Hot on the heels of nearly teaching my child to swear when asking for candy, I came across a mom who curses a lot wondering how to deal with this issue.
In any case, this is a sticky issue for me. I once vowed not to morph into one of those uptight parents who tries to raise their kids in a bubble. And I never gave much thought to my language when there wasn’t a tiny human in the house.
Now, I get annoyed when my husband plays a semi-violent video game in her presence. The hip-hop music he likes is now verboten when she’s in the car with us; why didn’t all the violence and misogyny in the lyrics faze me pre-baby?
I can tell you why they should faze you now: because your child doesn’t yet have the context to deal with these kinds of messages. Adults have all kinds of filters and contextual knowledge to determine when something is appropriate or not. We can deal with conflicting information, and we can tell that the violent video game is not real and is not to be emulated in real life.
As far as cursing goes, it offends people. I’d rather not have my child offending people on accident. Swearing is a tool, and it’s silly to give Eli unrestricted access to that tool before he’s really capable of using it. Yes, he’ll hear cursing. Some of it he may hear from me. It’s not my job to protect him from it forever — it’s to give him the context he needs as he’s old enough to handle it.
This was exactly my argument to people who felt it was perfectly fine to let their young children watch The Simpsons and South Park. (They’re cartoons, after all, and cartoons are for children, right?) Yeah, they’re funny as hell, but the *reason* they’re funny is that people *don’t* as a rule act like that. Children don’t have the sophistication to separate that out from “funny to act this way,” so you end up with 11 year olds running around singing the “Blame Canada” song.
Filters? We’re supposed to have filters?! $#!&!!!!!!!
Growing up, I truly believed that cursing was merely the sign of a limited vocabulary. Then I watched linguist and (later) politician S.I. Hiakawa use a bullhorn to tell a demonstrator to “get the hell off the car” and had to rethink my position. Sometimes it is the only way to communicate effectively(as I discovered experientially in the army and certainly civilian situations). As you said, swearing is like comedy (OK, you didn’t say that; I put words in your mouth): timing is everything. And kids simply don’t have the frame of reference to have the timing.