Mummy what's the F word?

[kittykatty]

My 6 year old son asked me this yesterday! What would you say? Torn between telling him straight, with the appropriate health warning, or fobbing him off and protecting his innocence a bit longer, but I imagine his mission to find it out will be even stronger and he'll start asking other people.......

Flip? As in "Oh, flip"

Don't think I'd want to tell a 6yo the truth in case he started saying it in front of his friends.

I'd say it straight, with an explanation of why it is inappropriate to use it.

Anything else is doomed to failure.

The 'f' word is flip, at least until Year 5.

Likewise, the 'c' word is crap, at least until secondary school.

Fraggle

By the time mine found out about the other f word and the other c word, they were old enough to understand about context.

No, of course It's flip.

Fudge!

Fairy cakes!

To be honest, I would tell the truth. Write it if you don't want him to hear it.

Thank you all! The problem with giving him a made up word, eg flip, is that I have already told him it's a very rude word....so then if someone else says 'oh flip' out loud they'll get a shocked look from him.... Discussed it with my husband, we thought about writing it down but then it would be a comedy phonics session of sounding it out ffffff-uuuuuu-ckckckckckck which I think would make it even worse and I would probably not be able to stop myself laughing. My 8 year old daughter is now in on the theme, they're both desperate to know. "Remember you are going to tell us about the f word were his last words last night". We've scheduled the chat for the weekend and they can't wait. I think we will probably tell them straight........

Make up a pseudo word then that they won't hear anyone else saying like fladulate,fengo, fuerteventura.