What to do when kids start swearing

My four-year-old son, Mica, is in his room, playing with his toy cars. On the roadways that wind through his imagination, he's a very good driver. He knows his stop signs and always ensures his invisible seat belt is buckled before he roars out of town in his miniature '57 Corvette, leaving Bob the Builder to eat his dust. But in play, as in real life, his patience is not infinite. And just like his old man, he'll occasionally lean on his horn. "Beep, beep," he says, in his cartoon-character voice.

It's so cute I want to cry. How many times has he seen me doing the same thing? It's both comforting and frightening to ponder just how blank a slate a child can be. "Beep, beep," he says again. And then: "Beep, beep – Jesus!"

Huh? Perhaps I'd heard wrong. "What was that, Mica?"

"Beep, beep, Jesus. Beep, beep, Jesus. Beep, beep – JESUS!"

Where the [expletive deleted] did he pick that up?

Like father like son
In so many, many places. At the intersection of Robson and Hornby streets when the driver in front of me couldn't figure out that a turning lane is, remarkably, reserved for turning. On Cambie Bridge, now a veritable automobile logjam as a result of Vancouver's construction mayhem. Mica has heard it dozens of times during his life. Like father, like son. Or like Brian Mulroney, in a private moment.

I've always had a rather salty tongue. As a father I've tried to tame it. But at times, I'm not even fully aware that I'm spouting profanities – a significant problem when one is tasked with modelling acceptable norms of behaviour for a four-year-old child.

I tried the word-substitution tack, which magically transformed a well-known sacrilegious utterance into the inoffensively bland "Gosh darn it." "Holy crap!" became "Holy mackerel!" a phrase that seemed almost worse for its heresy. (The Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost…and the Blessed Fish. Amen.) "Hickory dickory!" came out of nowhere. When I first heard myself say it, for a brief second I thought I was channelling that banjo-playing kid from the movie Deliverance, the one with the head shaped like a lightbulb.

Dealing with the problem
Nevertheless, it worked. Mica swapped milquetoast euphemisms in place of the profane. Still, something was wrong. Clearly, even low-grade gutter talk spilling from the mouth of a preschooler is bad; but was "what the heck?" much better? The difference between a "darned thing" and the handy little phrase I'd normally reach for is subtle. My approach, I realized, was fundamentally flawed. Substituting pseudo-swear words for real ones is like substituting beer for vodka: it may seem like a kinder, gentler alternative, but the eventual outcome is pretty much the same.

No, it wasn't the words that were the real problem. Rather, it was the emotional intensity behind them. Mica was modelling my anger, my impatience, my frustration. I was passing it on as surely as if it were the texture of my hair. And that was a much bigger problem than a salty tongue.

What's my next move? Right now, I have no idea. All I know is this is going to be tough. Sweet Jesus, indeed.

Read more:
Teaching your toddler good hygiene
Getting your kids in the swim
Discipline strategies for parents

Guy Saddy is a dad and writer who lives in Vancouver.

This story was originally titled "Beep, Beep" in the June 2008 issue. Subscribe to Canadian Living today and never miss an issue!

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