How to Keep Your Child from Using Profanity

Some types of profanity are used these days as a part of normal speech or slang. If you're looking for a movie for the entire family to watch, you're soon hard pressed to find one that doesn't at least have some type of profanity in it.

Keeping your children from hearing some type of profanity is almost impossible in today's society. Nowadays profanity has almost been accepted as a second language in our world with its declining set of morals.

Creating a Pattern

What your children learn in their early years of "mental development" is mimicked and kept with them for years to come. These are the most important years of your children's development. What's learned in these years of development can leave a lasting impression on them.

Parents are observed by their children everyday as they begin to copy what they see and pattern their lives. These emotional patterns they receive from us will help to form their adult years. Our children are now forming habits which will also be taught to their own children.

The best way of preventing your child from using profanity is to never use it yourself. If in fact your child starts to use profanity, the best decision is to nip it in the bud before it's had time to take root deep inside of them. But first you need to understand "why" profanity is used before you can prevent it; or even possibly curtail the act itself.

Repressed anger is usually the emotion which causes most cases of profanity. Some pre-teen children use some types of profanity as a way of looking "cool" to impress their peers when they reach their adolescent years. Younger children sometimes use profanity to provoke a reaction from their parents, or try in a way to be just like them who uses profanity as a common way of communication.

Understanding Your Child

If your child is using profanity in an anger release situation, the parent needs to find out exactly what's making the child angry, and find a new way for the child to release their anger. Once they hear profanity from their parents (or even another adult) they believe that profanity is an adult way of expression.

Creating a good set of morals in your child (and practicing these morals yourself) is probably the most important thing you can do for your children. Moral habits which are created early in the child's life usually remains with them and is registered into their subconscious. Sometimes the young child will use a bad word just to get some much needed attention from the parent.

When a bad word is said (by the child) and it creates a formative reaction from the parents, the child jots this reaction down into their memory banks and stores it for future use: shock value. Now when they desire this reaction (from anyone) profanity sticks its ugly head out of the emotional barn and roars as loud as it can.

Young children are always looking for ways of expressing themselves, and when they get the needed reaction (from using profanity) they use it to the best of their ability. If a few bad words are uttered when the child is young, correct them but don't make a big deal out of it. Usually this acting out will pass in the young child unless it's blown out of proportion which makes a lasting impression on the child.

If the child hears profanity from another adult, pass it off if you can. Try not to overreact, as this causes immediate attention to the profanity. If the child asks you about the bad words explain to them that this is just the way some people talk, but not us.

Anger in your child needs to be addressed whether it's being released in profanity or another form of a destructive behavior. It also needs to be taught to the young child that releasing their anger in this form is "not accepted."

Discipline

Respect is an emotion which sometimes reduces or replaces profanity. This learned emotion of respect for others needs to be instilled into your children when their very young. And now, as your children grow good moral habits are being formed in their young intuitive minds.

Action and reaction also plays an important part in curtailing profanity and needs to be taught to the young child. If profanity is used by the child there will definitely be a "reaction" to the profanity by the parents. Most times young children would rather not deal with an "unknown reaction." There are several ways of reacting to the child when they use profanity; here is one of my favorites.

I learned quickly at school never to use profanity, unless I wanted to write another 500 word essay on "the many uses of a shoe lace," or several other boring writing subjects. After completing this article I quickly refrained from using any type of profanity in school, whether it was cool or not.

We've used this type of punishment with our children many times, and actually my daughter has turned out to be quite the writer. I suppose this type of punishment does spark a certain amount of creativity.

Children need to learn early on what an acceptable behavior is, and what is not. Stick to your morals which you've instilled into your children and never deviate from them throughout your child's life; this is just another stage of being a parent. Keep in mind that we're always parents, not just when the children are very young.