He has, mostly.
I don’t generally swear in front of my child - but then again I don’t really swear alot anyway. I made a very conscious effort to clean up my language after basic training (boy did I need it).
I do my best to not swear in front of my kids. When my son was little the worst I would ever say is “hell” or “God damn it!” (had to put the emphasis on damn). One time when he was 3 he accidentally knocked over his block tower and I heard “God damn it!” come out of his little mouth. After that I made it a point to try to avoid swear words.
When I drive I sound like Yosemite Sam. “Cal fragga marga nobble summa robble lammal! Where did you get your fraggin drivers license, you saran lornin moron?!?”
I don’t think it’s necessary for me to add to the amount of profanity that my children are subjected to. They hear enough from TV, movies and the radio. I mean, in the movie Space Jam, Daffy duck says, “We’ve got to get a new agent. We’re getting screwed!”
I don’t think it’s necessary for me to contribute any more ear pollution. I’m not a prude but I think children should be allowed to stay children a little longer than they are and not have to listen to
Our concern has been more along the lines of expecting the kids to be aware of and not lazy in their language usage, not becoming overly dependant on slang or profanity, and understanding the effect their word choice has on others.
For example, my sisters are all pretty religious, so we told our kids to avoid saying “Jesus” or even “Geez” around them, just to be polite. And we told them to avoid off-color language around their grandparents, just out of politeness and respect.
And when they were younger, when they said something “sucks” or 'blows" I would frequently ask, “What was that?” and they would usually say something like “I mean that stinks.” I remember telling them those were metaphors for oral sex, and “bumfuck Idaho” anal sex, just so they realized what they were saying. And i think that “stinks” and other words are just as good and far less ofensive.
Essentially, we prefer that they (and us around them) resort to profanity only when appropriate, say when frustrated or angry. Just the other day I realized we had apparently lightened up now that they are all well into their teens, tho I did comment when my daughter casually described someone as an “asshole.” I just asked them and their mom whether we had decided to abandon all restrictions on language. Again, just kinda a reminder.
Coupla stories. When my son was very young, we were driving around and I was pointing everything out, trying to get the kid to repeat the names. “There is a Shell. Can you say Shell? See the car? Can you say car?”
He simply sat there silently, until a car cut me off and I happened to blurt out “Fuck.” For the rest of the ride he happily blathered on “fuckfuckfuckfuck…”
I thought we had been careful about our language, but one time when he son was around 2 he was toddling along carrying some blocks and he dropped them. He stood there and said in a loud disgusted tone, “Dammit. GOD dammit!” Which didn’t really bother me because it seemed pretty appropriate given the situation.
I remember one dinner conversation when they were quite young and wanted to know what was “the worst swear.” It was funny, because they thought things like “shut up” were swears. I introduced them to quite a few new vocabulary words that evening!
Sadly, I am an old punk. I have made my husbands Army buddies blush. My parents tried (unsuccessfully, for the most part) not to swear in front of us, but it wasn’t my upbringing, so much as my generations/friends/influences that helped me to perfect the art of swearing.
In the beginning, I tried to not swear in front of my daughter, but it was quite hard, and truth is I figure she is going to hear it eventually, so I stopped pretending to be something/someone that I am not. I prefer that my kids learn to be true to themself rather than learning to pretend to be something else just to protect or please someone else.
Although I do swear bigtime, I have always made it clear that I would prefer my children do not. I treat them like people and explain to them the reasons behind the (very rare) instances when I want them to “do as I say, not as I do” – in this instance, it is still just not socially acceptable to speak the way I do. My kids don’t swear. My 14 year old daughter will occasionally let a “shit” or “damn” slip out when she is with her friends, but never in the presence of an adult. She wants to be a lawyer someday, she’s pretty good at being an upstanding person My 7 year old still considers “poop” to be somewhat offensive.
Pepper Mill uses “Fudge!” In moments of extreme frustration, this escalates to “Fudge Nut Brownies!”
Although I have caught her saying pithier things under her breath.
Me, I’m self-inhibited. I don’t say much that isn’t for Sunday-school consumption, except the occasional “Damn!”
I try to keep my language under control when I’m around my daughter, and so far I’ve been pretty good about it. My wife and I had been so-so with keeping it under wraps, but a few days ago my wife casually mentioned to me how someone she knows was “being a total bitch”.
“Bich!” comes floating over from the other side of the room in a sweet, 17-month-old lilt. Since then, we’ve really been trying.
I only recall hearing my grandmother (on my dads side) swear about twice in my life, which makes this story even funnier.
I’ve been told that when my grandmother was a young girl she used to make pocket money by stopping by a auto body shop. The mechanics would pay her to say ‘the blue streak’. She got something like either a penny or nickel for every swear word she could say without repeating herself.