Swearing on public transport and children

Oh how brilliant!

remember my 5 year old ds telling off a group of teenagers outside the local shop for throwing their rubbish on the floor. He told them to “put it in the bin or take it home” and they scrabbled around picking up the litter and popped it all in the bin! I just stood there with my mouth open.

I think your DH did the right thing. Indeed would have been reasonable to have approached someone on a loud call in any case- you could use the excuse that you could overhear something that could put them in some danger (where they are going to be at some point for example is information for a mugger).

Agree about the kind of reaction you could get.

I think the ending of earphone jacks on some phones has contributed, and manufacturers should be required to provide one, or perhaps face a penalty such as double VAT on phones without them.

WTAF. There are loads of things that are bad behaviour that aren’t murder or abuse?!!

It’s not nice and it’s anti social to have a loud conversation on speaker using swear words (even without the swearing it’s still antisocial) for a whole train carriage to hear. I’d want to bring my child up knowing that’s poor behaviour personally. So yes absolutely I’d tell my child it’s a not nice person doing and saying not nice things. Then I’d move on and distract them with what can we see out of the window.

Yeah let’s normalise men confronting women in public 🙄

Just because you don’t approve, you don’t have the right to tell off another adult. We all have to exist together unfortunately so if it’s not illegal or dangerous to others, keep your nose out.

You don’t know how someone will react anyway

And this is a good example of what is wrong with society these days...

Rather than the person causing the nuisance being called out people are supposed to tip toe around them and inconvenience themselves instead.

What a bizarre attitude.

OP, your partner was perfectly right to tell that woman to have some respect for the people around her.

And when they point out that it’s nothing to do with you? How do you react?

I heard a woman asking some teens to tone down their language and they apologised. When she moved away, they spent the rest of the journey making rude comments about her and doing unflattering impressions. I think she may have regretted doing it.

I wouldn’t care about the swearing but I would care about the speakerphone and would’ve said something.

Of I feel safe I have no problem asking people to tone it down.

IME, teenagers are the most apologetic.

Or you could drop the judgment completely and say the words aren’t appropriate for children to use without talking about ‘bad people’.

People who kill and abuse etc are ‘bad people’. People who swear are just people using language that you dont want your kid to hear.

This time he could confront her because she was a woman on her own. I’m guessing he might not have been so quick to do so if it was a group of men. Your child is going to hear swearing. Far easier and also a good lesson to just tell him something age appropriate about not nice people using not nice words because they’re cross and making a bad choice.

So he’s not an arse for confronting a random woman yet I am for refusing to police the speech of others?

There are plenty of things I don’t agree with but I don’t appoint myself the speech police.

Yes. A bad experience has put me off doing it in future. Resulted in being followed out of a cafe and threatened - also filmed and accused of being a Karen and even racist.

I think he was right to call her out, though I can also see your point about causing a confrontation - you don’t always know how someone will react, and you’re likely worried because your child was there, so I get that.

I do swear (not constantly), but sometimes it’s just the best word to use. However, I don’t do it in front of children and I try to watch what I’m saying in public places.

I also tend to lower my voice in public places like cafes and public transport because there’s seriously nothing worse than those people with their booming foghorn voices talking at full volume and thinking their conversation is one that everyone wants to hear.

Like another poster, I have heard groups of men and women in bars who seemed incapable of using anything else but swear words and I just think that’s crass and unnecessary - it seems almost like teenagers trying to impress their mates, except these people are in their 50s and it’s all a bit tragic.

The woman was exhibiting low-grade scumbag behaviour. She got called out on behaving like a low-grade scumbag. The sex of the person who called it out really is a very minor point, and whether it was a man or a woman who did so they should be commended for trying to stop the low-grade scumbag behaviour. Not enough people do.

Spot on.

I'm not particularly sweary, but a man trying to control my behaviour in public would have got right up my nose, I'm afraid.

I asked someone to either wear headphones or turn off their media recently. It's just manners to respect other people in a shared space. She didn't like it

We were at a family sporting event last month, lots of children/families having fun. One chap standing very close to me started effing and blinding about everything, I don't like to hear that, but I'm an adult, so didn't say anything, even though there were children around. It was when he started with the C word, I had had enough, even the children were looking at him; I asked him to not use that word as it was very offensive, and there were small children around. He told me it was his favourite word.

So are you.

It is his business if he and his 4 year old can hear it.

Just tell your child that they’re not very nice words and nice people don’t use them and then distract them.

I hate stuff like this because I would put money on the fact your DH wouldn’t have told a bloke to tone down the language. It’s always men feeling confident to tell women how to behave; you rarely see them telling other men.

People need to be called out for this so he did the right thing.

I often find that grey haired oldies are dreadful with phone etiquette.

Loud ring tones, phones on speaker phone.Because they can't hear, playing videos out loud, forget to switch mobile phones off or put them on silent in the royal opera house for example

What delightful ageist choice of words too.

Technically you can’t expect everyone to accommodate for other people’s kids in public but I do think it’s common courtesy to exercise restraint when children are around and those who don’t are more often than not the dregs of society. Good on dh for saying something as I agree, there was no where for him to take the kids away.
I was at a slash pool at our local park the other week which was rammed with young children and bang in the middle of the pool was a mum on the phone having an incredibly loud conversation, spitting out swear words and talking about all the ‘little sh*ts’ around her splashing her. Thankfully I heard her as we were leaving but she was getting a lot of looks.

What the hell? How is he an arse? When did it become acceptable to swear your head off in public?

I’ve twice told, not asked, people to stop swearing in front of young children. Once was on holiday - a drunk woman swearing her head off on a phone conversation while her embarrassed partner sat nearby. I just walked up and said stop swearing in front of my child, your language is foul. She stared at me in astonishment but did tone it down. I told her partner to talk to her about it when she’s sober because if I see it again I’ll complain to staff.

The second time was in the school playground where a couple were waiting to pick up their DC and his language was awful. She told him to stop swearing and he told her he couldn’t give a …. I walked over and asked him if he wanted to have this discussion in front of school staff. He actually apologised to me. You don’t stand in a playground at 3pm and swear your head off in my world.

I doing understand why so many people have conversations on speaker phone rather than hold it up to their ear. Does any one know why people do it?