Excuse me but what is silliness about my post? I must be as stupid as you seem to think I am if you and I agree, but when I say it is is “silliness.”
Even though you may choose to assume that the child screaming in public is deservedly being “punished,” at the least, hearing a little kid screaming obscenities will turn heads. The whole point of teaching my children to do this is in the hopes that someone will see that something is not normal and step in to assist.
While I may personally believe that it is asinine for someone to allow words to hold power over them and to be offended at mere words, it is the way it is and that is why I have brought my children up to speak in a way in which the worst judgement passed on them might be that they’re a bit anal retentive. But, you know, I am sure I was unclear on the whole issue of understanding that people judge others. I mean, I did say “I have explained to my kids that I don’t want them doing it for this very reason – other people judge them for it.” I can see how that might be confusing.
Of course there are settings in which cursing is unacceptable. By adults as well as children. The company picnic, court, church, Grandma’s funeral…I don’t think anyone’s denying that. It’s certainly inappropriate at certain times, and I wouldn’t want to witness a five year old chanting George Carlin’s cheer:
(a cheer my stepkids know, with the edit of saying “dirty old socks”)
It’s ridiculous to think that anyone, no matter what age should have free reign to curse at any level, any time, anywhere. I’m certainly not advocating it.
The OP asked “What’s bad about little kids cursing?” I still say: nothing. Sure, there’s a time and a place for it, and believe it or not, most kids know when it’s not appropriate. Surprise, surprise–that’s when and why they’ll often do it. That’s what kids do.
My steps are allowed to curse whenever they want. They know not to run down the street yelling “FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK!!!” unless they’re being chased by bees.
You know what? They don’t curse a whole lot. Take away the taboo status of something, and it loses the majority of its appeal. I was raised from a young age being given wine and after-dinner liqueur. My parents were right in their thinking that I wouldn’t see drinking as anything special, and I became a fairly abstemious adult.
Side note: comparing the word “motherfucker” to “nigger” (I’m not going to vaginafoot around that word. I don’t use it conversationally, except when talking about the word itself) is misleading. Motherfucker is a general term, not referring to anything concrete. It was never used as a term of oppression for an entire group of people. And it certainly doesn’t have the same history and implication as nigger.
I’d rather they not be judged, but ya know, they’re judged on the colour of their skin, their word choices, their clothing, their last name, pretty much everything. I cannot control anyone’s actions or reactions except my own, so such is life. I never have referred to curse words as “grown-up words” though. It just seems like saying “if you talk like this, you will sound more grown-up” when society tends to view it the other way around. With my kids, I simply explain that they will be judged by their words and ask that they give no one a chance to mistake them for something they are not before getting to know them.
Which brings up an important point: If little kids went around cursing all the time, it wouldn’t ever be funny when it did happen (like on South Park).
If little kids spouting obscenities can’t be wrong, it can’t be so-wrong-it’s-funny.
At what age do they know when its not appropriate? Because the thread title is “little kids” and in my experience, LITTLE kids have a hard time understanding that hitting your sister isn’t appropriate, much less when and where swear words are appropriate.
Then maybe we should ask the OP to clarify what age range is being asked about. I’ll admit, my opinion differs depending on the age of the child. My steps are 10 and 12. They were saying “shit” at age 6…
Nevertheless, I still don’t see why “shit” is “bad,” while “poop,” or any one of a dozen other euphemisms is okay.
Who defines what words count as “curse” words? Is it just what the listener defines as offensive?
Is “Jesus” a curse word? Many people find it so, but many others disagree. Ditto “hell” and “damn.”
Funny enough, my kids (both of them) consider any “bathroom words” (piss, pee, poop, shit, doody) to be “dirty words.” They just figured out early on that they could “get away with” using some of them without being told not to say that word. My son gasps when other kids say “poop” in front of me.
As for other words, my MIL, after being told by my daughter that she’d said a “cuss word” (she’d said “hell”) explained that it was “ok if you’re talking about the place.” So we have a family joke that the word “asshole” is ok, since you know, we’re talking about the place – although neither of my kids have tried to actually say it (in front of me).
From “Two dozen and one Greyhounds,” Thanks to the Simpsons Archive:
Bart: Hey, boy, you want to play fetch?
[SLH looks up, tired, then puts his head back down]
Aw. Me and Santa’s Little Helper used to be a team, but he never
wants to play any more since his bitch moved in.
Marge: Bart, don’t ever say that word again!
Bart: Well, that’s what she is. I looked it up.
Marge: Well, I’m going to write the dictionary people and have that
checked. Feels like a mistake to me…
What age is a good question. I have a buddy with a 7-year-old daughter. One day he asked me for some “nice, clean” songs to put in an iPod playlist for her. One criteria was that there be no sappy love songs. One of the songs I suggested was KT Tunstall’s “Suddenly I See,” which I figured was a nice tune that avoided more grown-up themes of love and heartbreak. He listened and decided it was no good - because Tunstall sings “suddenly I see, why the hell it means so much to me.”
Come on, man, you told me she’s already come home from school and asked her mother about the f-word, which she learned from a friend’s older sister. I bet it’s not the first curse she’s ever heard. And the kid is so hopelessly girly already at this age (and boy does she play it up) that I can’t imagine she’d want to spoil her own image by cursing like a sailor. So if the song has an otherwise positive message, why freak out about it? It’s got to be better than those creepy covers of adult pop tunes sung by kids.
Nor do I, but all the same we teach our kids that you don’t say “Jesus H. Christ on a Pogo Stick!” at school no matter how funny mom thinks it is at home. You should make some effort not to offend the general sensibilities.
Some people think shit is a bad word. As are other minor swear words like “hell” and “damn.” My daughter says “I just say darn, it works as well as anything and I don’t get it trouble at school.” That seems sensible because I really don’t want to be explaining to the principal that “to our kids, shit is just a word like darn.”
(At school, potty humor will get you in trouble. Kids end up with the strangest ideas about “bad words.” Shut up is a “bad word.”)
I think this is a good way to look at it - that cursing is bound to make someone sound less immature than more mature. Personally, I don’t really like casual swearing from anyone - whether they’re two years old or 80. I swear sometimes, and everytime I do it sounds (or looks, if I do it in writing) really lame to me. I always think, “That’s the best you can do?”
I want what I say to have power. And I don’t think not using certain words because they’re inappropriate or unimaginative gives them power over you - I think it gives you more power because people are more likely to listen to what you say and hear you instead of being distracted by all the other garbage spilling out of your mouth.
Well, I never thought “shut up” was a ‘bad word.’ It’s just a phrase that is damn near always rude - very rude - and you should never have to say it to anyone. I learned that when I was little. Only time I can think it would be acceptable would be when followed by “and fuck me.” I learned that when I got a little older…
As far as I know, just about every speech community has ranges of synonyms in which some are more socially acceptable than others. It’s natural and universal that your choice of words connotes more things than the words themselves denote, and levels of language - sacred, aristocratic, formal, technical, businesslike, neutral, informal, slang, vulgar, and obscene - are a direct product of that.
I have to share this. I was visiting my sister, and I was sitting on the couch watching TV. My sister was showing something to my adorable redheaded niece, who I think was five at the time. Whatever my sister was showing her must have been awfully surprising, because she exclaimed, “What the fuck?!”
She immediately clapped both hands over her mouth and her eyes got as big around as saucers. “oops?”
I looked up at my sister and asked, “Did she just say what I think she said?”
“Yeah, you know what they hear on the playground these days.”
My sister, who is not prone to profanity, seemed to think it was pretty funny. She didn’t get angry with her daughter, probably because it was clear she already realized she had used that word in an inappropriate setting. Also, maybe because she used it in exactly the correct manner, rather than just spewing it for shock value (she’s an extremely smart kid, with an astonishing vocabulary for her age).
If we’re talking about really little kids, it reflects badly on their parents or other caregivers. Like last month when I encountered a toddler, maybe two and a half, who was loudly telling someone that the mother-fucking faggots were going to go to hell. The kid has no idea what those words mean yet, but it’s obvious that he’s hearing those particular words.
I have taught my daughter to never be unnecessarily offensive to anyone. She really is a very respectful child. I am proud of her natural inclination to offer the utmost respect to people.
But, I also don’t like the idea of allowing words to have too much power over me. I don’t want to unnecessarily offend, but more importantly, I want to be able to avoid being overly sensitive to offense.
Therefore, I am quite frank with my daughter about the reality of words like “nigger”. I doubt anyone would ever be able to hurt her by throwing it at her, but she would never say it to anyone else, (she may say ‘nigga’ when she is older, cause I do. But I don’t think she will because her personality is very different from mine).
Her dad and I did have fun teaching her the proper way to say ‘damn’, ‘hell’, and ‘bitch’. She had figured out that these could be used ‘legitimately’. Again, only in the house around us, not where others may take offense. She doesn’t even abuse it. Only once in a while does she say “That bitch was howling this morning” to the giggles of her dad and I. She knows it is a ‘shocking’ thing to say. I have not had her say it at school or in mixed company.
If my daughter was a different kind of child, I may have thought twice about allowing her to swear. Even as it is, I don’t allow her to say ‘fuck’ or ‘shit’. People just can’t handle that.
As a data point, my dad swore like a sailor all the way through my childhood, but I didn’t swear at all, in front of them or anyone, until I graduated from high school. Now, of course, I take after him, although I don’t have any trouble restraining myself when appropriate.
(I did find myself cursing a blue streak in front of a nice church lady from Indianapolis on a plane once, but that was because we were landing and a sinus condition felt all of a sudden like ice picks were being jabbed into my brain. I apologized.)
I was raised not to swear. I had to watch my mouth constantly at home. It became easier to control my language when I became a broadcaster, and realized that I couldn’t swear off the air and not expect an occasional blooper to hit the airwaves. So I made a conscious effort to remove those words from my life.
A funny story. A morning talk show host in Los Angeles got in a bit of hot water a few years ago. He ran a promo with a 7-8 year old boy saying:
“My name’s Tommy and my mom listens to Bill Handel every morning on KFI. We like Bill. He’s a great guy…OK, Handel, there you go. Now when do I get my 20 bucks, you rat bastard?”
I have to admit I roared with laughter when I heard that. But there was the vocal minority that got that promo canned real quick.
