"Language." "Nng, sorry..."

[prog]

So babies & toddlers are starting to inevitably spread through my social group, and are being brought to gaming events, which serve as the mead-halls for my social life. This much is fine. I like kids OK, and I like smart kids a lot, so I honestly look forward to this crop getting old enough to think and talk, so I can start feeling jealous for their awesome childhoods within a whole crowd of delightfully immature "aunts" & "uncles". (Versus that of poor baby jmac, raised by friendless oldsters and sent to bed at 6pm every night. Alas!)

But there is one thing I don't like so much: it's accepted that, when the wee ones are around, all the grown-ups must refrain from using cuss-words. This actually makes me a little annoyed. Actually: rather annoyed, and a little angry, that I must constrain my own behavior for reasons which, when I think them through, seem more harmful than beneficial to the kids in question.

I mean: beyond being a futile exercise (you do plan on sending them to school one day, yes?), it smacks of teaching one's children a known falsehood, setting them up for later disillusionment and confusion. I guess I could see it if we as a group truly abused the words to a nautical degree, but I would argue that we use them as proper language flavoring: salt rather than syrup, if you will. So wouldn't one want to expose their kids to smart grown-ups speaking naturally, rather than teach them the fiction that the words simply don't exist, and are never said by anyone?

Naturally, I say all this as a non-parent, and further one who can't imagine changing this status, not without a rather severe personal mental rearrangement, so maybe there's something magical I'm not getting. Furthermore, were I ever put in charge of a child, I would (barring, again, a drastic change of personal philosophy) teach them during their first sentient Xmas the truth about both Santa Claus and Jesus Christ, and I don't know how different this strategy would be from even the new parents in my current crowd.

Comments

[dougo.livejournal.com]

I guess what bothers me is that the people admonishing "Language!" would probably not care at all if you yelled "Fudge!" or "Mother jumper!". It's really just about that particular series of consonants and vowels that they don't want their children to hear (or don't want to hear themselves).

[aspartaimee.livejournal.com]

this is very true.

most of the reason why i like to swear is because of the sounds. "fuck" is satisfying to say when your are angry because the F and the K sound are harsh. same with combos like "christ on a cracker." when saying "beaver" the B part gets the hard stomp of the accent. it's easy to interchange these words around kids, because the sounds are similar even if the words are different. fudge, criminy crackers, bother etc.

[prog.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I like to say "Rot! Rubbish!! Figs!!!" in that order. Because it's fun, and because I will marry the first person who gets the reference. (Unless I am misremembering it, which would be a shame.)