Somewhere along the line, I became part of the establishment

[mahogany]

I wasn't a perfect teen - far from it, in fact. I cursed and drank and smoked, and stayed out too late, and snuck into nightclubs. Still, I somehow managed to stay aware of my surroundings. If there were children around, I stopped myself from doing those things. It's a courtesy thing, that seems to be sorely lacking in a lot of people, I've noticed. Today, the dh and I were at the park playing frisbee with the kids, and having a great time. There were other young kids there besides ours. Some teenagers showed up and man-oh-man, was their language ever objectionable. It was the f-bomb, here, and OMFG there, with some dumbasses and shits thrown in for good measure. And it was loud. We left.

So now I'm sitting at home fuming. I feel like I should have said something. Why should we leave because of their bad behaviour. Dh feels like I would have embarrassed the kids (not to mention him, I'm sure) by saying something. I dunno. It just seems pretty backward to me. They should have been the ones having to either A) tone down their language, or B) move somewhere else.

[Poll #1170649]

Comments

[freakykitten.livejournal.com]

So, I said Both Say nothing and Stay, and Other. The reason I said that is because - it's not that foul language isn't a big deal so much that I don't want to make a big deal out of it to my kids - like drinking, if I make that a huge big taboo, they'll rush out to try to at every opportunity. My brother took great pleasure in swearing when he was 12, because he thought he was getting a rise out of my, my mother, etc. I'd rather cut that off at the pass, if I could, by just acting as if those are unpleasant things that also aren't a completely big deal.

Mind you, I'll let you know once it actually comes to that for me. Heh!

[mahogany.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough hearing swearing doesn't particularly bother or offend me. Frankly, I've found that it can feel really good to insert the occassional curse word when I'm really feeling it.

When I hear swearing used as adjectives, nouns, verbs, adverbs without discretion, I'll admit it starts to grate on my nerves and I must confess, it leaves me with a negative impression of the user of said language. I think that's the reason that I don't like my kids to be around people that are using foul language. It's not a case of "Oh no, my kid heard the F-Word! The world is coming to an end!!!" It's more that I don't like them being around swearing to the point that the language is completely saturated with profanity. I've also noticed that when young children swear, it tends to be in the more indiscriminate manner where ever second word is an expletive. Somehow it makes the kids sound incredibly uncreative, and unintelligent to me.

[mahogany.livejournal.com]

I should add, though, that I never ever ever swear in front of any children, no matter how much I might feel like it.