The eight year old D comes home with a big story of a new word that she has learnt. Drop the coffee mug I did when she asked me what’s the “F” word. She proceeded to spell it out to me and I was seeing stars. The four year old is a like a parrot and quickly picked up and kept taunting “F’ word “F” word. Frankly, I use to use a lot of swear words and with much difficulty I stopped it after the kids. I do randomly use it when I am with friends or whatever, but hearing D say it was like a good slap in my face.
Then the conversation was going nowhere since she wanted to know the meaning. What are u suppose to explain to a child about the F word. Had to just tell her it’s very bad and she should not use it and some story that I cooked up. The curiosity with which she was looking at me I was bit confused who the mother was for a moment.
Called a good friend on advice, wrong move, she quickly jumped up to say oh see I told u don’t send her to an International School. Then she told me not to let D play with her kid for a bit since they should not discuss the word and gave a fake laugh. Right let me move on. Called another friend from the said school itself. She told me to just keep with the same story. Obviously the kid is too small for me to be having a talk of the birds and the bees.
6 comments:
Hi Ya
When my kid threw the same question at me when she was small I was quite honest.
I said it's a really dirty word that children don't use and that when she's older she'll get the meaning anyways. But right now I told her if you use it, you will get into a lot of trouble. i.e;
Your friends will use it at home and their parents will then ask them not to be friends with you.
You will get into trouble most of all with your teachers.
If your aunts or relatives heard you they would e horrified. And your parents, us, will look very bad as they will think that we have brought you up improperly.
Most of all I always stress to her to not be in hurry to grow up and enjoy being a child. That she has a lot of time to grow up.
Now she schools here so obviously she knows very well what it is. But because both of us as parents have a completely open dialogue with her or always leave the door open; she never uses it.
She calls the word "IT"!!!
:)
dhammika
I was a smart kid... when I picked up such words, I used to find the meanings myself..:D hehe
these days kids pick things up very fast.. I remember how it was when my younger bro asked me what the F word was.. and I said the same story.. it's a bad word and dont use it... and he listened...:)
also reminds me... when i was 7, a family friend's son was staying over at our place.. we were all abroad.. and the kid was my age. we were playin Uno in the middle of the night and he told me about sex! I was only 7!!!
he made me promise not to tell anyone.. and he learnt these from movies on Star T.V, which was cable tv there.. and from movies...
at that age you tend to blab alot and i had apparently been a talkative kid.
SO a few days later, I got excited and told my mum... mum told dad... dad told my friend's dad... and that was the end of our friendship.. his movies and his cable tv!
The families were friends and my parents were never the people to think or say anything wrong..
i still smile when i think of it.. :)
It happens when there's too much of freedom and ofcourse it's the other kids..:)
My 7 year old girl watches a lot of comedies (Seinfeld, Friends, DVDs of past episodes of Mind your language, Fawlty towers and Thin blue line) with us. Some of those uses swear words (especially the older comedies). We were thinking of not letting her watch those but later decided against it since she seem to be learning some good lessons from them (believe it or not!).
But everytime such a word is heard I tell her “Remember, kids don’t use that word” and she seems to listen. But I also suspect one day she might want to know their meanings…. Let’s hope she will be at least 16 then. :-)
He He. Reminds me when I did the same at about the same age. Told it to Dad I did. He very calmly said: "You found a difficult word, you should look it up in the dictionary." So I did. Of course that referred to "sexual intercourse", which I then looked up but couldn't make much sense of, and I had better things to do than go through dictionaries. So I gave it up then.
2 things about that still impress me: Dad was Smart & Dictionaries are the most un-informative information sources ever.
Thanks for the comments. I really feel better after reading the different experiences :).
LD : The mehendi girls are at BMICH. Its on until next friday only so hurry
If ma son happend to use it, i wud have to embrace it, kids do grow up n pick up things fast..
wish we'd get to see the shock on ur face when she uttered the word!!
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