Licensed psychotherapist Colette Brown vividly remembers the first time she heard her then 10-year-old daughter use the “F-word.”
“I was a little shocked and I was a little charmed,” she tells TODAY.com with a laugh. Her daughter defended herself by truthfully saying, “Mom, you curse in front of me all the time!”
Brown’s daughter is now 19, and adds an important clarification: It wasn’t the first time she had ever cursed — it was just the first time her mother had heard her curse.
Recently, a number of celebrities have admitted that they curse in front of their kids: Kylie Kelce and Jenni “JWoww” Farley from “Jersey Shore” had a discussion about their pro-cursing households on a recent episode of the “Not Gonna Lie” podcast, and Charlize Theron told Page Six that swearing in front of her kids “teaches that there are things for them to look forward to.”
But is it OK to casually drop F-bombs in front of your children?
“That depends if it’s OK with you if your kids swear,” parenting expert Dr. Deborah Gilboa tells TODAY.com.
“If they’re 2 or 3, they mimic every word, especially the ones that sound kind of fun,” she says. “So around your kids, you only want to say words that you’re totally comfortable with them saying in front of Grandma or the principal of their preschool.”
But as children grow, social impressions start to change.
“If people hear a 3-year-old swear, they’re judging you, not the 3-year-old,” says Gilboa. “But when people hear an elementary or middle schooler swear, they judge that kid. They feel that they’re just not quite as respectful or admirable as a kid that doesn’t do that.”
But if you get a call because your child happened to shout out an expletive on the playground, take comfort in the fact that scientists have found correlations between cursing and honesty, creativity and intelligence.
When speaking to a group of parents, Gilboa asks how many of them have ever uttered a curse word. Then she asks how many of them have cursed during a job interview. The responses are quite different.
“That’s the skill I want my kids to have as they get older: not how to never swear but how to never swear at the wrong moment,” Gilboa, a mom of four boys, says.
Once a child reaches the age of 7 and has the beginnings of impulse control, you can begin to discuss when curse words may be appropriate for them to use and when they are not.
“Once my kids hit middle elementary school, I say to them, ‘You may never swear around an adult or a kid younger than you. I don’t want people to misjudge you,’” she adds.
Of course, the issue can become more complicated when parents in the same household have opposing ideas about what kind of language is “appropriate.” But it also teaches kids to find balance.
“Cursing is actually an art form in the Bronx,” Brown, who grew up in the New York City borough, shares proudly. However, her Staten Island-raised husband was “vehemently not into cursing.”
“When I would curse, my husband would say to our daughter, ‘That’s not the way we speak.’ And so she would hear Mommy say these things, and then she would immediately get the correction from Daddy,” she shares. “I think it taught her that context and content matter.”
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