ds2 was swearing in the nursery playground and the other mums were looking at me in disgust

[divastrop]

he is 3.9 and has always been very 'lively' and laddish,but today he was running around and 3 times shouted 'f**k it' and 'bugger'

i told him off,obviously,but the other parents in the playground were looking at me horrified,as though they expected me to do more,but i dont know what they expected me to do?

i dont know how to deal with this.dp and i have been watching what we say at home,but ds2 already knows the words now.he doesnt listen to me when i tell him off anyway.he just grins cheekily when anybody tells him off(even the headmistress of the junior school,who scares me,told him not to climb on the stairs when we were waiting for ds and dd1,and he just ignored her).

i have recently found out he has a hearing problem,i dont know to what degree exactly,but im waiting for an appointment for him at the hospital(i was told he most likely has 'glue ear').he has some problems with his speech because of this also.

i dont know how to deal with this,as my loder 2 children,however they may have behaved at home,have always behaved brilliantly at school.they work hard and have never been in trouble.

ds2 starts infant school in september,and i can forsee frequent visits to the headmistress if this carries on

sorry marne, but I couldn't help but lol a bit about the finger.

I honestly think this is all to do with having a new baby. There is a hideous period with a lot of children between about four weeks (when they realise the baby is staying) and 12 weeks (when they get used to it) when they are desperate to check you still love them and will pay attention to them. My ds's version of this was to run away from me, which I found very harrowing.
Also, he has a hearing problem, and that often causes behavioural problems due to extreme frustration caused by an inability to join in and communicate properly.
Both are not 'excuses' for bad behaviour, but they may very well be reasons.
As for what to do, well you told him off, so I agree, what else could you to. I would try to keep it quite low key during this tricky time, but look at ways of encouraging better behaviour all round. Speak to the consultant at the hospital about his hearing problem and possible links with his behaviour.

much the same position hunker bloody house buying and selling sucks! ( i said sucks!)

When my dd was born my ds was 3.3 years when dd was 6 weeks ds started runiing away, he escaped from nursery & made the front page of the local newspaper, he also escaped from home 2 weeks later & was found on a main road in his pj's with my shoes on when i thought he was nicely tucked up in his bed.

I think this was the worst bit for ds, he became distrutive because my attention had to be shared now & ds was so used to just having me all to himself.

I think what you did was right, you told him off & made it known you did not want him saying this. I do however think that there will always be "some" who will judge you thats life.

When he does swear if it home i would just ignore it because the more you make a big thing of it the more he will prbably say it & remember the word & also remember that when he said it last time he had mummy's attention. At the end of the day if it is good attention or a telling off kids just want your attention.

If out & he says it then yes i would speak to him & let him know this is not acceptable.

Don't be to hard on yourself you have just had a baby the 1st few weeks are always hard

As for the rest of you PARP

I'm quite surprised at all the judging going on on this thread tbh (would throw a ffs in there for a larf but won't ) . Hmm, well supposedly none of your children would have been allowed to be friends with my ds then. Shame, he's lovely and very popular, despite knowing the odd unsavoury expression.

Enid, I completely disagree with you. It's just not that bad imo. It's a couple of words. And telling him off any more than the OP already did really wouldn't have helped at all imnsho.

But hey ho, agree to disagree etc.

I'm sure if you continue to tell him it's wrong he will stop. And perhaps the other mothers in the playground (let's be charitable here) were only thinking "there but for the grace of God" rather than thinking harshly of you.

God - poor OP - having been mortified in the playground, you're now being hung out to dry on the internet

Come on guys, be fair - she never said it was ok for her DS to swear and she never said the other parents shouldn't be horrified. I think she was just asking for tips on how to handle the behaviour not more judgement

Anyway, just to make divastrop feel better, when I picked DD up from nursery earlier on this week, I was told she apparently told another child (who was shouting at the time) "Don't you say f* to me" - I can't imagine where she heard this from . She's 2 yrs 4 months btw.

Christ, unless you all keep your kids indoors and act like Mary Whitehouse all freaking time, how on earth do you prevent swear words from coming out of their innocent little mouths??

Go on, sock it to me you lot

I found my daughter (2.5) a couple of months ago sitting in front of her stepbrothers' Xbox shouting "putain, putain" (French equivalent of f*).

I was NOT amused and told her brothers to stop saying putain in our presence.

They didn't manage to stop until I threatened them with not seeing their sister unless they did. This gave them a real shock (they had to check out with their father that I meant it) and they have stopped saying it. And so has she.

Children learn by example.

yes, the second time my ds said it I told him I'd be leaving him in an orphanage if he ever said it again, he never did

they learn by being very scared, absolutely

Divastrop, hope you're feeling all right out there (my, there are a lot of Mrs Judgey von Selfrighteousness-ess out there today!).

If it's any comfort, my nephew had an undiagnosed ear problem which wasn't discovered until he was six - up until then he was an absolute horror, would play up like mad and also went through a foul language phase - which he did not get from his parents!

(to all those sitting in judgement saying 'he must have heard it at home', all my dd has to do is listen as she gets walked through the park/shops/streets of our town to hear some horrific language, as the local youth use the f word (and others) as a noun, adjective, adverb - you name it. Unless you live in a nice little village or are going to put earplugs on your child, they will hear those words!)

Newphew is now ten and he's a lovely little boy. Polite, non-sweary, helpful... so it may be that once your ds has got his grommets or whatever, things will change.

Also I doubt the baby has helped matters. Some people on here are being decidedly unhelpful with their comments - which is also lazy, IMO...[;)]

I have no advice, I'm afraid, other than to agree with Xenia (!!!!) that my mum also used to say to us that swearing was a sign of a poor vocabulary, and that somehow made us very reluctant to swear, certainly in front of her.

She also used to ask us if we knew what a word meant when we said something bad. If we said no, then she said we shouldn't use it until we did and could explain why it was appropriate. I'll never forget her scolding a group of teens in the park by telling them that their football was an inanimate object and thus physically incapable of doing what they were suggesting it was doing... (these days she'd get knifed!).

Good luck

Nephew, even

What is PARP??

I'll have to agree with wickedwaterwitch.

I'm shocked that so many mothers were horrified by a swer word. Would have thought they would be made of sterner stuff. If that's the worse thing a child does.........

I'm with WWW, Xenia (!) and Lovecat.

Do get the ear stuff checked. It can make an enormous difference to behaviour (as will baby newborn growing a bit of course as well).

Surely at 3.5 he can't possibly truly understand the implications of the f word. I wouldn't have looked horrified at all, instead I would have given you a sympathetic look. My 3 year old has occassionally said a swear word, imo this is because he senses that such words are somehow a big deal and he loves attention and testing boundaries. I just ignore it.

Ds(3.3) swore last week.
Then he swore today.
Infront of the Estate Agent.
he said f**k off, in a gentle, not at you way
Maybe he thinks its funny.
I don't.
I am totally embarrased. Becuase I know where it came from.
Me.
I am mortified.
I said it, last week, when someone cut me up really badly and I nearly crashed the car.
That is no excuse.
I thought that I had dealt with it last week. But clearly not.
I am not quite sure where to fgo, from here.

The OP does realise that the other mothers have every right to be shocked.

im suprised parents swear in fornt of kids
so easy not to do imfo
but ia m perfick obv

Yes but it's not just parents kids pick up swearing from is it? Even "perfick" parents can't keep their kids in a bubble all the time surely?

i was quite shocked when a little boy in our toddler group came out with some foul words, i wouldnt have wanted my dd to have heard them and start using them as dp and i dont use them in front od dc.
but i went and let his mum know so that she could deal with the situation, at the end of the day, kids catch on quick and we cant avoid that, we just have to TRY and teach them that its wrong to swear.

I think this thread is just so very middle class and English - I'm from NZ and I think there is probably lots more swearing in the general conversation as it were. Even at 5, I think when kids swear it is pretty experimental (like saying poo and willy and bum), and I'm slightly worried that you all claim you'd never allow your child to play with one who swore - the OP's DS is only 4! I have to admit I'm with WWW - play it down and don't react.

I swear in front of my kids (terrible habits you pick up when your child doesn't learn to speak- I've noticed that many people with non-verbal children have less active swear filters), and ds2 has never sworn at all (except bugger- but actually he was saying bother from TTT engine it just sounded like bugger).Suspect whether the child swears or not has more to do with being either too young to understand and liking the reaction they get when they do, being naughty/wanting to rile parents, or being older and trying to look cool. DS2 is a bit of a goody 2 shoes so doesn't swear despite my terrible example.

Agree with WWW too, and Fio.

My ds who's is 3.2 occasionally says "oh bloody" when he is cross, and dd who is 6 recently told me she knows the 'F' word. When I asked her what is was, she said there were actuallly 5 of them - it turned out none of them were the F word at all, just poo, bum, willy etc.

Apparently 2 children in her class had told her about the 'word', surprise surprise they both have older siblings.

I would have been a horrified parent too if it had been another child at DS2's nursery. Think swearing is horrible at the best of times but particularly vile coming out of the mouths of babies. I also would have been concerned that my child was going to copy the language.