Taking the fun out of cussin'

- Warning: There are real swear words in this post. If you think they might offend you, please stop reading.  Thank you! - 

I remember watching an episode of Malcolm in the Middle where Malcolm was caught swearing. What his dad did was to make him type up a whole list of swear words and look him in the eye and read them out loud. I always remembered that as great way of teaching a child not to cuss.

I had two 7 year old boys in my car. And as boys would do, they jibed each other throughout the drive and tried to get each other into trouble. It meant making fake calls on each other cussing.

Evan, being Evan, wanted to know what each word he was accused of saying meant and he wasn't letting me off with "it's a rude word."

So, I tried the truth instead. I explained every single one to him. Thankfully, they weren't the really difficult ones to explain.

To state from the outset, none of them were used on him. 

It started with
1. The middle finger- I told him sticking it up at someone meant to show the guy his penis.

Evan's response was "WHY WOULD ANYONE WANT TO SHOW ANYONE HIS PENIS?"

2. Bastard- As boys are wont to do, they mishear everything on purpose. So when Evan exclaimed "busted!", it was misheard as "bastard!" to his exasperation. And then, I told them bastard meant a child without a dad, both boys' reactions were "So mean to be mean to someone with no dad."

And the kicker was

3. Fuck- They didn't actually use it. Since they realised that I was explaining cuss words to them, they asked about something they saw scrawled on the wall in the playground. My version went along the lines of 'that's how Daddy and Mommy made you.' The two seven year old clowns in the back seat couldn't get past how it sounded like 'duck' and started going "hey, you know that word that sounds like 'duck'?"

Did I say driving with 2 seven year old boys meant a great amount of face-palming?

But the general consensus seemed to be that swear words were over-rated and couldn't figure out why people would want to use them.

Hopefully, by demystifying these swear words to them, they won't think them as attractive to use. I'm not sure. I'm not a boy. But I am a pretty big fan of explaining things to them properly instead of the misinformation they're bound to be exposed to in school. Packrat concurs on this point. He said in boys' schools, the amount of misinformation is actually more than accurate information. Humph. I can imagine the amount of 'hum-ming' and 'haw-ing' that's going to happen as we explain to them the birds and the bees.

Anyway, I did end the entire conversation on cuss words with the cursory "Please don't use these words because they aren't very nice and are hurtful to others." Plus the short version. "And it's rude." And they did reply with the cursory "Ok, we won't use bad words."

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Capturing Faith

The one area that fascinates me with JED is their belief in God. I know their faith is actually a reflection of our faith because they aren't old enough to fully understand God yet but even then, their faith is touching.

We see snippets of it when one of them hurts themselves and the other two (or at least one of the older ones) would pray that 'God takes away the pain.'

They know how to pray for things that matter, like their school to remain open

Of course, we also see them use it for more mercenary purposes like "God, please bring me a pair of binoculars for my birthday."

Recently, there has been a great amount of concern expressed over Satan and how we will know it is Satan since he can take many forms. It took me a long time to explain to them, particularly Evan that while Satan was powerful, God was even more powerful and God was on our side.

He then drew a parallel to the Transformers. God was the leader of the Autobots and Satan was the leader of the Decepticons. Strangely apt.

 And then, there was Jordan who drew God. How wonderful that in all the bright colours and beauty, God was placed in the middle. They seemed to have pretty much hit the nail on its head.

I hope that JED will always have the faith of little children.

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A moral dilemma

When it comes to following rules, JED are all on different pages.

There's Jordan who is very happy to circumvent the rules if she thinks she can get away with it.

There's Evan who is a stickler for the law and will enforce it without question and at all costs.

There's Muffin who will flagrantly violate all rules when it benefits him but will enforce it when it has to do with others.

From a moral standpoint, Evan is the upstanding one. The problem is that will pose a problem socially. Regardless of situation or circumstance, a rule is a rule. It is black and white. There is no bending. Barry Schwartz on TED talks about Practical Wisdom and knowing when to follow the rules and when to choose wisely. We think Evan will have a big struggle trying to strike a balance between the two.

We have told him that 'stupid', 'shut up', 'sexy' and 'wah lau' are words he should not use. So he carries that out and enforces it to a T. He refers to them as the "ST" word, "SH" word, "S" word and the "W" word. I assume that there have been more but those are the ones off the top of his head. He tells off both adults and children for the use of such words. Even when we ask him about the words, he won't say them. It's like being a wizard and muttering the name "Voldermort".

When we told him that there were certain situations where such words were okay,

1. Stupid- if it was used to describe objects (definitely not people).
2. Sexy- when it was used by an adult to describe objects (Packrat was at the point describing a phone that was sexy when the little policeman blew the whistle on him).

Evan's head almost exploded. He was much happier when we told him that "Sexy" and "Wah lau" should never be used by children, to describe children and describe the behaviour of children, he was much happier. 

He is also happy to tattle on anyone who violates the rules. Justice is blind in his six year old eyes. "But Ah Ma used the 's' word on Jordan!". That's when we told him that he could very nicely tell Ah Ma that it wasn't a word that was very nice to describe Jordan with. His tangential response to that was "But I can't pronounce the word 'describe'!"

With Jordan, if her moral compass serves her well (and as parents, we hope it does), her ability to decide when to follow rules and when to bend them will be a good thing. The theory behind that is that we have to trust that she will know how and when to do the right thing rather than just the expected thing. The morally righteous would disagree with me and I wonder about the larger implications of raising her on such a philosophy. It is true that the conservative and the morally strict have it easier in life because everything in their world is black and white. The moral libertarians have it much tougher. Jordan is a moral libertarian.

As for Muffin, we think he's going the way of Evan more than Jordan. He tells on his classmates if someone is misbehaving. He gets very upset when his siblings don't do as told and indignant when he has to and they get away with it. How do we know this? Because he tells us so. But that bit, makes us wonder whether he is just tattling on them so that we will, in his words "Scold Kor Kor Mommy! Scold Che Che Mommy!" But he is wilful and doesn't think twice before disobeying us or our rules.

Right now, it's still a pretty blanket rule in our household. What we say goes. But because of there different outlooks regarding rules, we have to deal with each differently.

For Jordan, we have to explain to her why things are right and wrong and why we ask and expect her to do things in a certain manner.

For Evan, we provide him with exceptions to help him see the world in a few more shades of grey.

For Muffin, right now we just tell him what is right and wrong and we try and explain his black and white world into a little bit of grey. But for him, we're not sure how much he actually gets.

Every day, I understand a little bit better why my parents responded "Beacause I say so" as an answer to us second guessing and questioning them.

Hooking up with Regina's Tuesday's Thoughts:

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Full of sass

It seems a universal truth now that our kids are full of sass. I know my kids are.

Part of me feels that it is slightly rude but part of me marvels at the boldness and ability to express themselves.

Some gems from the last few days that I need to record because they are hilarious.

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Yesterday, there wasn't school so I took JED out to breakfast.

At breakfast, there was a little girl from their school dressed in uniform. Obviously her parents had forgotten that there was no school today and had got her ready for school only to discover a quiet and empty school premise.

As we walked by, the twins asked her " Don't you know that there isn't school today?"

After I smacked both of them on the back of their heads, I had to apologise to the sheepish looking father.

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 Last night at Grandma's, their cousin Becca asks if the twins could stay over.

Evan's response to her, " Tomorrow is Saturday. I have plans with my Mommy and Papa."

Thought bubble in my head, "5 year olds have plans?"

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Jordan knows that the rule in the house is that she doesn't get nail polish on her nails till she is 18.

Conversation she then has with Mommy out of the blue.
Jordan: Mommy, next time when my daughter is 6 years old and she wants nail polish, I will tell her yes, ok? Because nail polish is pretty.

Using the third person to make her point clear. .

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Even little Muffin has learnt sass.

He hears a noise as he is about to fall asleep. He says he is scared.

Mommy: It's ok. It's like when you drop a ball and the people downstairs can hear it.
Muffin: We drop ball. Wake up downstairs people now?

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I have to admit that we as parents, sass each other quite a bit so I suppose they take after us.

I guess we just have to teach them to say it out of ear shot and the subtlety to go with all that sass.

 Technorati Tags: sass, children

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