Firstly, what are your thoughts on swearing and do you swear? If you do, do you swear in front of your offspring? If you don’t, why?

Personally, I swear like a trouper, mostly because a well-placed profanity can be pretty funny, and other times, slipping one into an argument really hammers my point home. But, I am aware that many people think swearing should be off limits to their kids.

My mother thinks it’s disrespectful to swear in front of her, yet when I asked her whether she thought I disrespected her, she said, no. This conversation would assume that swearing has little to do with respect, because I can quite obviously respect someone whilst spattering my conversation with colourful expletives. Perhaps, disrespect is perceived by my lack of concern for my mother’s preferred conversation code? But, I have my own code, in which she played a part in establishing (albeit a small one), that should also be allowed to be expressed if it causes no real harm.

Let’s look at the word, ‘respect’.

Dictionary.com sites the meanings of respect to be;

3. esteem for or a sense of the worth or excellence of a person, a personal quality or ability, or something considered as a manifestation of a personal quality or ability: I have great respect for her judgment.

4. deference to a right, privilege, privileged position, or someone or something considered to have certain rights or privileges; proper acceptance or courtesy; acknowledgment: respect for a suspect’s right to counsel; to show respect for the flag; respect for the elderly.

Number three, in regard to how I feel about my mother, is… how I feel about my mother. I have high esteem and a sense of great worth for her, including all (well, most) of her personal qualities and abilities.

Number four gets a bit hazy for me when I am quite unsure of the ‘rights’ and ‘privileges’ ascribed to parenthood, if there are any, and if in deed, there should be any, as well as who should appoint them and who should abide by them. I am more concerned with the experience of being myself in the presence of my parents. And, I am more concerned with my child being himself in mine.

This doesn’t mean that I condone three year olds sprouting profanities at their relatives and the rest of the world… but I think this is another issue, although granted, it is related. Kids usually mimic the language they hear at home and it’s pretty damned confronting when a todler tells you to piss off… but if I happen to tell my dodgy uncle to shove his bloody opinion up his backside within earshot of my sweet, little sponge, then I should expect to hear it relayed to me verbatim when I tell said sponge to stop picking his nose. Washing his mouth out with soap is ludicrous as is any kind of punishment considering I am to blame for his linguistic indiscretion, and, considering I think swearing is fun.

A little chat is probably all that’s required, explaining the pitfalls of free expression, particularly in front of grandma. And maybe an apology for providing him with a new attention-grabbing vocabulary, without the common approval to use it.

Teaching kids to think for themselves, I feel, is far more important than imposing hypocritical language limitations and espousing parental rights and privileges. I know my son, now that he is a teenager, swears, and I know it because he swears in front of me. He has chosen not to swear in front of his grandmother, his friends’ parents, people in ‘authority’, and well, just about everyone except me and his close friends. He has taken my advice and chooses his audience carefully, and for me, that’s a huge win. He got where I wanted him to be without coercion. If he does slip up – he knows the consequences and is prepared to accept them.

Swearing often causes no harm, so when it doesn’t, it’s fine with me. When it does, it’s not fine. Grice’s notion of conversational implicature purports language as packed with meaning, depending on linguistic context, the utterer’s agenda, and the situation in which it was uttered.  Go figure! So, when swearing slides dangerously into the realm of abuse it has become something else entirely and shouldn’t be fobbed off so flippantly, so I won’t. Verbal abuse is a serious matter that involves serious psychological issues. My hope is that by teaching kids how to think critically, we might just head those psychological issues off before they become a real and social problem. But, if your child is abusive in any way I’d suggest you seek professional advice and quickly.

Don’t beat your kids up (metaphorically) for swearing if you swear. Think about your reactions to children’s swearing and how you could respond more appropriately by taking responsibility for your part in their verbal achievements and by providing them with the tools to make better decisions. As adults, most of our kids will swear, so I think it would be a much better option for us to learn to be okay with that and happy that our children are comfortable enough around us to be themselves. I want to know my son as the person he is out there in the world, not the pious and proper version he is for my mother.

I respect her wish to be protected from his potty-mouthed reality, but it’s not for me.

Smiley