The time has come for us to work on our language. I mean, not our GRASP of language, although that could use some work too, but our swearing/cussing/inappropriate movie references and one-liners from stand-up comedy routines. This will be somewhat of a...challenge, since we don't have a lot of family-friendly alternatives in regular rotation. I mean, I say "OH DEAR" a lot, but only in an ironic way, and only because it highlights my Minnesota accent in a way that we both find funny ("Ooooo deer"). BR says "MOTHAH-LESS MOTHAH", which, while a fine alternative to the classic "mothahfuckah", remains...borderline.
This weekend, at Target:
BR: Do you want to go look at electric razahs?
Tessie: PULL YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR ASS! (Rushmore reference, am not Huge Wifely Bitch/Hag)
AD: Ahsss...
Tessie: Oh Dear.
How did you all learn to watch what you say in front of your kids? I don't think we can do the old Swear Jar trick, since neither of us ever has cash and I just KNOW BR would make up some kind of elaborate credit-based banking system complete with spreadsheets and an APR in excess of the federally regulated limit. So, you know, fuck that.
Speaking of butchering the English language, it is hilarious and frightening how AD Boston-izes everything.
Tessie: Here's your Nutrigrain bar.
AD: BAH
Tessie: Do you want some more?
AD: MOAH
Tessie: Hee hee! Is that how Daddy says it? Say RRRRRR! RRRRRR!
AD: NO MOAH MONKEYS! *finger wag*
Tessie: No more monkeys, indeed.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
33 comments:
Hmmmm. This is a hard one. I keep thinking back to an old Three Stooges bit where an attorney tells Curly to "DROP THE VERNACULAR!" Recent additions to my kiddy friendly vocab include snap, awesome (used as a filler much as the f-bomb would be if passionately appropriate), and yucky. The filter betwix my brain and mouth is still being adjusted. However, it has been working. Oh - and Bostobabian is SO CUTE (as her mothah tongue)!
I should add, however, that even the best of moms have slip-ups. Exhibit A: Little Diva became upset when our dog was all up in my Dad's grill on a recent visit. She loudly proclaimed "Dammit, Belle!" Which mommy instantly corrected to, "No, LD. Mommy says 'DOWN, Belle.'" It was met with a smile and the former indiscretion has not been repeated. Can I recommend the buzzer from the board game TABOO? Then you and BR can bleep each other. WAIT - THAT'S GENIUS!
No help on the not cursing. Fortunately my daughter is not repeating after me.
Speaking of accents, my old boyfriend had the heaviest Brooklyn accent EVAH. I swear it was difficult to know if he was saying "Boxes" or "Boxers" out of context.
And when I was a kid, my NY accent was so heavy, I would say I was going with my "Mudda" and "Fadda"
Um, I have no kids so I can say as many inappropriate words as I please. However, I think it is hysterical how BR would create an elaborate credit system for the Swear Jar using spreadsheets and APR. Laughed out loud! :)
Mimi has been saying "people duck" for the past couple of days. No one seems to have figured out that she is actually copying me saying "people suck." Not exactly cursing, but it's a good reminder that she can pick up anything we say and repeat it for days on end.
i don't really know how we stopped swearing it just kind of happened. of course, we had our biannual fight yesterday and K managed to bust out 3 swears in the span of about 30 seconds and O's eyes were complete wide (I don't think he knew the words but OMG people disagreeing - run for the hills!). we've tended to use alternative words like caca (I assume swearing in another language is permissable)
oh and no moah monkeys is a CLASSIC. i want to teach my kid to have an accent . . .
MOTY-I sort of love DROP THE VEHNACULAH! I can see that replacing the good old SHUT IT around our house. I also like the Taboo buzzer. I think I'll start just using that to drown out EVERYTHING BR says. I'll just hold it down until he stops talking and then when he starts again I'll give a little BZZT! HAHA! Okay, this is turning into an elaborate scenario in my head. Still. Buzzer. Awesome.
TLA-I may or not, um, ALSO be a suckah for the NY accent. The guy I dated before BR was from NY. My favorite word of his was "DRAW-AH" (drawer)
I cuss like a mothahfuckah around my kids and neither of them has repeated it. I think it's the same principle as the fact that I drink around them and they don't do that either, because it's not allowed. But that's just me. I don't get all worked up about swearing.
I can tell you this was a tough one for me as well. I was told by a 30 year old hockey player a few years back that "I swore like a truck driver"... (he was definitely not an angel...)
I decided to try working on swearing before we even gave birth to get a head start on it! We actually did a version of the swear jar. We have a dry erase board on our fridge and every time one of us swore we would make a mark. It was a hefty mark ($1 a swear) plus it was sort of competitive because neither of us wanted to get a mark (though there might have been a few times that one or the other of us would TRY to get the other to swear...) It really did work and we never actually paid on it - it was really just a good way to remember not to swear and also to see how much we actually swore (A LOT).
Also, I would find alternatives to words like the standard fudge or darn it but I also made up silly things to say so swearing was still fun but silly instead.
Finally, I get out some swearing when chatting with friends on the phone or by e-mail and also on my blog.
Matthew has never said a swear word and we have not really said many bad words around him.
Though there was the time I said 'OH SHIT' very loudly for some reason I cannot remember, I looked him right in the eye and I fumbled about telling him that he should never say that word, it is a mommy and daddy word and how about a glass of chocolate milk dear ;)
I use the same edit feature as I do at work, so my potty mouth is not a factor. Mike is a whole other story (he works with all guys in a non-public office), and the kids just know not to mimic him.
The accent thing is so cute. I remember being in Scotland and hearing the little kids with their accents thinking it was just adorable.
are you fucking kidding me? i just wrote out this whole elaborate anecdote and it's vanished. bullshit, dude.
in short: i need a buzzer for my husband. not because we have kids but just to shush him.
No advice here. The cussing in our house is spectacular.I say go big--if it's one long string of them it will be harder for her to repeat.
I should add that I don't think there's anything wrong with swearing (obviously). I don't find it offensive, and I don't subscribe to the "taking the Lord's name in vain" thing.
BUT, I do want to watch what I say in front of AD IN GENERAL, and that includes things like telling my husband to pull his head out of his ass, which obviously was a (hilarious) JOKE, the nuances of which may be lost on a kid.
I'm not offended by cursing, but I knew that if I went down that path with my luck my son would drop the F bomb in front of my MIL and it would be my fault. My husband was in the army for awhile and I think it got the swearing out of his system, he hardly ever swears. So, everyone would know it was my potty mouth. Luckily, being an INFJ I subconsciously screen almost everything that comes of out of my mouth, so I just worked harder at pausing before I said anything. So far, good results except for the time some jackass nearly rearended me and I shouted "Fuck!" I think my son was so alarmed by the fact that I was clearly freaked out, that he didn't really listen to me. No F bomb from him . . . yet.
Oh, my. I watch A.'s ice fishing shows just so I can hear Al Linder's accent. You two crack me up.
I will be off no help to you regarding your colorful use of language.
I am officially known by my and A.'s siblings as The Aunt Who Taught My Angel To Swear. I have personally been responsible for at least two nephews saying their first swear words.
Victory is mine!
When my sister was young, she learned to put back the "r"s in words where my Boston mom left them out: cah, bah, moah, etc. She overcorrected sometimes, though. When she heard Mom talk about the Amish (we lived in a community with a lot of Amish people), my sister assumed the word was "ARmish."
As for the word correcting, K. picked up "stupid" from Scott when she was very little - not even 1 1/2. He told her he had actually said "Snoopy" and pulled out an old Charlie Brown tape to show her. A few minutes into the tape, Lucy called Charlie Brown "stupid." Hee.
We still use 'snoopy.' Creative substituting can be amusing.
I don't know how, because we both have horrible mouths, we manage not to say fuck, bitch or shit in front of the kids. Both though, are really god for saying DAMMIT! and pounding their fists on something......ooops. Eddie asked me, as I was buckling him too tightly in to his carseat last week "WHAT THE HELL IS THE MATTER WITH YOU?!?" So, yeah.
Until Caitlyn starts cursing under her breath, like I'm famous for, (especially when I'm cooking--I'm whispering "shit" and "fuck" constantly!) I'm not worried.
That is too funny! I was just telling BG that we need to watch our mouth because SD is repeating every thing!
Ooh, yeah, that's a fun one. We learned our lesson when Supergirl was 1.5 and learned the word "shit". Since then, we've come up with some ways to substitute, like just the first letter ("a" for "ass"). "Pull your head out of your a." Also, Rock came up with "Foof" as a sub for the f-bomb, which promptly lost it's edge and became a family term of enderment. When the kids are being a little mischeivious, we say they're being "foofy". Or we call them "little foof" kind of like "little monster". Just a general term that only we know.
I LOVE IT when you post about your kid. My god, it makes me happy. Also, I think most kids talk like that, even ones without Boston-accented parents. But maybe I'm wrong.
Jess-You're totally right, they DO. It's just a happy, funny coincidence that reminds me of how deeply weird the Boston accent is.
I am no help. The other day my four year old was watching me play Pikmin and she yelled "Shit Mommy they're going to eat you! RUN!" She's just picked up shit, crap, dammit, and also suck in the past few weeks. I'm not sure if she just started paying attention or what.
So now I have to do this edit in my head, which means that I am swearing under my breath and screaming FUCK in my head at her more often, just because I know I can't say it out loud. Good times.
bwaaha. i love it when you write in boston.
We have to learn to self edit too or our child will curse like a sailor and have a really warped sense of humor. We are constantly throwing out one liners from Seinfeld, Ron White, random movies, and a really old Eddie Murphy routine that no one else has ever heard (before he was very famous and when he was funny). She will likely never hear these so it will be really odd if she starts throwing out these one liners and laughing because mommy and daddy laugh. No solution here...we tried something that my friend Carla and her husband started - substituting the word Chickenbus for curse words - mostly because it was just damn funny. But it didn't stick and people who aren't in on the joke look at you really weird if you bump your funny bone in Target and use the word chickenbus in the same tone you would say fuck.
We've been struggling with banishing our potty mouths here as well. We spell a lot and use the first word substitution that shelly mentioned a lot. It's gotten to the point where I actually use "F!" or "S!" even when Zoe's not around. I know she'll pick up on it but at least it won't be too bad when she repeats "F!" in public.
Uh, right?
The other day I spilled some milk but wasn't too upset about it, so I said "Shoot!" emphatically but not angrily. Elizabeth IMMEDIATELY AND CLEARLY echoed, "Shoot!" so I was glad for the shot fired over the bow.
The older kids have mimicked worse words, and then I just explain (like Jane does) that they can use those words when they're older, but not now while they're children.
hahahahaha sara, i am DYING over "WHAT THE HELL IS THE MATTER WITH YOU?"
I can clearly see the day we're at the pediatrician's office and Maddie shouts, "FUCK!" after receiving a booster. It. Is. Coming.
That reminds me of the time my husband went to the Secretary of State (AKA the DMV in other states). Needless to say, our son came home that night and at the tender age of 2 walked around saying,"F***ing C***, Daddy?" Arrgggh... So what if the woman wouldn't transfer the title without him giving 11,234 proofs of ID... not in front of the boy, for God's sake.
Okay, the swearing? OH MY GOSH. I so feel you. We are both kind of casual swearers (in that we let it slip all the time, over stuff not really, shall we say, "fuck" worthy.) What makes it worse is that though swearing offends neither of us, we are in fact Christians with lots of Christian friends/family that it DOES offend very much. So while we have the filter on all the time when we're out in public, when we're at home we tend to totally relax and let our guard down, forgetting that the little parrot is listening!
OMG, I love all the comments here...I will say what finally enabled us to cut the crud was hearing the darling child repeat some of it. (On a busy street in a strange city: "Fucking trucks! Fucking trucks! Fucking trucks!" When discouraged by inability to draw perfect fish scales: "Fuck." Etc.)
Now that the darling child is six, however, he has is own gd'd vernacular:
Cousin: I spy with my little eye, something floating in the sky. What is it?
Child: Poop?
Cousin: No.
Child: A butt?
Cousin: No.
Child: A weiner?
Cousin: Yes! An exploding weiner!
Repeat ad infinitum.
Would liberal amounts of adult language make this exhange more bearable? Less? Hard to say.
I love the accent! I'm still learning how to watch my language because normally i cuss like a sailor, though I've never said anything worse than "shut!" in front of Soph. My biggest prob. with her is to make sure I use my ex's nick-name and not his real name, or even spell out his real name, because then she recognizes what I'm saying.
The other night though it was cute because we were watching Toy Story and she said "ooh they said stupid and shut up. Those are bad words." and I said, "you're right. those are not nice words." then she goes, "they said it, I didn't."
I meant "shoot" and also: I love chickenbus!
Post a Comment