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Home › Articles › Communication › Curb the Cussing

Curb the Cussing

How to Cure Your Preteen's Foul Mouth

By Carma Haley Shoemaker

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Actors in movies do it, athletes do it, even presidential candidates do it. So it's no surprise that most children have a vocabulary that includes a curse word or two – or three or four.

Regardless of what it's called – slang, cussing, cursing, foul language or swearing – it all means the same thing: using words that are considered inappropriate.

What's Wrong with Cussing?

Compared with other activities that preteenagers could involve themselves in, the use of swear words seems minor. "It's not the worst thing kids can do," says Jim O'Connor, author of Cuss Control (Three Rivers Press, 2000). "Kids are told not to take drugs, not to get in fights ... they are told all the things they cannot do and they think, 'Can't I even swear?'"

Parents need to understand that a child who swears is not a bad kid, but just a kid that uses "bad" words, O'Connor says.

If curse words are just that – words – what is it about them that makes them so inappropriate? Perhaps it is not the words themselves, but the attitude that accompanies their use. "So many of the swear words are used in such a negative way," O'Connor says. "Some use them joking around, but most of the swearing is a negative expression of criticism, complaining, grumbling or just plain negativity. Who wants to hear that?"

But if you want to curb the cussing in your family, next to breaking out the soap and washing out a mouth or two, what can you do?


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