I had this conversation with Havoc the other day
Havoc: “This boy calls me Dork all the time.”
Me: “Well, that is rude of him. Name calling isn’t nice.”
Havoc dithers a bit about this. He doesn’t like being called Dork but then he says. “It’s ok I guess. It’s a game we play.”
M: “Doesn’t sound like a very nice game to me & it sounds like you don’t like it much.”
H: “No, it was his idea. He called me Dork & then said I could call him a name too.”
M: “Oh really?”
H: “yeah, he calls me Dork and I call him Pussy”
pause for a couple of seconds while I CALMLY digest that.
M: “what do you call him?”
H: “Pussy”
M: “How did you come up with that name?”
H: “This older boy said it would be a good one”
Do you know where these boys were when this game was being played? Vacation bible school. I have no idea who the older boy was, another student or a helper. I have no idea where any authority figure was either.
I swear fairly often. I am 100% responsible for any ‘hell’s, ‘damn’s or ‘shit’s the kids drop in conversation (which so far have been few and far between. They seem to get that just like there are grown up beverages, there are grown up words too). Lately he has been saying kickass and badass, which, again, my fault. I let him watch some Star Wars parodies on You Tube that had inappropriate language. Though he does only use those words when he is reciting dialogue. He has yet to thank me for the kickass dinner or announce he is too badass to play CandyLand. It is context specific swearing.
I don’t expend a lot of energy protecting their virgin ears from language. I’d rather they were not shocked by hearing someone say asshole but just shrug it off as someone behaving badly. It isn’t thing big forbidden thing people do, but just words most people would rather not hear. But I do try to limit the exposure. I was expecting this to happen. But I assumed it would be on the school bus, where he rides with 30+ other kids ages 5 –17 & only a distracted driver overseeing things. I did not expect him to come back from bible school with an ‘enriched vocabulary’.
I’m downplaying it for now as I have with other words. He hadn’t been calling anyone else pussy so I suppose it’s not too bad. I almost want to start a list of Words You Can’t Say so he’ll know ahead of time, since he has been so obviously clueless. But then he’ll have a list of inappropriate words & will no doubt share it with others.
Then I’ll be that mom who gave her kid a list of swear words.
I can only imagine the hits I will be getting due to language in this post
