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“Mimi don’t tell dad”, my son whispers loudly. Moments later my daughter yells from the other room, “Dad, Carter said a bad word!” Wonderful, my children are swearing. What is this horrible foul word my son has said? I make my way into the room where they both are sitting.
I do my best not to swear in front of my children. For some reason, or no real reason a swear word will come out of my mouth in general conversation. This usually doesn’t happen when my children are in the room. Actually even if my children are not in the room they can hear everything; they were born with super hero like hearing. I am sure I had this super power when I was a child but that was many years ago and I can’t quite remember if I did ease drop or even thought twice when my father occasionally would swear.
My daughter is at that ease dropping stage where she wants to hear grownups talk. She will find some reason to be within ear shot and then in the middle of a conversation she will throw in her two cents. It’s cute but sometimes those conversations are the ones I find myself having a slip of the tongue.
My son would rather play with others then stick around and hear parents or adults talk. But somehow I am afraid he has caught on to some of the words I have said, along with other words and phrases that I never say and don’t approve of.
“No duh.” “Fire trucks are red duh.” This is what my son was saying recently. The word “duh” is a horrible word. I remember saying it when I was a kid and somehow this word has made its way to my son 30 years later. It infers that the person you are talking to is stupid or should already know something you are talking about. After hearing my son say this a few times I let him know it was not a nice thing to say and that I didn’t want him saying it anymore. I haven’t heard him say it again but this is not the word or phrase my son said. I will get to that word in second.
“Baba, that is lame!” Baba is what my kids call their grandmother in case you were wondering. For the record neither my wife nor I use the word lame. Just another word I have told my son not to use anymore as it just seems mean spirited.
I make it into the room where my son and daughter are sitting. My son keeps telling me how sorry he is for saying a bad word. My daughter is close and is eager to share the bad word that my son slipped out.
“So what is this bad word that Carter said?”, I asked. “Carter said Dang it”, my daughter quickly answered.
“Dang it is not a bad word Mimi”, I said (at least as far as I am concerned). We then got into some small discussion as to how she got 
this confused with something else I had said. My son was relieved to find out he was not in trouble and had done nothing wrong.
Not even a few days later his sister again made me aware of a bad word my son had said. This time the word was damn. This was a word I knew I had slipped out from time to time. More specifically it was “damn it” but never the less I spoke to my son about it and told him it was not ok to use that word.
It makes me feel quite bad that I have said a specific negative word enough to where my son thinks it’s ok to use. I can’t really blame him at his age for saying the word when I know the source (me). What I can tell him is that it is not ok to say and that he will get in trouble going forward if he chooses to say it again. I will do my best from here on out to not swear so that I can be a better example.
If you have a story like this I would love to hear about it in the comment section below this post. How did you deal with it? Where did your child hear the word?
Thanks for reading,
Andrew (the overprotective parent)
