In the past year, Mr. Athena and I have both observed teenage girls calling their parents names that would have gotten us grounded for life had we attempted that during our teenage years. It seems that it’s a normal thing nowadays for kids to call their parents and other adults assholes, bitches, etc. These kids do it all the time, and there’s no punishment or other repercussions. I shudder to think of what would have happened to me had I called my mother a bitch at age 16. Hell, I remember getting a very stern lecture about the word “hate” at about age 5 when I told my mother I hated her for something probably like not letting me have another cookie.
At the same time, these parents have been observed to do the same to the kids at times. Not on a day to day basis, but when tempers flare I’ve personally heard the fathers call their daughters bitches to their face. That also never happened in me or Mr. Athena’s experiences - the worst that either parent has ever called me was “lazy” when I was a teenager. Mr. Athena’s mother once told him that he’d never account for anything. It’s not too hard to figure out just how these teenagers learned to use these words.
So are we just old fogies that are shocked over nothing, much like parents in the 60s were shocked when their sons came home with long hair? Do your teenagers call you names? Do you call them names?
Well, I’ve heard teenagers call their parents “assholes” and worse behind their backs when the parents were out of earshot, but I’ve never heard a kid address a parent that way to their face.
I have seen plenty of parents addressing their kids using downright filthy language and it always makes me cringe. I watched one woman coming out of the grocery store last week with a four-year-old in the carriage and a teenager walking alongside, swearing a blue streak at both kids. I can’t imagine how crappy that woman’s life must seem to her to take it out on the kids like that. As angry as a parent can get sometimes at a kid, I don’t ever remember being so angry at my daughter that I would verbally abuse that way.
As for me, I have a fourteen-year-old daughter. Neither of us has ever used “names” on each other. Even should she need discipline, we treat her with the common respect with which we expect to be treated.
I have been known to jokingly imply that my mom’s being a bitch…but I’m 28! And we’ve gotten to be good friends. Had I called her a bitch as a teenager I’d have been in real trouble, I do believe.
I don’t know why these people let their kids do that. I sure wouldn’t.
At first reading of the subject title, I thought this was about nicknames; I refer to him as Boy, Bud, or Rugrat. Boy is usually in a feigned redneckish tone, and he calls me Pa in the same tone.
He’s gotten away with calling me an asshole once or twice, and they were in the context of me interacting with someone else. He was pointing out that I was a jerk, once for real, the other for fun.
There is a very well defined line in my house about what you can call or do to someone while being impish, as opposed to being pissed off. A good analogy is that he can burp and fart with impunity at home, but he’d be in big trouble to do it in public. He would never get away with calling me an asshole to my face because of a situation between the two of us, and I won’t call him one if the situation was reversed.
Once I told my mom she was being bitchy about something…and she slapped me across the face. I didn’t call her a bitch, just that she was acting that way. But still, I guess I could have phrased it differently and avoided the smack.
The worst my dad ever did was ask me if I was stupid as in “What are you? Stupid?”. You know, when I’d done something pretty stupid. I don’t remember him ever calling me stupid. Just implying I might be.
My son is only five and hasn’t called me any names. Although some times he calls me by my first name instead of Mom. I don’t have a problem with that. I suspect my parents would have hated it if I had done the same thing.
I don’t call my son names. I have been known to ask him why he’s acting like a spoiled brat. But I don’t tell him he is a spoiled brat.
Outside of Godzilla and Rodan, I don’t call my kids names. Were they to call me bitch, I think they’d probably be spitting out soap in the confines of their rooms for some time.
My dad called us every name in the book. Especially me, because I went off and became a stripper when I was in college. I got hooker, slut, whore, bitch, cunt, etc. Not to mention stupid, ignorant, trashy, hillbilly, etc. My brother’s got asshole, stupid, idiot, dumbfuck, etc. Our little sis has gotten none of these.
I’ve called my dad names, but not until I was an adult and he was saying the things listed above. I’ve never called my mom a name.
I call my kiddo stinker, sweetie, meanie, crazy, boo, turd, bunny, etc. She’s eight. That’s about as rough as the language is allowed to get in my house. And obviously, it’s that way for a reason.
My children would not have survived the experience. Even now that they’re grown, they would want to think carefully before showing that amount of disrespect. I don’t call them names; I expect the same courtesy in return.
That pretty much sums it up. Either that or I would have been sipping clear liquids through a straw for a while.
It never really occured to me to call my parents names. And I’m glad that they never called me any. I would have been incredibly hurt. The worst I ever got called was “little shit”.
I thought the the same thing. The only name calling which goes on in our household is the little pet names we have for each other, or when we’re playing around. We actually all really like each other and are good friends as well as family.
I was always raised to have the utmost respect for my parents, so I find the whole idea of swearing at one’s parents to be completely unacceptable. And my Dad could have whooped my ass right up to the day he died, so I wasn’t ever about to try it!
I call my daughter a ton of pet names, but I’ve never thought of calling her anything rude or nasty and I don’t really see that changing. I told my mom I hated her once, when I was too young to understand what it really meant. It hurt her feelings, and I’ve never said anything like that again to my mother or father. Mom never called us names, but my dad called me a bitch (Who knows why.), a dyke (Because I wasn’t parading guys in and out when I lived there, instead I just spent a lot of time with my best friend.) and a slut (Again, I don’t know why, especially considering the reasons he called me the previous name.).
The very last time I spoke with a friend of mine, she had her little boy over at my house. He was about 2, I guess, and he was playing with some markers that I had out. He took the lid off of one of them, and she told him to put it back on, and when he didn’t do it correctly, she grabbed it and said “God, are you stupid or something?” I can’t stand to hear people talk to their kids like that. I also hear a lot of people telling their kids to “shut up!” when I’m grocery shopping, and I think that’s pretty rude too, especially since it’s usually aimed at kids in the 2 year old age group.
A friend of mine, who is one of the most upstanding people I’ve ever met, and seems to have based his life on whatever he learned at boy scouts, surprised me by casually calling his mom a bitch to her face. It wasn’t in the middle of a heated argument, either. She was just being shrill and a little irritating, and he came out with “Stop being such a bitch, mom.” He generally seems to have very little respect for his mother, while having tons of respect for everyone else. She doesn’t seem very shocked by the name-calling, which leads me to think that it is a common thing in the household. Well, to each his own, but I don’t dig it too much.
My dad has called me a bitch, a whore, and a slut. He rarely swore, which made it worse, IMO. I thought it was kind of lame when he called me a whore and a slut, just because I dyed my hair. I called him a faggot once (I have nothing against homosexuals, but my dad is homophobic and he was a P.E. teacher…(long story)anyway, I almost got the crap beat out of me and was kicked out of the house permanently about a week later. Needless to say, the names I call my kids are only loving playful names. I will never be like my dad!
I just remembered to check with Mama Tiger on this.
She said I wasn’t that sort of kid, but that if I’d ever told her something like “Fuck off, bitch,” corporal punishment would probably have been involved. And since she only spanked me on rare occasions, that means something.
It is completely unfathomable to me to think that I would ever call my parents names, or that they’d do the same to me. It just boggles my mind.
Right before my wife and I got married, my step-daughter was mad at my wife and yelled “I HATE you!” to her. Before my wife could respond I said, “Stop right there. You HATE her? She clothes you, feeds you, and cares for you? And you HATE her? You’ll apologize to her right this second, and never speak to her like that again while I’mwithin earshot, or you’ll leave this house right now and never step back in it.” I think she got the message, because we haven’t had any more such episodes.
And has been mentioned before, if I HAD called my parents names or shown them any disrespect, I would have had dire consequences to pay.
