I totally agree with you. But I couldn’t help myself. I was a nervous Mom. All I wanted from them was to not get hurt or die. If they all lived in my basement and gamed I would be happy. I know logically that is wrong. And I did cut the apron strings. I hated it though. And my baby, oh, that was a hard one. I am still clinging a bit to her. She just finished her 1st year at university.
The few scrapes they got in as young adults weren’t very bad. So I feel lucky there. Now, if I can get the lil’wrekker through these first adult years I may rest easy for a few years. I hope:)
Seconded.
Okay, I’m back.
Don’t mean to be the Profanity Police, but I find so many stating profanity is fine distressing. Say it enough times and it becomes a normal part of your speech without any real meaning. I’m sure in the days of slavery and segregation, the n-word was used so often it lost it’s sting and true nature. Just as you might say “This damn jar won’t open”, I’m sure someone back then said “This damn n-word jar won’t open”. It becomes a part of your daily speech and slips into your conversations without you knowing it. I strive not to curse, but sometimes do it automatically when I’m by myself driving. I usually catch and remind myself to stop doing this.
Which brings me to my greater concern. When profanity becomes a part of your regular speech, you lose awareness of who’s within earshot. Particularly young children who so want to be like their older siblings, parents or other adults. My Mom told me that my Dad once yelled "STUPID HAOLE (white person)! when the driver of the other car cut in front of him. Well, my niece was in the back in her carseat and repeated "TUPID HAOLE!. Yep, she was just like Grandpa, all grown up! Two lessons were learned that day. That it was a word combination that should never be repeated by anyone and Grandpa better watch what he says!
Oh no, having a ton of boundaries gives you a toooooon of boundaries to test! Lots of practice figuring out which boundaries to respect, which ones to push back (plus how to push back in ways that will be accepted), which ones to vault over and which ones to shatter.
The people I know who went wild at one point had parents ranging from HeliMom to Do Not Ever Say No To The Kid.
To those who say, “But it’s only written, not spoken.” Maybe I’m unique, but (I think I posted this in this thread), I write like I speak. If I write, f***, s***, m**********, it will come out in my speech sometime when I’m having a conversation with the same or similar context as when I wrote those words. I don’t even like to use WTF written or spoken, because while it seems harmless enough, someday I’ll unconsciously blurt out all three words completely.
One more thought about young children. If you let your underage child use profanity or view porn, there’s a 100% certainty that little brother or little sister will stumble upon big brother or big sister using (whether text or speech) profanity or viewing porn. They may not say anything about it, but they’re anxiously awaiting the day that turn 15 so they can do everything their older siblings did. If you object at that point, you’ll get the feared “But you let big brother / big sisters do it when he/she was 15!”
BTW, as I mentioned before, I don’t have any children, but I have fantastic memories of my childhood as early as age 4-5 confirmed by my much older siblings
How do you pronounce all those stars?
That’s a reason for you not to use profanity, not the rest of the world. There’s nothing wrong with not using profanity though, feel free not to. Many people wouldn’t think I ever do use profanity because they never played golf with me or weren’t around when I dropped something heavy on my foot.
No, it doesn’t. The boy is using profanity appropriately and with respect. He swears around his buddies but doesn’t around his parents. I can assume that if he doesn’t swear around his mom, he probably doesn’t around grandma and grandpa, his teachers, clergy…
I can swear like a motherfucker but I don’t even say “damn” around older relatives, bosses, clergy…
There is nothing wrong with a 15 year old boy saying “fuck!” around his friends.
Racial epithets are not curse words - they’re racial epithets and, if he’s using them, should be spoken to about what they actually mean and why we don’t use them.
Hate to say it, but you are.
Everybody gets their own phone these days, and there is some expectation of privacy. In my house, everybody also has their own computer (gamer family!).
OP, my son also is on Discord with his friends, also swears like a sailor, and also looks at naked pictures of women posted in the NSFW channel of his Discord group.
I’ll moderate his speech for decorum if he gets out of hand, but no matter what, that is going to be a losing battle. You can’t thought-police him, and short of denying him ANY of these interactions (take away phone, take away internet access) you aren’t going to stop it.
And when it comes to the porn… Well, I promise that in my teenage years, it would have horrified you to know what I did nearly every chance I had! It is natural, and unstoppable- and it apparently didn’t scar me, as I am a productive member of society today!
Your father had a truly depraved attitude. That comment is about as stupid as a parent can get, in terms of philosophy.
I have teenagers too & if they could ever monitor the conversations I have with my girlfriends on a moms night out, I think they’d be pretty shocked too. The fact that your son behaves appropriately when in your company (and I presume in the company of other adults) suggests that he’s just a normal kid.
Is there a father in the picture? If so what does he think?
I personally would do absolutely nothing with this information.
Young person (23-year-old) here with a young person’s opinion.
The fact you’ve lost trust in your son after this discovery is perplexing. How, precisely, do you define that trust, what is it based upon? You trust your son because he doesn’t say “fuck”? You trust your son because he doesn’t have biological urgings like most teens?
Personally, my mom trusted me a great deal when I was young, and here’s why. I cared about the feelings of others and the repercussions my actions could have. I treated other people, whether friend, family or stranger, with respect. I obeyed rules and listened to my mother’s requests.
What I’m driving at is this: you need to decide what you care about more, that your son is a good person in the ways that matter, or that your son is a perfect angel. As it stands, as many people have expressed, he sounds like a very normal teenage boy who’s doing very normal teenage boy things, and the possibly-unpleasant truth is that you might need to take off your rose-colored glasses for a moment and acknowledge your son is a human being.
While you might personally disapprove of the things he’s doing, there’s a difference between that and actual wrongdoing. I’ve been saying “bad” words since 12 or 13, and I am still capable of being civil and polite, as I always have been. I have control over the words that come out of my mouth and I know how to exercise that control. I don’t substitute swearing for actual intelligent thought (as lingyi suggested). All in all, the fact that I sometimes say “fuck” doesn’t seem to have had an appreciable effect on my life whether positive or negative. An important distinction with swearing is how it’s used: is your son directing it at other people in anger or malice? Or is it just a way to harmlessly vent negativity? I am probably talking to someone at the time when I swear, but that doesn’t mean the swear is about them or directed at them. Swearing can be cathartic; I have a chronic illness so personally I often use it when I’m describing how I feel, e.g. expressing that I’m in particularly severe pain that day or something. Incidentally, I have a friend who is religious and finds swearing to be upsetting, and I voluntarily choose not to swear around this friend at all for any reason. That’s because I care about other people’s feelings. I want to reiterate here that swearing doesn’t have to be about attacking other people.
All right, but let’s move on to the porn and stuff. Sending or receiving inappropriate pictures is definitely a bad thing, as others have pointed out, and could have legal consequences for your son. But on a broader level, there’s really nothing wrong with your son having these urges and attempting to satisfy them (in safe, healthy ways). Sexual desire is not something we choose to have, it’s forced upon us by our biology and brain chemistry and so on. It varies widely by individual, so maybe you didn’t have a phase like what your son is presumably going through. The important thing to acknowledge is that it’s no less natural than desiring food, and fulfilling it in safe, age-appropriate, healthy ways can help improve one’s life in other aspects. For example: people who masturbate are generally less likely to rush into a relationship. Some people who have sexual urges think that it’s only okay to fulfill them with another person, so that desire overrides their better judgment when it comes to careful selection of partners. Also, fulfilling your body’s needs will quiet those needs for a while and allow you to focus better on important things, etc.
Overall, I don’t want to tell you how to parent your child because I’m certainly no expert in that area, but I think you are indeed being naive – not by trusting your son, but rather, it’s naive to think your son is beyond his baser urges (like swearing or horniness) or that having those is somehow a sign that his moral character is lacking. Your son is his own person, and when he’s an adult and he strikes out on his own, you won’t be able to decide anymore what he is and isn’t allowed to do. While you still have him under your roof, you need to teach him broader-scope fundamentals like “how do I take risks responsibly?” and “how do I ensure that my actions are respectful and do not hurt other people?” Those are principles that he can apply to all sorts of behavior, even behavior like swearing or sex — and it’s even more crucial that he knows how to apply those principles to those things, because they do come with a lot of potential risks and ways to make mistakes.