Kill the Potty Mouth, Build the Vocabulary

Reading the Google News Alerts this morning, I came upon at a couple of blog posts or articles where parents complained about bad words and potty mouths for different reasons.

In one instance the child in public school was tempted by the potty mouths of others and found himself using a few choice words.

Another complainted about the potty mouths on sports teams. I can remember where I found the other... possibly a comment of agreement.

Anyway, dealing with potty mouths is a part of raising kids. Maybe I was lucky, but I have not had to deal with this in a big way.

Now I am not saying my kids have not dropped a bomb or let a word slip. What I am saying is that each time it happens it is a new word... they never repeat the previous word again. With each new explitive that I hear, I stop, find out where the word came from and in a matter-of-fact manner explain exactly what the word means and why it is not appropriate for civilized conversation. I think because I don't make a huge deal of it, that it does not become a problem in my home.

My kids do have friends, or rather have had friends with potty mouths. My son, especially asks the friend to refrain from cursing as it bothers him... if he in turn gets cursed out for making the request, he chooses not to hang out with that person. This is without my prompting. I just noticed a pattern of when I ask what happened to so-and-so, my son says, he curses too much.... end of conversation. I have actually had to ask my son to give his friends another chance.

I think our biggest problem with cursing in our home is curse word substitutes. I do find myself saying that word "shoot" is just a substitute for (insert unexceptible word), or 'when you say 'darn' do you really mean something else? To be perfectly truthful, my kids say the same thing to me.

Anyway, I guess my point is, cursing is a huge part of this world, I think we just need to inform our kids why we don't use them, morally and for reasons of intelligence. Sometimes we have to give ourselves the same reminders.

In short... this is what this word means, but I am sure you can look into your vocabulary and find a much more intelligent word to use. Use potty mouth moments as a chance to build the vocabulary.

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