{"id":504,"date":"2006-05-31T12:21:00","date_gmt":"2006-05-31T12:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/?p=504"},"modified":"2006-05-31T12:21:00","modified_gmt":"2006-05-31T12:21:00","slug":"bad-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/2006\/05\/31\/bad-words\/","title":{"rendered":"Bad words"},"content":{"rendered":"

Of all the potential parenting pitfalls, I never expected words<\/em> to be one that would trip me up. I may not be much of a cook, I throw a ball like your grandmother and what I know about fashion you could write on a grain of rice, but I know from words. I gots me lots of words, big words and little words, fancy words and simple words, and I even know how to string \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcem together real purty.<\/p>\n

At first, the concept of \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcbad words\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 seemed cut-and-dried. Curse words bad, other words good. And I knew that my propensity to curse might some day be problematic. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t exactly swear like a sailor, but I have been known to drop the occasional f-bomb. More likely, a d-bomb or a sh-bomb. And I simply refuse to give up \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcbloody hell\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 as a nearly perfect curse for all occasions. However, as predicted, my potty-mouth has come back to bite me in the ass \u00e2\u20ac\u201c er, tucus. One day when he was about two, Tristan asked me in the most polite, gentle voice to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Open the damn door, please, mummy.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Oops!<\/p>\n

That same year around Halloween there was this singing ghost in Canadian Tire that Tristan loved, and it sang that old disco song by Wild Cherry: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Lay down that boogie and play that funky music till you die\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6\u00e2\u20ac\u009d We sang that song over and over again for months, except every time we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d sing it, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d change the last word so it would be \u00e2\u20ac\u0153play that funky music till you cry.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (I know, I know, but I was still a newbie parent then. I was na\u00c3\u00afve and full of embarrassing idealism. Thank god that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s gone now.)<\/p>\n

So \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcdie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 was our first stealth bad word, and from there we discovered a universe of seemingly innocuous words that lead a secret double life. Soon \u00e2\u20ac\u02dchate\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 arrived, and shortly thereafter \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcstupid\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 came to call. Each time, I tried to explain to Tristan (and now Simon, who is, if anything, even further ahead on the linguistic curve than his brother was at two) that some words are simply not nice. You don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t \u00e2\u20ac\u02dchate\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 something; you do not like it. You absolutely never call another person \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcstupid\u00e2\u20ac\u2122. (Except when they are, and then you only do it behind their back. But I’ll wait ’till he’s in school for that part of the lesson.) That boy did not try to \u00e2\u20ac\u02dckill\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 you<\/a>; he simply tried to take your Thomas train away.<\/p>\n

And then, just when you think you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re getting through to him, he tosses you the curve ball. You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re talking to your spouse about houseplants and lamenting that you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve \u00e2\u20ac\u02dckilled\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 every one in the house, and your son, whom you didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even know was listening, pipes up and chides you for using a bad word and it takes a full minute of replaying the conversation in your head before you can figure out what he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s on about.<\/p>\n

So you launch into a discussion about context, and meaning, and intention. And around the second minute, you see his gaze wandering and you realize he hasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t processed a single thing you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve said, and you wonder why they only listen when they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not supposed to.<\/p>\n

And you realize that the whole \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcwords\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 thing is a slippery slope, and you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re on the way down fast. When the issue of name-calling comes up, as it inevitably does with a four-year old, you immediately react when he calls his brother \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcstupid head\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and tell him name-calling is not acceptable. You try to teach him that words have power, and in using words you have responsibilities. You suggest that calling somebody a \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcpotato-head\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 is a much better alternative, but when you actually hear him calling his brother a potato-head, you change your tune and issue a no-name-calling edict instead, and you realize that not only have you rather hypocritically just contradicted yourself, but that you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve just talked yourself into a corner as well.<\/p>\n

And the most disheartening part is you realize that this is only the first of many, many times you will do this. You realize that you have debated the philosophy of semantics with a preschooler, and lost. And you realize you have changed from the first to second person half way through your post and are simply too lazy to go back and correct it.<\/p>\n

Words. Phft! They’re nothing but trouble.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Of all the potential parenting pitfalls, I never expected words to be one that would trip me up. I may not be much of a cook, I throw a ball like your grandmother and what I know about fashion you could write on a grain of rice, but I know from words. I gots me … Continue reading “Bad words”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}