Just got called a cunt by a 10 year old. How's your Friday?

[EllisRoses]

Group of 10-12 year olds in the play park singing along to Cardi B "bring a mop and a bucket for my wet ass pussy" on repeat, throwing rubbish everywhere and kicking balls towards my toddlers head. I told them this isn't the place and to go play elsewhere if they're going to kick balls around. They all laughed and turned the music up and continued kicking ball around and singing about pussies, before asking me what I was looking at and to fuck off. I said I'm looking at a bunch of children who despite trying to act cool and grown up, still hang out in a play park, which says it all really. The youngest of the group called me an 'old cunt'. I'm 25

How's your Friday going?

Ohh and the coughing!! Had forgotten that! I had a covid positive patient cough on her hands and deliberately wipe it on my uniform, then tried to rip off my mask because she was offended that I was wearing PPE.

I think the trick is to wonder over, tell them you LOVE that song and start Dad dancing to it. They want outrage. They want something to kick back against. They do not want to be doing something that parents think is cool.

For me the being shouted at by the little bugger is worse than the fact it was a swear word.

Malaya from what I can gather that's the issue. They just can't stop them coming in.

And the more they are challenged the more they do it and escalate.

My then 3 year old came said to me “mummy, you’re a whore” One day after nursery. I asked him where he’d heard that word and he said he’d made it up . I had assumed he’d overheard the nursery staff talking amongst themselves, now i realise it was probably one of his little friends. I bet he hasn’t forgotten it either.

I imagine covid has made this much worse. The lack of people on the streets will have given these little thugs courage. Without other people to back you up and be witness, they think they can get away with anything. And once people are scared to go out, they have one. It's going to take a concerted effort once this is over to win our towns and villages back. Hopefully school will help some.

Absolutely disgusting. Music lyrics are shocking but it breaks my heart when children loose there childhoods so early 😞

I think swearing is more common place now, so they’re just copying off adults and as another poster has said they don’t know what the words mean when challenged.
I’m not keen on swearing, occasional for effect, but some people seem to be proud that they can’t seem to string a sentence together with plenty of expletives, even on this site you get posters reserving their right to swear like trooper etc..
Before lockdown I spent a weekend around a girl whose every other word was cunt, or fuck. It was fucking tedious listening to her .
Again before lockdown in gym sauna, blokes in30’s and 40’s effing this, bitches that, men in the past would have apologised for swearing in front of women and kids, but not anymore.
When I grew up ( I’m in my 40s) I don’t remember hearing adults swear that much and I certainly didn’t have a sheltered up bringing. When they did it was understood that they where either very angry, or a bit common according to my mum.
You can’t blame kids for swearing when they’re surrounded by it.

Some 13-14 year old charming boys near us were monopolising the playground a few weeks ago. I asked one to move so my young dc could go on a swing. Got a mouthful of abuse.
Few minutes later I got my phone out and pointed it at him and told him to smile, because I was putting his picture on the local FB residents page so his parents could see (I obv didn’t, I didn’t even have the camera open). I’ve never seen kids move so fast!!

this thread is sad and shocking but not surprising.

there have always been DC who are raised from birth to be mini thugs and the parents couldn’t give a crap, but what has shocked me more since being a parent are the handful of boys my DC age who are known locally to be a nightmare and have been that way since nursery age (they don’t know one another, but are all well known for vulgar language, violence and marshalling a rowdy group around themselves at their various schools). What each has in common is a certain type of newly minted middle class mother who treat DC like little future masters of the universe. heaven help you if you ever say anything to school or to them about bad behaviour, your name will be mud and your child called a bully for standing up to them, or babyish or unable to take a joke (because a 10 year old kicking another DC in the nuts till they bleed is just a joke, right?).

I'm in my early 40s. As a PP has said, swearing in general (among adults) is much more commonplace than it was when I was young. And yes, when an adult swore, you knew it was an expression of anger or frustration. It wasn't just the way they spoke about everything, trying to sound cool, like so many do today.

If/when kids swore "in my day" (late 80s, all through the 90s), it was carefully hidden from adults, because adults wouldn't put up with it! You'd be punished if they heard you. Honestly, even as an older teen, I didn't hear that much swearing from my peers, and I remember it being relatively mild. There are certain curse words I didn't hear until well into adulthood, and now they're apparently everyday language for some. Nowhere near what you hear from so many today.

"Children; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. They no longer rise when elders enter the room, they contradict their parents and tyrannize their teachers." Socrates

It has always been like this. Also to not in my day, pp above, kids in the 1970s were far far more badly behaved on streets than kids are now.

Ah, forgot to add that the swearing is just one part of a larger problem with so many people (now including kids) lacking respect for other people and thinking it's okay to intimidate and threaten them. It's more shocking coming from kids, and people may feel less able to deal with it than they would if an adult behaved that way. With an adult, you're more likely to call the police, but some hesitate to get involved when the thuggish behaviour comes from a child.

These kids/teens recognise their protected status and feel safe from any consequences. And yes, there have always been some cases of bad parenting, but I'm absolutely convinced that this problem has accelerated and worsened in the past twenty or thirty years. It's not just a case of us getting older and becoming impatient with younger generations.

I’ve been a cover supervisor for a few years and for a while it was a frequent occurrence ! Funnily enough it stopped when I saw a that a year 9 wrote it about me on their computer screen... I had the cheek to ask him not to play on games.... I printed it out and posted it to their mum.... school governor:.. even though he apologised profusely (which I accepted) he couldn’t look at me for months afterwards!

yeah to Socrates, but people like that are multiplying exponentially and living longer .

I grew up knowing that misbehaving at school meant having to face the music at home not a vendetta from parents aimed at the school for daring to criticise their child, and that rudeness to a stranger on the street meant a good chance of a clip round the ear both from the stranger and from your parent when you were marched home. How many times lately do we see ‘entitled’ used on MN to talk about other adults, these DC are their offspring.

I know a parent who complained to their school governors causing a teacher no end of grief, and pulled her precious perfect DC out of the school. Why? because the DC smashed up a room and the teacher told them off. I heard that DC gloat that mummy said the teacher might get the sack. They were not disciplined at home, they were taken on holiday after being upset. FFS.

@Boatonthehorizon not where I lived and grew up, we didn't swear at each other or anyone else around us at 10, parents swore like troopers though. Swearing was adult language and nobody wanted to be like their parents at 10, they were really old in their 30's !

My daughter has no idea what fuck means. She knows it's a shocking word as I was completely mortified first time she said it. When she does say it- she's only said it 4 times in her life- I ignore it whenever I can.

She obviously picked it up from me when I was frustrated and the word just came out.

I don't insult, back chat, or talk down others around her like some people do on a daily basis in front of their kids. I am very careful not to use the word around now.

It was a simple mistake. No parent is perfect.

Oh and I said a swear word when I was 3 years old. My older brother taught me. I got smacked by my dad and never swore again.

Horrible.
Group of 13/14 year olds too the p when I was (wobbly) walking past them in the park a few years ago. Mimicking my actions, laughing, etc.
I was on my way home from a 10 mile walk. I stopped, went back and told them that yes, I knew I looked funny. I was recovering from breast cancer and it was really important that I regained fitness and was as healthy as possible. I wasn’t strong enough to run yet but could do funny walking and yes, I knew how stupid I looked.
By the end of it, one of the lads was telling me his gran had died of cancer and a couple of the others were tearful. Most were just looking red and kicking the ground. They all said goodbye, couple good luck and they were in deep conversation when I looked back from the gate.
Next time, maybe try to engage and explain why you think they shouldn’t be doing what they were?
Clearly antisocial, but maybe a bit more softly softly next time? No, it absolutely shouldn’t be necessary but sometimes it works where perceived confrontation doesn’t?
They weren’t toddlers that long ago and their mums would have protected them (hopefully) so maybe that’s an angle?
It is horrible though.

Also if you got told off by an adult you didn't go home and tell your parents as one telling off was enough.

@frumpety

Also if you got told off by an adult you didn't go home and tell your parents as one telling off was enough.

Absolutely.

I'm fairly sure I have blathered on about this on some other thread, but I would love to see some national infomercials along the lines of "don't swear at your kids".

Soooo much stems from it.
Was just reading that according to ofcom people are more offended by the wrong word when it comes to minorities / racism (that's good!) But that they are less offended by swearing. Why?! It's such a lazy way to talk, and script writers have the power to change the world.

If you hear lazy, pointless swearing on any tv show, and you feel it's unnecessary you can flag it on ofcom's website. It's because nobody does any more that there is more and more on tv, and it's becoming normalised.

Why do we bother making carefully crafted children's shows with amazing animation and the input of psychologists etc, just to cut to a programme full off swearing five minutes later? It seems pointless to give our kids the "best start" we all strive for if we're just setting them up to fail socially.

A word like crap might be fairly mild, but I absolutely don't want my 2 year old to say it. So why is it on tv before the watershed?

I was listening to a kids radio show. So many songs with suggestive lyrics. Most mainstream music does it. Radio 2 plays stuff all day long that is questionable for small children.

Gosh I'm such a prude 🙄😳

@SomeOtherGirl - I very much agree with you. I had the misfortune last week to witness a youngish father put his face right up against that of his tiny toddler son, whilst screaming, "that's it! I'm so fucking sick of your SHIT! Do you understand me?? No more of your SHIT!!" The child's crime, as far as I could tell, was not climbing into his pushchair quickly enough. My 11 yr old DD was absolutely horrified, and asked me why I didn't say something. Truth was, the guy looked terrifying, and I didn't want to risk it, (this all took place on a busy London street, and while many onlookers were clearly as shocked as us, no one dared intervene). I have no doubt the poor child in the pushchair will grow up to be one of the kids described upthread - that sort of behaviour will have been completely normalised to him.

Why is this happening? How can parents stop it?

My DS (6) acts up sometimes and I cant tolerate his rudeness. Doesnt swear but starts mimicking me telling him off or calls me stupid before accepting his punishment (e.g. to his room to cool down) I really wish we are allowed to smack children. When he is calm he's all sweet. I do worry he grows into such a child...

@DollyScrobbler

I walking through my school nursery on my way to the book storage and a little boy kicked the loo door open and shouted 'Oi, you gunna wipe mi bastard arse?' He was three and a half.

I despair

Oh my days 😳

I am glad someone else is shocked though. I had a very similar experience in a play park two days ago. Little boys of 8 or so on bikes (I know the age as they looked roughly the same as my son) talking in a string of expletives on sexual subjects, finished off with a reference to "pakis". They did apologise when they saw me but really.... That one actually upset me more because I truly thought kids might have got away from that. Shows what a bubble I love in. I prayed my ds didn't hear and thanked God we lived in another country where children remain children until at least 12. I pity teachers.