Children and Language: Bad Words 2016/10/19

From where I come from it is said that children are like sponges. Have you seen what a sponge does? In contact with water they quickly absorb as much as they can.

Now imagine your child as a sponge and everything that surrounds them is water. They are surrounded by so many situations, gestures, beautiful or awful things, the affection of their family members, friends, nature, cartoons, examples of other adults…

How many times do we accidentally slip a bad word? Meaning a curse word or a dirty word. Well, sooner or later we will hear them from our children, because they are like sponges so as they absorb our kisses they also absorb our bad words.

Evolution (if we can define this situation) of the use of a curse word, follows a pattern we can sum up this way: Listen, Interest, Use, Disappearance.

Listen

Where do our children hear the bad words?

Easy: from adults. Even if at home we pay attention to the way we speak, because there will always be someone who won’t. And the same way as a virus, the bad words are also transmitted at school, heard from their classmates.

Interest

This new word becomes interesting when it awakens a reaction from the parents: if we let them see that this word amuses us it means that we approve it and it is likely that this word is something amusing to say. On the contrary, if we show concern and scold our child they could use this word to provoke us.

Ignoring is also not a good solution since in this case indifference will awaken a bigger interest in our children.

It is best to minimize what happened, asking the child where they heard this word and over all if they know the meaning of what the said. If they do not know, then, why use this bad word?

Use

If in spite of all our good will our child continues to repeat this bad word, they could be doing it to get our attention, because we know that everything that is not allowed is mysterious and attractive to them. When they are a little older, the child will understand the offensive function and meaning of a bad word and will maybe limit its use to times of anger.

Disappearance

Bad words… in the same way the arrive the leave. Have trusts and patience!