Today's lesson: Watch your mouth around children

we are horrible, have pathetically tried, but still swear like truckers kind of parents. my kids will be in kindergarten next year and i suspect that is when it will come to bite us in the a**!!! we are good parents tho!!!

You should hear some of the things we hear at work...one of our kiddos, when he was about age 1 3/4, discovered the joy of "dammit" (said as one word, lol). The first time he said it, the other teacher and I were sure we must have heard incorrectly. Later, as he used it repeatedly in appropriate context (stubbed my toe "dammit", spilt the milk "dammit", I want that truck "dammit"), we had to have a quick chat with mom.

AAAARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!! *runs and hides* i dont want to be taken aside for a chat with a TEACHER!!! i can swear AND lie!! my husband is the "bad swearing parent"---not me, i SWEAR!!!!!!!

not meaning to make light of teachers jobs--i am sure it is a chore for you when you are trying to teach all the good things. i will clean up my act!!

Heh. Frenchie. We actually debated about it for a long time. Fortunately, it was mom with whom we had a very good relationship. We simply explained about the phrase we had been hearing, knowing that the mom would likely be a bit embarrassed, but also maybe pay more attention at home. It's one of the hazards of childcare. In a home, you can wait for the phase to pass. Here, where we have 8 little mimics, it would've not have made for happy times for the other 7 sets of parents.

The other day I was in line for the interminable wait to pick up my son from kindergarten. I mean I live like less than a mile from school and it takes 45 minutes. (I walk on the days I don't have my 2yo nephew with me and it only takes 25 minutes on those days). Anyhow... some butthead decided just to cut right in front of all of us who had been patiently waiting in line. Just smooshed his big butt expensive SUV right in there. So I mutter under my breath. "What a f***er!" And eagle ears in the back seat (Justin) "Mommy! Who's a f***er? What's a f***er?" So I try to tell him not to say that, that it's a bad word. "But Mommy, I don't know what a f***er is??!!!???"



That's gonna bite me in the butt for sure.

Lol @ rincaro. Kids hear *everything*.

My parents never swore in front of us that I know of. I didn't even know what a "cuss word" was until third grade when somebody listed it as a sin in religion class.



The big thing we got yelled at for saying was "shut up." all the other kids were allowed to say it, but we weren't. I was discussing this with a friend of mine one day (in second grade) and she says, "Shut up isn't so bad. There's one word, though. It's the worst word in the world. And you should never ever say it." I, of course, wanted to know what the word was. (so that I could make sure I didn't say it... or something) so she told me... "f***" I was so excited. I knew a new word!" "Well, what does it mean?" I asked. "I don't know! Just don't ever say it!" she told me.



I didn't until I got much older. Until I knew what the word meant, it was useless to me. I didn't dare ask my parent, either, because it was "the worst word in the world" and I knew that good little girls NEVER said bad words.



Now I use it all the time in my LJ but in real life, on the occasion that I say something... foul... people laugh at me and say, "Ella said (insert dirty word)! that's so cute! Say it again!"

This thread made me think of Meet the Fockers. A$$. . . . hooollle. Funny movie, and funny thread!

I'm still learning what half of those terms are. I actually learned... about a month ago I guess... what it meant to "give head"



eta: to put this in context... I'm eighteen years old and a freshman in college.

(Emphasis added.)



Masturbate has a u in the middle and only one e--at the end.

My son is 16 months old and has already said **** more than once! I am really trying to watch my mouth too! It just happens so fast, all of a sudden they are repeating everything you say and you have to totally change the way you speak. His vocabulary is expanding so quickly and I say a lot of things that I do not want included in it!

my parents tell this story from when i was five. They picked me up from kindergarden one afternoon and asked me how school was. I said that it was fine, except the kids are dumb. my parents asked what i mean. and i said, 'well, they the asphault is a swear-word. that's not a swear word; these are swear words: . . ."



and then i rattled off a list of about 20 terms that i'd gotten from my mom, dad, great grandmother, and a few other places around. My dad said it was the funniest thing in the world; they were just dying trying not to laugh.



funny thing is, i never used the swear words myself until i was 13. it became popular then and i was trying them out. i stopped about two months after a started. The reason why i didn't swear even though i knew all of the words was because my parents told me that it was uncreative to use those words when there are other adjectives that i could use. So, we set out to find other words that could be used in an explative way, that denote the same ideas--or what i thought the words meant based on context.



so, i didn't swear for a long time, and then i would be veyr snobby about kids who did:



1. you don't even know what that means!

2. if you use those words instead of others, you're being uncreative!

3. you're too dumb to learn other words anyway, because you don't even know what the swear words mean to begin with, or how to use them.



when i was five, i had a massive vocabulary. i also fell in love with the origins of words. when my class studied japan in second grade, i was so into learning the new words--it's crazy.



all of this because my parents told me it was uncreative to swear. and, of course, fully admitted to being uncreative at times.

I didn't wanna say anything. But if you can't spell it right....

...you can still do it right.

a light hearted thread!! yeah i must say i laughed my heinie off reading it. sadly my partner and i swear like crazy and are trying not to in front of our 15 month old. he doesnt' talk much but i know he listens...i will hopefully homeschool so no teacher worries (i am a teacher myself)but...i know we are gonna be in for it if we don't get more "creative". ciao

Swearing was never a big deal to my parents. They just said, "Don't let it be a substitute for creativity or knowledge."



Of course we never swear in front of Nana.

One of the ladies in my mom's group is in the process of potty training her 2 year old. She was horrified when her little girl came up to her and said, "Mommy, I have to take a dump!"

Thank you for the kiss. I won't write you a ticket.



Spelling it right and doing it right may be related.



If you spell it right, u will be at the center of it.



If you do it right, you will be at the center of it.



If you spell it right, e will be at the end.



If you do it right, e --



or even eeee! --



or even eeee-yeah! ---



will be at the end.

I have a friend who is a high school English teacher. Whenever his students use "swear words" in class, he makes them go to the thesaurus and look up a list of synonyms that can be spoken in polite society, write out a copy of the list and turn it in, and use these "acceptable" words instead in the future.



It is possible to express thoughts, emotions and expletives in English without using "cuss" words.

Joe!



Wow, this thread has taken an interesting turn, lol.

They vary widely in quality (and cost). Roget's was considered standard back when I was in school, but many people prefer a "dictionary" style to Roget's numbered conceptual categories. An international thesaurus will provide foreign words and phrases as synonyms as well.



Oddly, there aren't many on line.



The Merriam-Webster dictionary provides a thesaurus, but it is fairly limited:



http://www.m-w.com/



If you look up a word in the OneLook Dictionary



http://onelook.com/



at the bottom of the listings they usually provide a list of "Words similar to [whatever]:"



Wordsmyth calls itself a dictionary-thesaurus:



http://www.wordsmyth.net/



LookWayUp has a thesaurus feature:



http://lookwayup.com/free/



Finally, here's an article on "fake" cuss words (as substitutes for real cusswords):



http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?FakeCussWord

Frenchie, I bet it was awfully cute when that word came out of his little mouth.



I used to use the "s" words when accidents happened and even general purpose. My daughter just hated it. The two of them (15 and 19 now) never have sworn around us except mild phrases. Maybe as long as you don't carry on like a drunken sailer...