It's amazing what sounds vulgar coming out of a little kid's mouth. So when Hazel recently adopted the habit of saying, "Oh my gosh" every 5 seconds I had to prohibit it, even though I say it all the time. And when Ginger recently exclaimed, "Oh my heck!" I was a bit dumbfounded and asked her where she heard it. Aiden at school. (I thought, did his parents go to BYU? 'Cause that's the last place I heard that.) Bathroom words and body part words are out, too, at least for entertainment purposes.
Anyway, I'm curbing my own slang more than ever these days and I'm just wondering, what do you let your kids say and not say (at least around you)? They've got to be human, but holy crap, they're kinda young to be slanging!
6 comments:
We've run into the "Oh my gosh" and the other "oh my..." especially since Ethan started school. We have told them to say "oh my goodness" instead. So far, other expressions have been okay...like "awesome" and "cool"! Ethan has hit the potty phase as he wants to put a "pee pee" on everything...argh!
I think I've done pretty well avoiding saying many of the things I think in my head in front of my children. Reuben has consequently resorted to yelling BLAST OFF! and Biscuit!! and Go Away! when very angry. Unfortunately all of those words when said out of a mumbled toddler mouth sounds TERRIBLE. Particularly Go Away. the w gets a hard d sound and the y somehow gets close to an m sound. So around our house it frequently sounds like Reuben is invoking the divine to sentence our cat to eternal condemnation.
Kari,
That is a great question. George has just gotten into saying "poopy" which I find amusing, and functional of course. But I don't want him to be a vulgar kid... So it's made Ashley and I contemplate what kind of words we'll endorse. No final word yet. Just wanted to thank you for beginning the dialog.
Adam and I have an endless argument over "Oh my gosh." I say it all the time but he says I don't enunciate the "sh" enough and it sounds bad. Then I get mad and tell him he has no right to accuse me of taking the Lord's name in vain when I would never do such a thing . . . you get the picture. But it does give me pause when I hear Elizabeth say it. I think I need to switch to "goodness." Luckily, she already says that more. And if she hears "shut up," SHE is the one correcting US.
We are so past that point, since the kids are almost 10 and 14. We generally ignored things that shouldn't be said, after a first offense discussion. Now, it's more of questions asking what things mean. Either way, my kids don't like bad language and have to be careful not to police their less religious friends. But when a question comes home like yesterday: Mom, what does d%*k mean, and I know its short for Richard. Well, yeah, I'm kind of past the Oh my gosh thing. They figured out when it didn't bother us, it wasn't worth saying anymore. And, what did I do with the question? Well, since this kid's so smart, I asked him what he thought. And he told me exactly what the slang means. I also told him it's another term for jerk. And that it's really not a nice thing to say, especially since it was his great grandfather's name. And that was that. I know it'll never come up again, and he'll never use in incorrectly, at least as long as he's living in our house. OK, enough rambling.
We put the kabosh on "gosh" early, replacing it with "goodness" or "lands". My personal curse words are "Dogs!!" and "Crumb!!", both of which I genuinely dislike. (Q doesn't have any.) I also had to teach my kids that just because their friend, the Stake President's daughter, says "Darn it!", it's not okay for you. I have yet to meet this challenge with the boys, but I think the existing family culture will help.
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