Bruce Willis Kids

PARENTS TALK: R-Rated Childhood

George Washington said of swearing, “Every person of sense and character detests and despises it.”

Some would say he didn’t know @#&%.

Profanity is so prevalent in our culture that I often find myself trying to shield my kids from it.

Okay, a four-letter word has been known to fly out of my mouth on occasion. The time I dropped my cell phone in the lake, for instance. And childbirth.

I do try to censor myself around the kids by using benign phrases like “Rats” and “For crying out loud.” But I can’t censor them from the world.

My kids are going to hear profanity. So when they do, I say, “We don’t talk like that because those are ugly words. You look ugly when using them.”

In our house, we prohibit more than just the garden-variety bad words. My son was punished for telling his sister that tea parties “suck.” They aren’t allowed to call each other “stupid.” They know I have a bar of soap and I’m not afraid to use it!

We have these ground rules because my kids are drawn to bad words like forbidden fruit. My boys like to do tongue twisters in the car, and their favorite is this one: “I slit the sheet, the sheet I slit, and on the slitted sheet I sit.” Try saying that 10 times without blushing.

Sure, there are times profanity serves a purpose. It can make a statement more emotionally charged. Imagine Rhett Butler saying, “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a hoot.”

Doesn’t quite do it.

Swearing can punctuate a statement and give the speaker a sense of bravado.  Die Hard  wouldn’t be nearly as memorable if Bruce Willis had slayed the enemy with: “Yippee ki yay, jerk.”

And it’s a fact that cursing makes pain more bearable. (See childbirth above.)

In most instances, though, swearing adds nothing meaningful and just dilutes the message.

To demonstrate, let’s alter some famous quotations:

“One small step for man, one frickin’ leap for mankind.”

“Give me liberty or give me death, damn it.”

Does profanity make them more profound? I think not.

If only life had a seven-second delay, like on television, then I could censor myself and others. Not that my kids would give a  bleeeep .