Thank you for this post! I’ve been feeling worried about my daughter picking up inappropriate language and you’ve helped me relax and realize that we can work with it, even if it happens. Whew! What a relief. Thanks again.
I haven’t quite reached this stage in my son’s development yet, but I really liked the suggestion that Seonaid made about diverting the child’s attention away from the word. I know my mother always said that it was adult language that we couldn’t use until we were 18 or older. Of course at 21, she will still get on to me if I use “adult” language.
Like Stacy, my husband and I swear and are pretty okay with swearing in general.
Our outlook is that they’re all just words that someone decided were bad but we do not necessarily believe that words can be “bad”. We do try to teach our kids not to use them until they understand the meanings and we explain that some people are uncomfortable and/or offended by these words so they definitely cannot use them around other people out of respect.
I try not to say “we don’t use language like that” for the same reason as Stacy mentioned- who’s “we”? because if “we” is the family as a whole, then that’s not entirely true.
Overall, we ignore the behavior and it usually stops. Sometimes I give them a gentle reminder that those words are not words for them right now but usually, I just ignore it and it stops.
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Thank you for this post! I’ve been feeling worried about my daughter picking up inappropriate language and you’ve helped me relax and realize that we can work with it, even if it happens. Whew! What a relief. Thanks again.
I haven’t quite reached this stage in my son’s development yet, but I really liked the suggestion that Seonaid made about diverting the child’s attention away from the word. I know my mother always said that it was adult language that we couldn’t use until we were 18 or older. Of course at 21, she will still get on to me if I use “adult” language.
Like Stacy, my husband and I swear and are pretty okay with swearing in general.
Our outlook is that they’re all just words that someone decided were bad but we do not necessarily believe that words can be “bad”. We do try to teach our kids not to use them until they understand the meanings and we explain that some people are uncomfortable and/or offended by these words so they definitely cannot use them around other people out of respect.
I try not to say “we don’t use language like that” for the same reason as Stacy mentioned- who’s “we”? because if “we” is the family as a whole, then that’s not entirely true.
Overall, we ignore the behavior and it usually stops. Sometimes I give them a gentle reminder that those words are not words for them right now but usually, I just ignore it and it stops.