As I was sitting at a public event recently listening to the
folks behind me dropping F-bombs left and right, I began thinking about how we
got into a situation as a society where it is just normal to hear this type of
thing. Maybe it has always been this way and I was just clueless and am now
turning into a grumpy old man but the things I occasionally hear in public now
would have at least elicited appalled glares in the world in which I grew up.
Sometimes parents will ask me about how to address their
young child’s foul language. It seems pretty obvious that children don’t invent
these words on their own. They are simply repeating what they have heard. I am
a firm believer that the behavior we model for children is far more influential
than what we tell them to do or not to do. Children will mimic what they hear
from the adults around them, the media they consume, etc.How can you explain to children that they should not call others names when adults in positions of authority engage in name-calling and insulting others? How can you convince them not to use expletives when they are commonplace in the movies they watch or when the evening news involves having to spell words with asterisks in the place of some letters to report a story?
I am a UVA alumnus and fan but loved when Virginia Tech men’s basketball coach Buzz Williams grabbed the microphone at the scorer’s table during a recent game and told a person or group in the student section to “stop cussing.”
I do not think children should be raised in a bubble and then dumped into the world as adults. But there is a difference between being immersed in a world of vulgarity and incivility and knowing that that world exists but having a different one modeled for you.
So be the kind of person you want your children to be. Model
civility and respect. Don’t hide the world from them but guide them through it.
Be honest, answer their questions. But do it on their level. You can probably tell
a five year old that it is a bad word that we don’t use and leave it at that. For
an older child you may have to explain what the word means and that there are
more acceptable words to use instead.
There are no easy rules to follow and every child is
different. So this really involves knowing your child and listening to him so
that when these situations arise, you have a baseline understanding to start
the discussion. And if you get it right every time, let me know because you
will be the first parent in history to do so.