little potty mouths

[mamatoady]

Ok, I need real ideas here, not philosophies on "good word' "bad word" and there are no bad words and blah blah blah.

My dd, 6.5 has picked up a number of less desireable words i.e. stupid, damn, bad (like in name-calling "you are bad" which is something I abhore)..

anyway, she has taught these things to my almost 3 year old, who in turn has taught them to my best friend's 4 and 2 year old. Her barely 2 year old has started saying "stupid dada" and the list goes on.

I honestly don't know what to do to halt the situation. We've talked about being respectful with our speech and why it's important to use kind words and not put people down etc....my 6 year old gets it and my almost 3 year old has no clue. It wouldn't bother me so much if he wasn't teaching it to other small children who have no clue.

What can I do? waiting for the phase to end is not working and I'm terrified of what he's going to teach my 3 year old nephew at his b-day party tomorrow.

sarah

[labdogs42]

My son went through a phase of using "stupid" for everything (he was 3.5 at the time). I hated it. What I ended up doing was telling him that I didn't like hearing that word, but if he wanted to say it, he could go to his room and say it all he wanted. I don't think he actually ever took me up on my offer, but he has stopped using that word as much! I would think this might work with your 6 and 3 year old. I also explained that it wasn't nice to use those words in front of other kids. Again, I would tell her she could go somewhere else to use those words (bathroom, perhaps?), but not in front of the little kids. I hope you find a solution. I know I hated it when my DS turned into a "stupid" junkie!

[LynnS6]

Another approach is to take the Playful Parenting approach

"You can call me stupid, but don't you DARE call me clever!" (or 'waffle' or 'banana' - the sillier the better, actually). Then, when they proceed to call you 'waffle' or 'chartreuse' or whatever, then you really ham it up "Oh no! I can't believe you said that to me! How awful! I'm soooo insulted. Don't you ever do that again! How dare you!"

And then of course they'll do it again, and they'll get the same huge reaction, and after awhile that becomes a lot more fun than 'stupid'. This worked really well when dd was 3. I haven't tried it on a 6 year old.

[jrabbit]

i'm certainly not a model GD mom, but i try ... words are something that i work hard at, though. i listen to other children's speech and even movies, and i decided that it was not a negotiable subject. interestingly, we have *never* had a discipline issue with words.

my feeling about words is very similar to you - no disrespectful or mean talking about or to other people or animals, no matter what. we've recently begun playing with a very very active 6 year old who says "dumb" about everything, from shoes, to animals, to bugs. i don't think she says it to people, but i wouldn't be surprised. anyway, my 5 year old started hollering the same way last week - she said it in a cute way, but it took me by surprise. up til now, we've outlawed the word stupid - but now we have added the word dumb. we substitute 'something else' for the outlawed word ... in that case, the acceptable word is "silly."

my children have simply 'known' the rule since early, but we've added words over time that are not allowed. at 2-4 years old, we'd have situations where they'd ask "what is it we're supposed to say?" (such as when we decided that we would not say "oh my God" anymore - but they hear it everywhere, so it would be confusing sometimes ... and they'd ask me very sincerely what the rule was again) with the obviously bad words, we've ignored the word the first time, and they always passed.

i think that we've been lucky maybe, but we've simply tried to be matter-of-fact, and try not to make the word into a big deal. if it becomes a source of obvious embarrassment, the kids will keep saying it just to annoy you!

after writing that, it feels like i didn't have anything constructive to say ... hope you can take care of it without making it worse!
--janis

my children are 9, 5, & baby. we homeschool, and we are around kids of all ages, stages, classes, etc. (for 6 years, i owned a children's resale shop, and kids worked with me)