Swearing

I want to offer reassurance (mainly to my Dad) that I am not foul mouthed. You see he’s offered up his concerns and questioned where on earth I have learned to swear like a mother of three small children who may sometimes drink too much tea and rarely sleeps for more than a couple of hours at a time. Hum, I wonder… Obviously, like any good daughter I credit him with all my best qualities.

I understand my posts may give the impression that I am either a foul mouthed mother or I write while slightly drunk. Whatever you believe, I absolutely promise that I do not actually say fuck in front of the kids. Nope, it’s all that little voice that lives inside my head, the one I also argue with about what to cook for tea. The one that tries to ease my Mum guilt when they are eventually asleep at the end of a tough rainy day in isolation and the one that keeps me sane, most of the time.

That said. My kids, the first born at least has some understanding when it comes to swearing, He knows that adults swear sometimes. He gets that this usually happens when all hope has gone and the adults just cannot go on without throwing a very hushed ‘oh, fuck’ out there. I mean, come on, the kid listens to rap, although he does like to let us know each time a bad word might accidentally slip into the tune, sometime Alexa just can’t find a PC version of Snoop Dog or Eminem.

Thankfully, the first born has some idea of what he should and should’t say. For example, performing Power Ranger moves in the living room and landing with poised grace only to shout “ya buggers”, isn’t great. Dropping the sponge in the shower and shouting “oh crap” is also on the list of shit he shouldn’t say. But please be assured that he did not learn these from me. Although to be honest my heart does start to pound a bit when his Dad will ask him where he learned these words. My mind will start to flash through my short term memory as I rack my brain to recall whether I let a stray ‘crap’ slip out, accidentally of course. Needless to say, my sigh of relief is audible as he credits his friends with his new terminology. Phew.

When the first born educates us with whatever new language he’s learned I usually explain to him that it’s not something he should say. I give him a pass and assume he didn’t know, but if he says it again, that’s just not cool and it earns a good telling off and an empty threat of the loss of tablet time. I say empty threat, because the kids know all too well that I wouldn’t manage to get through the day if they didn’t get their hour of whatever You Tube shit they are addicted to at the moment.

But really, I kind of think that they are exposed to enough that even if one does slip out it’s not the end of the world. Sitting on his sisters head, slyly punching her as she passes him or shutting the door on her fingers, that’s bad. Dropping an ‘oh,crap’, maybe not so much?