Oh, my! What did your child just say? Where did he learn that? And what should you do now?

Kids say the darndest things, and often in a voice that can be heard across the room and within earshot of your pastor or your mother-in-law.  How you respond depends on the age of the child.

Preschoolers barely able to put a sentence together love to say bad words (which they say well enough that everyone can understand them, amazingly). Like a sailor’s parrot, they’ve picked up on words that are said with enough force and emotion – and clarity – that they’re easy to mimic. A bad word stands out because it’s supposed to stand out – it represents all the emotion the speaker is feeling at the time – and the little kid just learning to talk naturally learns this word. He is, after all, learning words at the rate of 5 or 6 a day, every day of the week. Bad words are just part of the vocabulary.

What seems cute, however, at age three will become annoying at age six, when your child means the mean words he says and uses them as an adult would. If your child is four or older, now is the time to make the point that some words he will hear frequently are off-limits. This means, of course, that they’re off-limits to you as well. You’ve got to model what you want to see (and hear). Because at ages four to about seven swearing is not a well-established habit, you’ve got an opportunity to lay down the ground rules and make them stick.

But what if swearing and cursing are pretty much everywhere in your child’s life? Her friends use bad language and that’s what she hears on television and in her music. Even the books she reads include profanity. Should you ship her off to a remote mountain peak where the only voices she hears are the voices of the birds? Well, no.

If your older elementary school child (or preteen or teen) uses bad words routinely and you despair of getting him to stop, then teach the very valuable lesson of choosing the appropriate time and place. You can tell your child you don’t care how he talks with his friends but you expect cleaner language around you and at school. You can reinforce this with a penalty jar (a dollar deposited for every bad word you catch) or in some other, reasonable way. The idea that “there’s a time and place for everything” is a key concept for successful adulthood, with many applications beyond bad words. It’s a good thing for your older child to know. By the time your child is in third grade, he can monitor himself and fit his language to the situation.

Speaking is a social skill. Knowing how to adapt a message to fit present company is a social skill too. Teaching your child how to do this – and doing it yourself when you model the vocabulary you want to hear – is more than just being pragmatic. It’s helping your child be welcome wherever she goes.

© 2012, Patricia Nan Anderson. All rights reserved.

A video went viral recently showing a mother egging on her toddler to shout profanities. When he did, the room of adults laughed and thought it was hilarious.

Well, sure. We laugh when we’re surprised – that’s what makes jokes funny – and it’s definitely surprising to hear four-letter words coming from a child who can barely talk at all. A lot of parents think this is the very definition of cute. Maybe you or your child’s other parent is one of them.

Most likely, no one actually taught the child to swear. Because swear words are said with a lot of emotional force, they stand out. Words that stand out in a conversation – words that seem important to adults – are words kids find important too. It’s also possible that someone did teach the child swear words. Cousins and older siblings might do that, thinking they’ll get the child in trouble. How surprised they are when grown-ups think a cursing baby is adorable!

However it happened, let’s imagine the baby swears. What now?

No matter how cute this seems, the charm will wear thin eventually. The toddler who cusses as a parlor trick will soon become a preschooler who tells his mother exactly what he thinks about bedtime. He will master more than just an isolated word. He will be able to be profane in whole sentences, sentences that will get him into trouble.

A preschool child or kindergartener who swears will get into trouble on the playground and at child care. He will be punished. And he will find the lessons in swearing he learned as a toddler very hard to undo. Because swearing is something he was once praised for, it almost seems disloyal to his family to stop swearing now. How can swearing be wrong if once it was so right?

We set our child up for failure when we teach him to swear. This is not fair.

Your child is not a toy. Life is not a movie. Real actions on our part have real consequences for our kids. We owe it to them to not create future difficulties for our kids just to have a laugh right now.

But if profanity is already spewing from your sweet child, what can you do? How do you turn things around?

1. Quit praising your child when she cusses. Don’t smile, don’t give her attention, and don’t give in. Let her know you “can’t hear her when she talks like that” and wait for her to reframe what she wants to say.
2. If the child is school-age, have a heart-to-heart talk. Explain what you don’t want to hear, ever again, and ask the child to help in keeping track of his swearing so together you can cut these words out of his vocabulary.  He can’t stop swearing overnight but he should be able to reduce his swearing over time, with your support.
3. Stop cursing. Eliminate bad words from your own vocabulary and insist that others use G-rated language when children are around. Put your foot down on this but start by setting a good example yourself.

Kids repeat what they hear and they love to make us smile. Don’t let your child think that swearing is the key to your heart.

© 2014, Patricia Nan Anderson. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Ask for Dr. Anderson’s new book, Parenting: A Field Guide, at your favorite bookstore.