Cuss Words

A couple weeks ago we were watching a movie in the car on a long trip. The movie was "The Fantastic Mr. Fox". I thought this was a kids movie, and I think it technically is, however there is a lot of language that I'm not sure is really that kid appropriate. For example, they use the word cuss...a lot.

They say things like "I'm going to call my cussing lawyer!" and "You sure as cuss are going to do that!"

It's meant to be funny and I don't have a big problem with the humor, but it's used so often that my children started to notice it. Finally after about the 10th time Matthew asked me what the word cuss meant.

I explained to him that it was a way of basically saying a swear word without actually saying the word. That we use sometimes it in place of a swear word when we don't want to swear.

He took this for just a moment and then exclaimed "I know another way to do that!"

I was afraid to ask.  But I did.

So he "flipped me the bird" and said "you just put your middle finger up like this when you want to swear at somebody but don't want to say the actual word"

OMG

I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. Where did he learn this?

I explained to him very quickly that that is not at all like the word cuss and that that is indeed swearing at someone (just without using words). And that was absolutely inappropriate and unacceptable. He said he knew that it was bad and he would never do it he was just trying to show me because of our discussion about the movie. 

It got me thinking about kids and swearing. I have to admit that I do swear around the house when things don't go my way. I drop glass of milk and I say sh*t.   I've never sworn at my kids but I have to admit I have sworn around my kids

I'm actually quite shocked that this is the first time my kids ever really talked about swearing. I think that's a normal part of growing up.  I can remember very vividly my nephew using the word dammit when he was only about two years old. He said it once and we laughed and then of course that made him continue to say it for the next several months :-)

We've never really had to have the discussion in our house that there are swear words that they aren't allowed to say. We do have a list of bad words but they are words like stupid and hate. We are not allowed to say those in our house.

Have your kids ever picked up a swear word that you've used?