When my daughter was a toddler and learning to talk, I consciously tried self-censoring. I aggressively shushed people who swore when they were around her, leaping to cover her ears. Back then, I still cared about my tattered Dr Spock bible and was hopeful about parenting the “ideal” way. I remember the day I broke my resolution. I’d taken her to the supermarket and strolled about for an hour with my shopping list with one of those trolleys that had a plastic car attachment. When I was done placing all the cleaning supplies, food items, and other knick-knacks, on the counter for billing, I discovered that I’d left my wallet at home. I stood there and said “fuck” thrice, quite loudly. The counter lady was nice enough to tell me she’d keep my things aside and I could return and pay. The daughter stared at me in shock and was cranky the whole drive back home. It was then that I realised that she didn’t care so much about the words that came out of my mouth as much as the energy I radiated. Fast-forward to a few years and she has become the kid who threatens me, “You know I’ll repeat what you say right? You should be careful.” Or when she hears me muttering under my breath, she’ll go, “What was that word, mama?”, with an evil Chucky-style grin. In my defence, she rolls her eyes at me when I call someone an idiot as well. I find it hard to believe that this is the same girl who can have a full-blown meltdown over a lollipop flavour AND tell me off for calling people names behind their backs. She is young and impressionable but is also mature enough to understand context. The other day when we decided to watch Kevin Hart: Zero F***s Given, she grinned when he started talking (because for Hart, same thing). When we told her to go to the room, she told us she knew what word he said. Growing up, my father never swore in front of us and when he did, we knew that he was truly pissed. My mother, on the other hand, would curse more casually in Tamil and English. I was raised between their extreme approaches to “reacting” to the irritations of the world and its people. And I turned out okay, even if I am the only one who thinks so.Sometimes I worry that my daughter’s knowledge of expletives is quite extensive for her age.
To all the folks out there with motormouths like mine, the good news is you can set the guilt (if any) aside. Benjamin Bergen, a cognitive scientist, asserts that if we aren’t swearing at our kids or using racial slurs, they’ll be fine if they hear the occasional blasphemous bombs. After all, bad language is everywhere – television, radio, other people’s conversations. It’s unavoidable. And why must we sugar-coat our identities for our children? Shouldn’t they find some chinks in our armours? I lucked out with an offspring who gets that being an adult has a few perks that she will have to wait to have access to someday. Perhaps that theory about getting the children we deserve holds true. In the just-released trailer of “The history of swear words”, the one where Nicolas Cage opens with a massive F-bomb, there is a theory that if two groups of people inserted their hand in a bucket of ice, those who swore would last 50 per cent longer than those who didn’t. So, there you go – I am merely trying to survive this shit-filled ice bucket called life.After all, bad language is everywhere.
