by Kellie Webster

Created on: January 23, 2009

Protecting your child's ears from hearing profanity is almost as difficult as shielding their eyes from the golden arches. But just like teaching them to eat healthy we can also teach them to speak well and without the need to include those words that seem to flow so freely from some.

Once a child discovers they get a reaction or attention from using swear words they will often continue to use them. Regardless of their comprehension of the word, it is the reaction they seek.

So if a young child swears, try not to react. I still recall the first time my daughter swore at the tender age of three. My ex-husband and I were so surprised we laughed hysterically before composing ourselves. Our reaction was a delight to our toddler, who repeated the word (starting with SH) continuously, focusing her eyes on our faces to see if she could continue to get us to laugh. Of course if it continues you do need to curb the use of the word. Our solution was to turn that SH' word into SHOOT. Eventually when our reaction was not forthcoming she moved onto other more appropriate words.

As she grew up she picked up other words from the various social circles she was exposed to. It is hard for a child to understand that some words are "not acceptable" whilst others don't carry any weight. So it became important for us to lay down some guidelines.

A friend whose son was of similar age to our daughter, swore like a trooper and no amount of asking him to stop worked. So his Mother came up with a compromise, he was allowed to swear as much as he wanted so long as

1. He only did it in his bedroom

2. Nobody else was in there with him

3. He did it with a quiet voice

Every time he swore he was asked to go to his room, not in disgrace, but as a reminder that that was the only place it was acceptable in their home. It soon lost its interest to him, with nobody to react nor listen to him, he found he no longer had a need to use those words.

Children look up to their parents and learn from them.
It is for that reason that parents must lead by example. It is not enough to tell a child not to use "those" words in their daily conversations, parents also need to provide alternate adjectives for their child to use. A child has limited vocabulary, so try to be creative if you need to cuss or swear. Take the Madagascar movie for example, Alex the lion is running along the beach, he trips on a log and is about to fall on his face, suddenly out of his mouth comes "Sugar Honey Ice Tea", a nice way to "cuss".

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