Swearing

Final rant, promise.  Well, for now at least.

[Apparently this post may offend. Just to clarify this is my personal rant reflecting my personal opinions and peeves. If it offends you then your opposing opinion probably offends me too! ]

I have what could be termed as a potty mouth.  I swear like a trooper.  However, I rarely ever swear at or in the vicinity of my children.  There's basic boundaries you should have, just like when  I was a teenager, you swore all day long to your mates yet you wouldn't dare swear at your teacher, parent or neighbour.  You just didn't.  Likewise you didn't expect them to swear at you.  It was basic respect.

The problem these days is that people have forgotten the purpose, the function of swearing.  Swearing is technically profanity, the use of expletives.  Swearing is not and should not be a fashion of bridging sentences together.  A true bridge would be a word such as 'and'.

A simple trip on the bus will surround you with conversation of 'yeah i fucking went and saw Si the other fucking day he was well off his fucking head the stupid c*nt'  What purpose really does that kind of sentence serve?  Does it makes the person appear literate?  Educated? Profound? Poignant?  Does the excessive and lazy utilisation of expletives make a point? No.  So many words in the dictionary, yet they can't appear to think of any alternatives.  It's not nice to hear this, it's irritating.  It becomes worse when travelling with your children and they become subjected to this atrocious misuse of the English language.  It's become so natural that people have no awareness that they're actually doing it and often appear none plussed when The Husband, for The Spawns sake, pulls them up on it and requests they adjust their language.

If you want to use profanity and expletives, do so by all means but have some grasp of the correct useage of them first! Educate yourself with a basic understanding on their purpose.

An expletive is supposed to have an effect, it's supposed to be vulgar.  An emphasis.

I'm absolutely appalled at how many parents appear to openly and routinely swear in front of and at times to their children.  It's unnecessary and in my opinion irresponsible.  It's why by age 8 your child may be swearing right back at you.  They've become so used to hearing it with no basic understanding of it that it becomes a part of their every day language.  I also don't appreciate you swearing profusely and needlessly right outside the Nursery whilst waiting for the Two, Three and Four year olds to enter/exit.

Where has the basic parenting gone?  Surely it is common sense that you don't swear at nor in the vicinity of Children? Why on earth would you? There's thousands of  none expletives!

It makes me sad.  It makes me angry. It's irresponsible and lazy.

We're not perfect, occasionally the odd expletive slips out, usually a b-grade, rarely an A-grade expletive. We're only human.   Granted The Husband is guiltier than me.  Especially when he's wrong or losing an argument.  It's an awareness of it that matters.  Taking the effort to refrain.  Behaving appropriately around children.

Then again I'm also a firm believer that if a parent must smoke, that too should not be done around nor in sight of their children.  Children learn through replicating the behaviours and attitudes they see around them.

As parents we are their role models, surely part of that responsibility to to try and continually be a better one.

Granted once the kids are out or asleep, the air turns blue with my somewhat colourful language but that's all part of the job.