Potty Mouth

2.5 Years: “Shhhhhiii… Darnit! This is some effing bee ess, this is!

I have a potty mouth. I always have. I probably always will. There was a time, in my earlier days as a mom, when I actually thought that this was an unforgivable flaw, and that cursing in front of my kid was an act tantamount to child abuse. But, after over a decade of swearing like a sailor, simply weeding these naughty words out of my vocabulary didn’t work so well. What was I supposed to say instead?

For those of us who say the F-word as freely as “the,” self-censorship becomes a constant game of self-correcting and substitution. Someone who has cursed for decades can’t just not say something when she stubs her toe, so, instead, she has to turn to euphemisms to fill that empty space. In theory, it’s better for kids than hearing parents loudly yell a string of four-letter-words. The only problem comes when they start repeating the euphemisms, and when everyone knows what they actually represent.