Inside: This is an excellent (and fun) tip to use with your kids if you catch your kids cursing. No one wants their child cussing so here’s what to do.
My husband and I were in the other room with the younger kids when we heard a commotion.
My 7 year old daughter yelled…
“Mom, he just said THE F WORD!!!!!!!!!!!”
We looked at each other in surprise… so our 6 year old son had learned the F word and used it on his big (kinda bossy) sister.
Well… that was a surprise.
I didn’t need to ask where he’d learned the bad word
Kindergarten had taught him a few choice words. And the truth is, our kids are going to hear bad words and that’s life.
Even if we never say them.
You may play only Christian music in the car, but someone in the checkout line will curse. You choose “good friends” for your kids and they’ve learned “bad words” from their teenager neighbor.
And on and on.
The truth is, I knew they’d learn these words eventually, and I was prepared.
I knew my reaction to the bad words mattered
As I called my son over to get to the bottom of this, it was important I didn’t freak out.
Act shocked.
Make a huge deal out of it.
I knew that would give power to the bad words and then – when my son was frustrated at me – he might use these words to push my buttons.
So we called him in. We explained our family rules about using curse words. Basically, we don’t use these words ourselves and don’t want them used in our hearing.
We think there are other more age appropriate words that can be used to express whatever we want to say.
Then I broke out the Best Trick Ever
And what is the best “consequence” for using curse words?
➡️ Give them somewhere they CAN say what they want to say, but not to you or in your presence.
I said calmly to my darling potty mouthed son, without any signs of anger or frustration or shock….
We don’t want to hear these words. So if you feel the urge to say that word, that’s fine, you can go to the edge of the yard and say it out into the trees until you feel finished.
He just stared at me for a minute. He knew the word would not be okay with me, but he didn’t expect that.
Now, if you don’t live in the woods like me, you can save potty talk for the room with the potty.
“Saying what the child can do also avoids the pitfalls of Taboos. Taboos are guaranteed to challenge kids and focus their interest on the problem.”
Sandy Blackard, mentor of mine and creator of the bathroom trick, from her book SAY WHAT YOU SEE©
Send your child to the bathroom with their potty mouth
You can say something like….
“If you want to use that word you can do it in the bathroom with the door shut so the rest of us don’t hear it. You can come out when you’re done.” Â
Then you let them have at it. If they come out and want to say the word again, send them back in until they get it all out.
Read: Time In Vs. Time Out … and is Time Out Damaging Kids?
They may go into the bathroom to say their bad words a time or two but, honestly, kids aren’t that interested in cussing if nobody is listening.
By sending them to the bathroom to get out their potty talk, you’re not giving power to the bad words. Children have an innate desire for power (we all do) and we as parents can’t control what comes out of their mouths.
If we push hard on this, we’re likely to get into a power battle over ugly words. And this could escalate into some nasty conversations as the kids get older.
Instead… state your boundary, don’t act like the kids are going to end up in a gang because they said the S-h word, and send them to the bathroom to let it all out.
Back to when my son yelled the F word to his sister…
So I tell my very analytical, quite serious, mildly perfectionist 6 year old son all nonchalantly that he can go the edge of the woods and yell that bad word into the woods if he wants to.
I had been clear about my expectations with him and hadn’t acted shocked and appalled about the whole thing, but I was curious… why exactly had my son yelled the F word at his sister in the first place?
So I said to him casually…
“What happened? Why did you say the F word to your sister?”
As he started telling me the story, I was glad I hadn’t pulled out a bar of soap to shove in his mouth. That would have been premature…
He said to us in a serious business like tone…
“Well, I was trying to talk to her and then she kept interrupting me. She started repeating every word I said. I kept telling her to stop and she WOULDN’T.
So then I said the One Word I KNEW she wouldn’t repeat back!”
???
I had no words.
My husband fought the urge to congratulate him on his ingenuity and I just kept thinking, well, you gotta hand it to the kid.
He knew the rules so well he used them to outsmart his sister.
He’s said one bad word since then….
After that incident he dropped the F bomb once more.
He got sent to the edge of the yard, of course. And I’ve never heard him or anyone else in the house say a bad word since.
Because we were clear about the rules.
We didn’t give the curse words unnecessary power.
And we took away the temptation to use the words because we didn’t make them taboo…
::
Related Reads:
I just told my daughter if she says all the bad words now it will take all the fun out of it when she’s a grown up!!!
Ha! :)
I so needed this today! What a great way of dealing with this. It is such a hard thing for children to stop doing completely. We just started dealing with this issue last week….. So grateful for you!!!!
Hi, Val! And you can’t control what kids hear out in public, right? All we can do is share out own values, give them something to “do” so we don’t fuel the fire, as Martha said, and then keep it up.
Awesome! I fully agree. Making it taboo usually only fuels the fire.
And I loved your son’s reasoning! :)
Yes, taboo totally fuels the fire, great way to say it!
Love this! What a great way of dealing with an inevitable situation. Going to use it now for my 5 year old who thinks potty talk is *the* most hilarious and going to keep it in my back pocket for the moment my first grader gives all those “bus lessons” a test drive in our house. Thanks for your humorous, thoughtful and intentional strategies. Love reading your posts!
Thanks so much, Meghan! I know the first time we heard our son say it we were like WHAT ON EARTH but you can’t stop them from hearing it can you?
I had to deal with a bad word incident today and that was my question how do you deal with it and give it no merits. I used the if you say it again you will lose a privilege but I like your idea much better! To the washroom it will be. Thanks!
Mixie, yes it’s totally not “condoning” because ultimately unless we gag our kids they can say what they want. We communicate what we want, why we want (or don’t want it) and then act like it’s not a big deal at this point!
I just read your response to the mothers who thought telling your kids where to curse was condoning it. It was rather bitter and condescending and worse- you labeled them all as Christian. How do you know they were all Christian and even if they were what does that have to do with their comments? Telling your kids where to curse is indeed a form of condoning the behavior. So what. Why get upset about it? Why cast Christians in a negative light because of it? I thought you were a Christian yourself but I guess not.
I was trying to address the issue AS A CHRISTIAN, hope that helps. I didn’t think that addressing fellow moms about a certain issue was casting them into a light. Sorry it came across that way :)
My apologies. I just looked at the faith part of your website and learned that you are a Christian. I also re-read your response and maybe I was wrong about that too but I’d like to encourage you not to cast Christians in a negative light in a public forum.
Oh goodness, I am a Christian myself and would totally not do that! I guess it seemed like saying ‘Christian moms’ it seemed like I am not one. Which I am :)
I didn’t feel like your comment came across as negative (I saw the comment in the email, then came to read the article out of curiosity). But, I disagree that “it’s biblical” (I guess that was applying to wanting to do something that’s forbidden). God DOES command us to simply not do some things, right?! Why is it somehow okay to tell our children, “ok, you can use that filthy word, but only in this place”? Why not say something like “This is a word that God doesn’t want us to use, but you can say *this* instead if you feel like you have to.” I dunno. I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree on this one.
I think your way is absolutely fine as well! And God does simply forbid us to do things, that’s true. I am coming from the angle (and gobs of research) that says that overly controlling our children actually can produce the opposite results. Like they *want badly* to do what we’ve forbidden them to do. Especially these “taboo” things. And, for us, we feel there’s so much the Bible says to do and not to do… adding something to the mix that isn’t mentioned really in the Bible just didn’t jive. Either way, we’ve only ever heard 2 bad words said in our home so I think at least we’re getting the desired result!
Would this method work for a 3 year old? She just turned 3 two months ago.
Great question! On the one hand, she’s so young it’s not even taboo yet really because she’s too young to know what words are socially acceptable on some level. On another, it can seriously be used as a weapon if you pop a forehead vein when she says a bad word, ha! So you could try the “we don’t say that” and if she repeats, the bathroom trick might do it
Hmmm. I wonder if this works on husbands too.
ha!
Such a good point! Haha
Thank you for this 🥰
Why should a child need to use a swear word?
Does sending them to the bathroom to swear, so you “can’t hear them”, stop them from using inappropriate words in front of others?
Don’t teach them to swear out of your earshot.
Teach them not to swear
I agree with this, my overall point is that you can’t MAKE them not swear. And so forbidding it makes i MORE enticing. Youc an hold your value (no cursing) and your boundary (no cursing in your presence) which communicates your value to your kids. But you can forbid it and they curse in their head at you.
I totally agree with all you said. My daughter at 2 picks up every word she hears outside, with her teenage sisters friends and even Dad. I so let her know that is “a bad word” and we don’t use that. I tell her to use another word like oops or oh my.