☜ Taught my kid on swearing ☞

Yesterday morning, on the way to school, one of my children uttered a swear for no reason. When I asked why he said it, he replied that he heard the big boys in the neighborhood said it some days ago, so he repeated it out of curiousity.

He's 5 years old already, so I think it's a good time to teach him about swearing - why adults use those words, but not kids. I told him:

"You know, the other boys may have heard that word from their parents or other kids, and they thought that it'd be cool to use those words too. But, actually, only adults can use them, and not all the time.

The adult have to go out to do business, work with other people, work with machines, go through hardship to make money to help their family. That's why, when they have a hard feeling that they would like to express to other people, they used those words - to make people frown - the same frown as the one who said it, so people can empathize with his feeling. Instead of breaking things, drinking and doing other stuff, letting the hard feeling out through swearing is a fast and civil way to make them feel better.

Kids are different. They are looked after, nurtured, respected, have plenty of play time. They don't have the kind of pressures adults have, so they don't have the need to use those words. Uttering those words only make adults wrinkle and think that the kid is not taught properly.

So those words are not all bad. Actually, they can be used in proper time, by proper people. In fact, it's a civil way to express discomfort, but only by adults, and even them would not overuse it. An adult who uses them a lot means that they found no way to overcome their hardship and just got stuck in life."

Thoughts?

--Vinh