Family members swearing around your kids

[littleraysofsunshine]

How go you deal with this

Is swearing really that bad? They're going to hear it anyway either from you on a bad day, a family member, TV, the street.....school, another kid's parents. They're only words and they're only 'bad' words because we have certain ideas about them. I actually think they're a very colourful and exciting part of our language, embrace them!

My eldest has known about swear words for a long time and she knows that the clever thing about them isn't knowing them, but understanding how and when they're used.

You turn into a nag. It's the only way.

I don't find swearing a big deal si can't say I've noticed

I agree that swearing is just part of our language, but i dont think its proper to swear infront of any child.

If you dont swear in front of them then they shouldnt either.

How about just saying 'ooo tone it down a bit, i try not to swear infront of x' or make it really obvious that you dont swear in front of them, e.g if you spill something 'oooohh sssshhhhhh-UGAR'.

However you approach it i think youre doing a good thing.

My family don't swear fortunately. I 'correct' my husband the odd occasion he does with a smile (he says 'it was sh*t' and I say 'you mean rubbish' and smile sweetly). I get that swearing is part of our language, and there can be appropriate uses etc. etc. but when the kids are young I don't want it around them where I can control it. If family or friends were to swear in front of my kids I would be pretty brazen about asking them not to again. I also personally don't like very casualised swearing some people include in part of their vocabulary and even before having children have asked people not to do it in my house - big grin to show you are not offended, and one or two people maybe a bit surprised, but I've not had a bad reaction from anyone. I would only do that in my house though - my house my rules, no where else.

I agree that it's part of our language, it's just when your four year old day at nursery.. "So and so said twat" .. Kind of embarrassing lol

Not vey often, and I believe if you make a big deal out of it and give it more attention then they will be drawn to it.

It's just when your kids are in their care, babysat or whatver it makes me wonder how much they are sweating as sometimes when they swear in front of us it seems like it's "f that, f this" a lot..

My partner swears sometimes and I just say oooh you mean ship! Or sssssugar..

And luckily the kids haven't picked up on a lot, It jut how thy take it I guess. I was brought up around a lot of swearing an violence yet I don't like to swear.

Hmm it just I was wondering what e effects are if they hear it around other influential family members

It isn't really part of our language, in that these are not vocabulary words or stored with vocabulary in our brain.

The are actually acts of aggression and stored in the part of the brain that expresses and recognises aggression.

I think it is very important socially that all children grow up with the same words stored in that "aggression" part of the brain, otherwise there is scope for serious and dangerous misunderstandings, for a child who has a swear word stored in the vocabulary area rather than the aggression area.

They are perceived as aggressive when they don't intend to be.

They don't pick up on it when someone else is becoming aggressive.

They are unable to signal to others they are starting to feel aggressive themselves.

Swear words are and should be completely distinct from other words, and children need to learn this.

This was understood intrinsically for centuries, before the science behind it was understood, and is yet another area when parental instincts about how to communicate with children have been shown to be very sound!

I don't have a problem with it. I'm a prolific swearer but I keep a lid on it at home, that said the kids have definitely heard me swear. They know they are bad words and thankfully they prefer to talk about farts and smelly bums.

Caronaim, that is absolute, complete and utter, couldn't be more, rubbish. From a linguist, a developmental linguist even, who looks at cognitive function and language. There is no 'aggression' part of the brain with separate vocabulary and if you have managed to find one then please do come in and show all of us linguists, psychologists and neuroscientists where this centuries understanding is.

Really, I have no idea where you have found all of this 'vocabularly' area and 'aggression' area, or even that there's a correct and incorrect way to communicate with children. I mean, really??!!!

Words like 'fuck' are simply considered 'bad' because they come from anglo saxon origin (think boewulf) instead of latin or frech, which were considered higher and more educated forms of language. That's it, it's a completely social construct and one that is part of our very rich linguistic past.

I understand that some people might not like the words, but come on, don't spout such absolute rubbish!

It isn't really part of our language, in that these are not vocabulary words or stored with vocabulary in our brain.

The are actually acts of aggression and stored in the part of the brain that expresses and recognises aggression.
I wonder how much of this categorization has to do with the way they're learned. They are just vocabulary words, there is nothing intrinsically special about 'swear' words. But because they're considered taboo they're only heard, by most children, as acts of aggression. And not usually learned at the same time, or the way, the rest of the language is being learned.
Really it's no wonder they're perceived as 'different' by the brain.

Well that crosspost negates almost everything I wrote. Except that I agree with your sentiment, Zsazsabinks (Your name made me literally laugh out loud, btw.)

Zsaz blink I was simplifying it slightly to be brief, but as a developmental linguist you can't not be aware that entirely different areas of the brain are used when swearing and listening to swearing.

This can be shown with modern medical equipment, but has been apparent even before such equipment became available. I am sure you have met many people who have lost the use of language after brain damage, and you must have come across the same subgroups that I have, those that lose all languag EXCEPT swear words, and those that lose swearwords but not other language.

these patterns of damage would not be so common if the two groups of words were stored in the same place.

I am also surprised you are not aware of the recent research into early language acquisition in children in which is has been shown that the brain picks up on statistically significant occurrences of the same string of sound and starts to pick these out of the whole flow of speech and recognise them as words. I have over the years heard so many parents and grandparents speak to babies in a baby way, with rhymming and repetition, "Oh look, a new toothy tooth" "Shall we have some dindins" "time for bye byes" etc, this has now been shown to be very beneficial, although most of us knew that intrinsically didn't we!

Same with tome and pitch of voice.

Anglo-saxon developed from English, then became pretty much obsolete, there is no classification of words considered "bad" because they come from anglosaxon - firstly no one classifies words as anglo saxon in their own head, secondly, as it came from English in the first place, there is no categoric way of identifying a word as anglosaxon.

I find your post a bit odd. I don't know what area of developmental language you are expert in, but not the areas I have up until now considered the areas of expertise of a developmental linguist. Some other kind I have not come across before maybe.

Ninja, it is entirely down to the way it is learnt! Exactly my point. If children are not taught that swear words are taboo, their effectiveness breaks down. it only works if the whole social group perceives them as aggressive.

it is important, I think, as it signals the very start of aggressive feelings in an interaction, and it is a very important stage to recognise.

That is why i think it is a shame and a waste if children are allowed to grow up thinking they are normal acceptable words, and storing them in their regular vocabulary - because of the scope for misunderstandings and miscommunication, which could easily lead to aggression escalating unnecessarily.

What are you talking about? Seriously?!

There is absolutely no part of the brain which separates different strings of vocabulary into 'aggression' or not. This is just vocabulary. Yes, our brains may react differently to what we perceive as aggression but that is entirely separate to actual individual strings of phonemes. You may well classify all swear words as 'aggressive' in your head but that's entirely due to your perception of them and nothing to do with anything that your brain is doing for you! It's not a telephone directory that hears and pops it under 'a' for aggression as opposed to 'v' for 'vocab'!

What part of my post concerned what we would call 'parentease' or 'carerease' too? 'Baby words' like, for example, papas are a highly frequently occurring part of the way we speak to children and interestingly, occur across thousands of years and are also cross linguistic. They are usually CVCV consonant clusters (which are 'unmarked' or simply, the most common phonological occuance accros language) and usually involve the simplest phonemes to produce, i.e., unvoiced bilabial stop, /p/. Actually, there's no absolute consensus on the role of this kind of language, but there are several possibilities and it most certainly isn't in any way harmful. Probably it's a nice way of introducing and emphasising certain sounds as well as making your voice interesting to babies and children. More variation in pitch etc. To be honest, it's not a particularly interesting area of study. More interesting is looking into things like 'mutual exclusivity' in language acquisition (so, how does a baby work out what a new item means) and how this compares between children of differing linguistic backgrounds. Or the acquisition of phonology, how quickly does a baby recognise phonemes relevant to their language (seemingly from within the womb).

Anglo saxon was a precursor to English. How you can have those muddled I do not know. Our complicated pronominal system is a remnant of it. If you're interested a good introductory text would be Mitchell and Robinson, A Guide to Old English.

I don't know which areas of developmental linguistics you are aware of, the field looks into language use across the entire life span. The area that I study is bilingualism and cognitive function (specifically executive function). The research question that I'm working on at the moment considers what impact the age of acquisition combined with the age of onset of attrition has on areas in which linguists have found bilinguals to have an advantage over monolinguals, that is auditory attention.

I referred your comment to another linguist who is from a completely different field to me, 'Applied Linguistics', this referrs to language as is it used in social contexts. So if you don't believe my arguments then you could maybe hear it from a social perspective. She's going to forward me some papers to look through too! I'll link them in case you're intersted:

"As someone obsessed with the linguistics of swearing there has been insane amounts of work done on swearing and bonding. People swearing in a friendly atmosphere makes people more comfortable and thus happier. Also swearing creates an instantaneous 'in crowd' vs 'out crowd' which works at parties, meetings and gatherings to make fast friends. I'm sure this is true to some extent, but the conclusion that you should never ever swear in front of children because swearing is aggression vocalized is just untrue."

Zsaz, I don;t think you can be very up to date, it is a long time since Anglo saxon was considered a precursor to English, it has been shown fairly conclusively that English was in fact a precursor to Anglo saxon, as to the rest of your post, some of it we are not contradicting each other, and some of it I suspect is as out of date as your Anglo saxon statement.

How would you explain the observation that many stroke victims use the use of all words except swear words?

That that observation is absolutely and completely untrue. I have known aphasics (you don't call them 'victims') who have retained 'bugger' and 'bloody' over all else.

Where did you get that 'observation' from.

What?! It's been a long time since Anglo Saxon was considered a precursor to English?! Where on earth did you see that bit of evidence???

Anglo-saxon developed from English, then became pretty much obsolete, there is no classification of words considered "bad" because they come from anglosaxon - firstly no one classifies words as anglo saxon in their own head, secondly, as it came from English in the first place, there is no categoric way of identifying a word as anglosaxon.
This entire paragraph suggests to me that you are talking out of your arse don't actually have a good grasp of the subject.

In small(ish) words:

• Anglo-Saxon is the same as Old English, which predates modern English by several hundred years. To say that Anglo-Saxon comes from English is just daft.
• Anglo-Saxon was deemed inferior during the time period that the ruling class in England spoke French, because it was the language of the peasants.
• Anglo-Saxon was a written language, examples of it exist to this day, there are even people who can speak it. Which is how we know which words come from Anglo-Saxon; because we can read them.
• Examples of Anglo-Saxon words that are well known and still used today: Fuck, which simply meant to have sex, with no overtly lewd or aggressive connotations. Shit, which meant dirt or mess in a very general sense.

Incidentally, to answer the original question. I made sure that my daughter understood that there are some things that adults are allowed to do but children aren't. Examples include driving, drinking alcohol, getting married, and using certain words. It absolutely worked - until she was a teenager, by which time I had taught her the rules of appropriate time, place, and company.

should say "lose" not use, but actually works both ways.

so you are confirming exactly what I was saying Zsaz,are you not? That the two groups of words can be lost or retained independently of each other. Because they are stored in different parts of the brain. What exactly is your issue with this?

Ninja, I'm not going to go over the whole history of the English language on a thread which is essentially about whether it is or isn't ok for children to grow up thinking swear words are just normal.

I don't think it is OK, and I have explained why.

however, your account of what is and isn't anglosaxon, and what did and didn't come first is based on the history of Britain invented by the Tudors and emphatically and categorically enforced hundreds of years ago. It has never stood up to any sort of genuine scrutiny, and now has been superseded by other ideas and suggestions, some of which have recently been backed up by modern scientific advances.

if you are interested, look it up. Obviously, some people who have learnt the old history are quite attached to it, but that doesn't make it true. We all at times in our lives have to change or established beliefs if new evidence contradicts them.

maybe that's where the confusion was coming from? Because I was calling it Anglo Saxon? Did that as opposed to West Saxon or Old English because it normally is the quickest way to imply distinction from English but relation to where English came from.

Thanks Ninja, thought I was going mad for a minute!

There is a distinction between English (british) and anglo saxon, and it is incorrect to refer to anglo saxon as English, because it isn't. It was once seen as a stage in the development of English, as the Anglosaxons were once seen as a population that inhabited England. Now it is known that the population of England is descended from the ancient British, as is their English language, and the anglo-saxons have little or no definition at all. There was a minority culture called anglo saxon. There was a minority language called anglo saxon. It may have come from Germany. It may have been a brigade of mercenaries who had retired from the Roman army, and were employed by English Kings. This may have been politically important, but the anglosaxons never populated England. They have left almost nothing in the genetics and language of the Uk.

"so you are confirming exactly what I was saying Zsaz,are you not? That the two groups of words can be lost or retained independently of each other. Because they are stored in different parts of the brain. What exactly is your issue with this?"

No I am absolutely refuting what you say.

Why are you talking about the Tudors? They came along about 700 years after the linguistic period that you're talking about!

I would be really happy to learn from you if you could point me in the right direction of something, anything that supports your views. I'm don't hold out much hope of finding any though!

Zsaz, how do you explain that so many stroke victims lose all language apart from swear words then. You have just confirmed you have seen this for yourself! The swear words are stored differently.

I am talking about the Tudors, because they invented this whole history that you are referring to. The Tudors were welsh, and part of their claim to rule was that the celts had been driven out of England by the Anglo- Saxons. This never happened! As I said in my previous post, the anglo- Saxons, whoever they might have been, were politically powerful, but they never colonised the UK. Nor in fact did the Celts, who inhabited the Western coast line only.

Both groups were powerful, both groups had political power, and scientific and cultural influence, but English, both the language, and the people, is descended from Ancient Britians,

You can look this up for yourself quite easily. There is dispute about exactly who the celts were and where they came from, and how many there were, and exactly the same about the anglo -saxons, but there is no dispute that modern Britain's language and ancestry comes from the ancient Britains, who's closest relatives were Basque.

Romans travelling in Ireland learnt English! English was spoken there before Gaelic. Same in Scotland.

caronaim, where on earth are you picking this stuff up from?