Would you confront a stranger in public who swore in front of your children?

[Jenna2212]

Picture the scene, you're in a cafeteria, you've treated the children to a cake each. They're playing and you're enjoying a latte. A woman at the adjacent table swears "the film I saw last night was sh**". She says this within obvious earshot of your children.

I've had experiences like this often. I will always confront the person who is swearing and tell them to stop and have respect for others around them, including my children. I don't want my children to grow up thinking that the use of words like that is normal or acceptable, especially in public places.

It's something that seems to have gotten worse in recent years. I was in WH Smith a couple of months ago and I heard staff telling a customer who was arguing with them to "f* o**". They said this loudly, so everyone in the store could hear, including me. Thankfully, I didn't have my children with me on this occasion. It used to be rare to hear people swear, and if they ever did, it was usually in hushed tones or perhaps a rowdy licenced bar on a Friday night. Shop workers certainly didn't do it on the shop floor.

It's sad that society has declined to such levels where swearing in public has become common.

Would you confront someone who was swearing in front of your children and request them to stop? Vote in the poll below and have your say.

I think I'd be saying something about a shop worker who told a customer to fuck off.
I might ask sweary guys on a train to tone it down if there were kids present. But I wouldn't get bothered about a person in a private conversation in a cafe describing something as shit if that was the worst thing they said. Were they being very loud?

The word gotten.

No, never have and never would.

As far as I was concerned when my DCs were young, the best course was to refrain from that sort of language myself and if my DCs ever started using terms like that, to help them understand that coarse language wasn't welcome in our family.

You may not like other people's choices when you're out, but you can't expect your children to live in a protective bubble, and it's not good for them to be so shielded from what goes on around them either.

HAHAHAHA

thanks for the laugh.
why the fuck should us normal folk keep the world PG for your skids.

fucking laughable 🤣

Gotten is a perfectly acceptable English word, @Whoarethoseguys

It's widely used in Hiberno English, just as the construction 'forgotten' is used everywhere in the Anglophone world.

Not in the situation you describe, no, my dc wouldn't even register. And also, they've heard me say milder swears, and their dad say much worse swears, with no ill effect.

I did ask some teens to pipe down on the bus recently, but more due to the content and volume than specific swears. To their credit, they did, bit I said it for the benefit of all the passengers not just my dc.

They'll hear all sorts at school, chill out

I hate loo and lavatory they are horrible words and sorry makes no sense of you can't hear someone unless you say sorry can you repeat that I didn't hear you and what is just rude.
I don't understand the toilet hate. I'm not keen on people saying bathroom or rest room when they actually want to know where the toilet is!

No because I'm pregnant and if someone is swearing enough and loud enough for it to bother me then it's likely they're aggressive or potentially unhinged and I'm not risking wading into that in this condition

I was expecting the context to be much stronger swearing than 'shit' 😃

Well you're setting yourself up to be told to fuck off for a start. Secondly, your kids vocabularies are your problem. Others have no responsibility to keep their language child friendly.

If you interrupted my private conversation because I used the word shit, I'd go out of my way to ensure your precious children heard me say cunt.

No I wouldn’t speak to another adult about their choice of vocabulary because:

1. My children are not the centre of the universe and they can be taught that just because an adult uses bad language it is not ok for them to use it and
2. I’m not a deeply controlling person who does not have good boundaries. So if someone swore in front of my children and I was upset I would move away and not make demands of a random stranger.

Exactly what I was going to say 😂

yes, this! I'd add 'entitled little' at the beginning of it too.

There's a lot more your children are going to get exposed to than words
You don't like them, you teach your children that.
These words are...
You cannot police the world for words.
They are the freedom you have living in this country.
Words.

Bollocks to that

I am assuming UK as you mentioned WHSmith but the word cussed is very American.
Apologies if you're American. You have a whole lot of other cussing worries .
If UK, you may not have grown up here, as what you're describing is just mostly descriptive language.

I grew up in a non sweary home. As I got older I found people swearing quite intimidating because I thought people only swore in extreme circumstances as that's all I knew about. Honestly it's fine if your kids are exposed to people who use language differently to you. My husband's family are casual swearers and my teens know they can drop the occasional swear at their house and not with my parents, people are different and that's fine. It is advisable to teach them to get their point across without swearing, to swear and be polite, and to be kind or cutting both with and without swearing.

No - I wouldn’t confront them. It’s not my job. They are only swear words. If they were being verbally abusive to someone else then yes but using swear words as part of a conversation - no. It’s not your job to police speech. You can simply say to your kids that does words are not to be repeated if they heard.

I wouldn't count shit as swearing, and they are all just words anyway. If someone wasn't in control of themselves and yelling and f-ing all around them I'd romove my child, but because it's scary to see an adult out of control and the potential for things to turn physical not the words.
I rarely swear or use rude language so when I do it serves its purpose, immediately alerts people to how I'm feeling/the situation, my child grew up knowing they were adult words and as a teen yes she swears but its in appropriate situations and places, the world won't end because we use them

Cafeteria
WH Smith
Hushed tones
perhaps a rowdy licenced bar on a Friday night

.....

AI?

Welcome to the world and all it's glories. Making like Hyacinth Bouquet will get you nowhere.

It is what it is. If that's all youre worrying about consider yourself fortunate..

No 😂 AT them, yes. But sometimes things fly out and it’s not anyone else’s job to police their language in front of my children. I have a condition that means I have, at the moment anyway, painful joints and swollen legs that hurt. I dropped one of my dc off to school the other day, spun around in front of the school gates (so children, parents, teachers all around) and walked right into the tow hitch on my car and shouted some choice words. I did apologise to everyone, but sometimes swear words come out.

Children shouldn’t be in cafés.
They should be at school, playground, home, church or center parcs. I would confront anyone swearing in one of the above.

TBH @Jenna2212 people saying “gotten” gets more on my nerves than someone saying shit