Letting my kids swear means no topic is taboo
By: Krystal Moralee
Tags: Parenting Teenagers, Parenting, Communication

Letting my kids swear means no topic is taboo

And that means they actually talk to me.

Photo by Jelleke Vanooteghem on Unsplash

It’s zero-dark-thirty and I’m driving my freshman son to school. He’s going on a rant about this one kid and the supposedly terrible things he does.

“He’s such a cunt,” finished my son.

Momentarily, I was stunned. Had my firstborn actually said that word — THE C-word — in front of his mother? Yes, he had. And he’d said it conversationally and matter-of-factly, with no embarrassment even considered.

I barked a little laugh.

“Wow. You must really dislike him. I can’t believe you called him that.”

And then, Mom that I am, I felt it necessary to explain to my kid that using that particular word is pretty off-putting to some people, so he should be careful about using it. After that, we went right back to our conversation about so-and-so, and what makes him so rotten.

At one point, I’d have been shocked to listen in to some of these conversations between my children and myself because in what seems like another lifetime, we didn’t swear. When my boys were very young, they didn’t even know what cuss words were. Upon hearing someone reference the S-word, my kid thought they meant — and he whispered when he said this to me — stupid.

Somewhere along the line, my vocabulary declined. Rather, it increased to encompass words I rarely said aloud. It started around the time my first marriage ended and later, when I began dating the man who became my second husband, my tongue loosened up even more. Part of that is because my now-husband swears like an old Marine, which isn’t surprising because he was raised by one.

As my marriage was ending and then while I was becoming accustomed to life as a single mom, I made a vow to keep it real with my children. That meant they got to see my raw, ugly emotions as I navigated what would become the hardest years of my life so far, and I was open with them about what I was going through. Possibly more often than it should have, that involved swearing.

The boys were pretty young when their dad and I split up, but I’m proud to say that as my oldest entered his preteen years and then became a teenager, I was able to nurture that open relationship to the point that now, he’s comfortable talking to me about anything. Admittedly, there were times over the years when I probably spoke a little too frankly, involving my kids in the grown-up things I was going through, but that’s okay. We’re all just muddling through this parenting thing as best we can anyway.

The swearing thing just kind of evolved. At first, he kind of felt around it, maybe slipping in a word here or there to see what he could get away with. Sometimes I laughed, sometimes I reprimanded, but usually I worked hard to make sure I didn’t flinch.

Why? Because he was talking to me.

I am an only child, and I never really got into the habit of swearing in front of my parents. Only now, in my 40s, might I let one slip in front of my dad and I kid you not, I blush when it happens. I got into the habit of guarding my words when I was growing up, I suppose for fear of not being the good little girl I wanted to be perceived as. That self-censorship extended deeper than the words themselves, too. I never really felt comfortable discussing any remotely sensitive topics with my folks either.

I didn’t want that for my relationship with my boys, so I deemed any word and any topic fair game. I did so by answering their questions — even the hard ones — calmly and honestly, and by metering my reactions when they said something shocking.

Because my kids and I like to go for long drives and find new places to explore in our beautiful state, we spend a lot of time in the car and that is the perfect setting to talk about things. My oldest is in charge of choosing the music we listen to, and the conversation flows in the most amazing ways between any subject that comes to mind. We’ve talked about love and sex and politics and substance abuse. We discuss liberty and feminism and Led Zeppelin and where we can find the best bowl of Pho or deep-fried pickles.

They’ve asked me questions that make me think, and they’ve made me explain things I didn’t want to talk about. I’ve asked them questions that they don’t want to answer, and I’ve responded calmly to the answers I didn’t want to hear.

Sometimes, we talk about what a cunt some kid at school is.

I don’t like excessive swearing. I think cuss words can be used effectively to express strong feelings, but their use can also get to a level that makes a person sound uneducated. I’m trying to teach my children the difference.

My youngest is a preteen, and he’s just starting to feel around the edges of swearing. Generally, it’s when his brother has really pissed him off and he’ll tell him as much. Sometimes I’ll caution him and sometimes I’ll let it slide. If his older brother’s language seems to be slipping dramatically, I’ll give him a nudge that it’s getting excessive and he’ll self-correct. (Until one of those teenage male rage-outbursts occurs.)

So far, it’s been working.

I hope that as my boys get older and life’s topics get more difficult, they’ll continue to feel like they can talk to me about them. And if throwing the C-word in there helps them express what they need to, I’m all for it.