WTF? F%&#ING KIDS and cursing

[chanel]

Children are learning to use profanity — swearing — at an earlier age, according to research presented at the Sociolinguistics Symposium this month. And the researchers found children are also swearing more often than children did just a few decades ago.

"By the time kids go to school now, they're saying all the words that we try to protect them from on television," says Jay. "We find their swearing really takes off between (ages) three and four."

Kids aren't learning swearing at an earlier age from the television they watch. The rise in cursing mirrors the rise in cursing among adults in the past thirty years that Jay has been studying the psychology of swearing.

Swearing is not a trivial matter about an occasional profanity slipping past a child's lips. Previous research into swearing has shown it has a significant impact with problems at home, in school, and at the workplace.

Children Use Profanity, Swearing, at Earlier Age and More Often | LiveScience


Comments?

 

[Madeline]

Profanity is a matter of generally accepted social norms, chanel. We might be willing to tolerate language on a message board we could not in church, and kids cannot make that distinction. If you don't make it a rule the kidlets you are raising cannot swear no matter what, you are handicapping them socially and career-wise.

You have to lay down the law about this and enforce it, because I have no doubt every American kidlet by age 5 has heard every "bad word" there is. None of us can count on any of us "not to talk like that in front of kids" anymore. Tis a shame, but there it is.

 

[uscitizen]

TV and Family Values and personal responsibility get credit for this issue.

 

[Sarah G]

Teens swear like crazy, they think it makes them sound grown up but it's exactly the opposite.

They'll learn that nobody in the business world wants to hear it and tone it down. At least while they're at work.

 

[Baruch Menachem]

TV and Family Values and personal responsibility get credit for this issue.

Were I to do over my kidraising, the TV would have been in the trash when we went to the hospital for the first delivery.

 

[Madeline]

Teens swear like crazy, they think it makes them sound grown up but it's exactly the opposite.

They'll learn that nobody in the business world wants to hear it and tone it down. At least while they're at work.

This is true, but if your teen aged kidlet knows better than to curse in front of you, they master the difficult art of place-appropriate speech. Letting them learn on the job is like any other guaranteed fail; not usually the best choice.

 

[Zoom-boing]

If the parents curse all the time the kids will pick it up. My oldest is friends (was good friends but now just facebook type friends) with this one kid and the mom always curses. All four of their kids cursed from a young age too. No surprises there. TV certainly doesn't help. I was changing the channel once and my son was in the room. I switched to a station and at that exact moment, Murphy Brown was in labor screaming "son of a bitch!" at the top of her lungs. You just can't win.

Regardless of family values, practices, tv, etc. when the kid gets on that 5th grade bus . . . whatever they didn't know or hear they learn and hear it then. Whether that's permitted in the home is up to the parents.