{in this post i discuss how ben and i have handled our kids learning about swear words. just a heads-up for you, my dear readers.}
a sunny, warming-up spring afternoon. ben and i were sitting on the swings while maddie and isaac were riding their bmx bikes at the park. there were some older boys working with their skateboards; it seemed like they were being pretty decent with our kiddos around. i was looking all around at the melting snow and the shadows and the sunlight and chatting with ben and half watching the bikers and skaters. i vaguely heard one of the older boys drop the f-bomb (you know, the f-word that rhymes with stuck). i turned to ben and said something about if maddie and isaac are around the park here very much they are going to hear that word and we are going to have to explain it to them.
so far, we've just taken each swear word as they come, talked about the word and what it means and why we choose not to use it. at some point, they watched some cowboy movies and heard what the hell. they watched secondhand lions and heard robert duvall say damn a fair bit. so, i explained that hell is an awful place, so why would we want to say that word just for everyday. and damn means you want to send someone or something to hell, so that's an ugly word, too.
we had the whole donkey-ass-backside-fool explanation sometime around christmas one year. somebody asked what is an ass? after the reading of the christmas story. don't they mean donkey? didn't mary ride a donkey?
when isaac was pretty little, ben overheard one of his buddies tell him, "some people i know call poop shit. what do you call poop, isaac?" isaac told him, "i just call it poop." his buddy said, "yeah. me too." ben followed up on that one with isaac, and then explained it to maddie, as well. we had pigs then. the back corner of their pen was full of this stuff. but people who want to sound nice call it something else, like pig-poop.
in ben's and my conversation at the park, i told him that i was just so grateful that maddie and isaac had made it this long without realizing that they may have heard the f-word, without it registering in their little minds. they are 9 and 10. to have made it this long without that word presenting itself is a blessing!
i also told ben that there is a song on one cd that we have that i always skip. the kids sometimes have asked why i always skip that song. i told them that there is a word in that song that is very ugly. it is a harsh and violent swear word (thank you, mumford and sons for using the f-word.), and we left it at that.
i'm sure you all know where this is going . . .
later, back at home, we were all sitting around the table, eating supper and, towards the end of the meal, isaac says, "is fuck a swear word?" just like that. no hesitation. and ben and i look at each other and just about laugh, because this is about four hours after the conversation in the park. and because this is the boy who calls stupid the s-word and dumb the d-word and is all kinds of distraught if he hears anyone use them. "yep. it is. where did you hear that, isaac?" "one of the big boys crashed his bike and said it today."
so ben told the kids that this word is one of the most harsh swear words. that a lot of people who say some of the others won't use this one. but also, that there are people who use this one for everything and the harsh meanings get lost on them. ben told the kids that even when he was younger and it didn't bother him to use the other words we've talked about, when he didn't care if he sounded respectful, that this one was pretty much off-limits in his mind.
of course, maddie wanted to know what it means. i've been thinking about this, too, ever since skipping the mumford song, because i didn't want to explain the sexual part of the meaning, but i wanted to be able to explain the harshness, so i said something like, "it's such an ugly word. and it has a pretty big meaning. it is violent, pushing into or through, slamming, tearing, ramming, ruining, hard, harsh, ripping, digging, turning something into an absolute mess, sometimes mangled and bloody. people use it for situations, for awful people, for things that happen to them, for things they do to others. that kid's crash probably hurt, but he wasn't laying in a mangled, bloody heap needing an ambulance; that word wasn't appropriate."
after a bit more talking, isaac said, "i knew i would ask you about it, but i didn't want to ask you at the park where other people might hear me. i thought i should just ask you at supper, at the table, cause that's where we talk about stuff."
yep. that's where we talk about stuff. and we'll just keep right on talkin' about stuff around our table.