Yeah - I wasn’t so good a cleaning up my vocabulary. Last year my then 6 year old asked when we would get to the restaurant. Because he was really fucking hungry.
Rules in my house: don’t curse around other grown ups that will be offended, don’t overuse it, and if you must cuss, use it correctly, for fuck’s sake.
I’ve always been surprised that my kids haven’t picked up more inappropriate language. My son went through a phase when he was 2 or 3 saying, “oh, twap” (instead of ‘crap’), and he’ll use anything he hears on the Simpsons (“who the hell was that?” got him in trouble with the neighbors), but I thought he’d somehow overlooked all of the, um, more colorful options. However, when I was volunteering in his first grade classroom a couple of weeks ago, one of the girls told me with big eyes that he’d used the f-word. I asked him about it later, and he rolled his eyes and said, “Oh, Mom, she thinks ‘fart’ is the f-word!” I decided not to ask what he thought the f-word was. Ignorance is bliss and all.
Our household rules are similar to ShelliBean’s.
Ha, and here I thought from the subject line “When your child is 25 months…” that the rest of the sentence might have gone, “…you need to start giving the age in units of years!”
What’s wrong with saying “my child is 2 years old”, or “turned 2 a month ago” if you must be precise? I can understand using months as a unit up to around 18 months. I’d even accept “24 months” in some contexts, as it appears on some clothing sizes as the upper end of a range (12-18; 18-24 months). But come on: once a kid is walking and starting to talk, you don’t have a baby any more, you have a toddler! I’ve talked to people who speak of their child being “29 months old”, and it actually took me a second or two (after an initial “wha?”) to convert that into “almost 2 and a half”.
Anyway, pet peeve/minor rant aside, I somehow managed not to have these “surprise cursing from a toddler” incidents with any of my three kids (now aged 9, 7 and 5). What I got instead were embarrassing public observations about other people in the context of regurgitating earlier overheard statements, such as “Mama, you said eating too many french fries would make you fat, is that why that lady is fat?” (pointing at a rather overweight lady at a McDonald’s eating french fries). Or, “Look Mama, that woman is wearing that shirt from Macy’s you said looked trashy!” (As you maybe can tell, my wife at one time was prone to dropping comments like this…)
Hmm…yea, our first turns 2 in in a couple of weeks. She picks up on everything - even things we can’t figure out! Like, ‘oo la la?’ She also drops the curse words and words that sound like male bodyparts but we try to ignore it and hope no one else picks up on it:)
For a while, our toddler loved to bang his fist on the table and say “fuck.” Thankfully, we got past that phase. Now, thanks to Daddy, whenever you honk the horn, he says, “Fuckin’ guys! Dammit.” He’s 2 1/2 (more accurately, 31 months 
)
Here, here (or hear, hear).
I remember one time when I was carrying something precariously perched on a pile of things, and I sorta knew it was going to fall, and so when it did, I managed to refrain from cussing.
Dweezil thoughtfully provided the off-color commentary for me. 
smack:
And at one point, I forget why, but one kid was on some medication and the other kid wanted some too. So Typo Knig had the brilliant idea of giving the non-medicated kid something - perhaps a vitamin, or a cookie, or something, and saying “here’s your placebo!”.
We fully expected to hear from the school, asking why our child was asking for placebos!
Um, correction. Your children are 108, 84 and 60. Months. 
Ooo. I forgot about the “you’re fat” “you’re missing a leg” “what happened to your face?” comments. The four year old told a guy at the salad bar “hey, you’re fat!” but really, he was fat. He also told a really tall guy the other day “boy your neck is long” but the guy just laughed and said “well I’m a really tall person!” The fat guy laughed too. I don’t think it came as a surprise to him. The “why is that lady in a wheelchair?” stuff doesn’t bother me because I just say “because she can’t walk on her legs. Some people are born that way or have accidents that means they need a chair.”
The really embarrassing stuff for me is along the lines of random recollections of the sex talk. Loudly. In the grocery store. And when it dawned on my son and he announced that his mother had sex before marriage (I got married after kids).
Oh, yeah…One time we were in an ice cream store and the Boy, then 3 years old, saw a girl with very freckled skin. “What’s wrong with that girl? Her have spots on her face! She should stay home!” OK, honey, that’s great, because 10-year-old girls aren’t self-conscious at all.
And to think, he barely spoke until he was over 2 and I thought he never would. Now I wonder if he’ll ever stop.
Rats! has been my favorite explitive for about 15 years. I am not sure why I picked it up, but it has stuck.
I never was much for swearing anyway. I have been known to yell F*CK once or twice…like when I hit a deer, or drove my car in a ditch.
I thought this thread was going to be about when your child is 25 months, you can stop referring to them as X months. He’s two, dagnabbit!
Mt favorite time was when my wife & I were trying to break ourselves of swearing; she harped on me to start a curse jar. For months, it was “you swear too much, it should cost you to swear that much!”
So we started a curse jar. Each time you swore, $.25 into the jar.
We ponied up weekly, on the honor system.
Week 1: @$5.00 each
Week 2: @$5.00 for me, $3.50 for her.
Week 3: $4.25 for me @$2.00
We come to week 4; which was a really lousy week. Her work was in shambles, and life was just nuts. Come Friday night, and I sheepishly pony up $10.25. She then asks if she can put in a check…
She wound up with $37.75 into the bank for that week…
I stopped being nagged about my language after that.
Eventually, she taught our kids and both of our godsons their first swear words. Our friends were thrilled.
Eli
One other thought, it’s amazing how the swear words continue to live with you as you get older.
My father was a mechanic, with the colorful vocabulary that comes as part of their toolbox. We could always tell how mad he was, based on which swear words came out.
The ultimate was a term that meant you had carnal relations with a porcine animal. If we heard that term, we all headed for the hills until the swearing stopped. Everyone; my sister, me, my friends; all knew that term was BAD NEWS.
Fast forward 30 years. My dad’s been dead for 12 years at this point.
My 2 childhood buddies and I were installing a toilet at one buddies house. In the process of aligning it, we managed to crack the ceramic base. As one, we all shouted “porcine animal-lover!” at the top of our lungs.
Some things are meant to be passed from generation to generation.
Eli
Oh, yes, the embarrassing comments. My dear son, 4 or 5 years old, on meeting my oldest friend’s husband ran up and wrapped his arms around his (very ample) waist and proclaimed loudly, “Your stomach is SO FAT!”
My friend and I have never spoken about it.
The worst part of MamaTigs’ story for me is that I was there…and I was the barely-teenage older sister who was embarassed by other people breathing, pretty much.
I have a coworker who must see this thread. Her son is five months old. And she’s got quite the mouth.