The Swearing Game

When kids turn the tables on cursing

Listen to the story, read by me. If you prefer…

Wonder how Papa Ramsay goes with the language…

The kids have made a game of when I swear. I love to swear. Having children has really highlighted how much I do it, but it hasn’t dimmed my affection for the practice at all. Perhaps the opposite is true.

Now when one of them hears me or my wife curse, they’ve decided that they are allowed to use that word, too. Once, shortly after the original offense.

This is no problem for my wife. She’s a respectable person. I, on the other hand, am easy money. Americans like to make fun of white Australians for being boorish ex-convicts, and my language is doing nothing to erode that stereotype.

I’m also known to swear repeatedly, in short, sharp volleys. So it’s not hard to catch me out. “Now we get to say it!” the kids yell at each other, merrily, whenever I let slip. Pouncing on me like players appealing to a referee, right as the curse word leaves my mouth.

My daughter first requested to swear at the age of six, after falling for the Sabrina Carpenter song “Please, Please, Please”. Pop songs are full of swearing nowadays, I’ve noticed, and I give the kids great credit for keeping it all in. At least around their parents.

She’d gotten to know the clean version of “Please, Please, Please”, with the phrase “little sucker” in the chorus. Once she heard the explicit cut’s obvious rhyme concerning maternal intimacy, she was practically bursting to sing it. I allowed it once. We all laughed, and she still talks about that day as if she’d finally learned to ride a bike.

I don’t listen to much sweary music. Mostly I save my swearing for the sheer frustration of life's little injustices. So it really is salt in the wounds to now see my kids jump for joy when I’m suffering.

Besides, parents don’t need a swearing game to understand the cruel irony at the intersection of cursing and children. Offspring are almost intentionally designed to bring a person to the point of tired, bewildered frustration, about some menial task. Usually being performed at a completely unreasonable hour. Perfect conditions for swearing.

Plus, apart from nuns, kids are about the only demographic I can think of still shocked by swearing. It’s devilishly tempting to pepper one in when you run out of other disciplinary options. Cursing has impact. Gravitas. Still, if you’re a responsible parent you stop yourself from using that trusty old release valve, I guess. I’m not sure I ever found another way though.

When my children were babies it didn’t matter. They didn’t know what I was saying. It was business as usual. You try changing fifty thousand diapers without swearing once or twice.

Then they started to talk, and unless you want your kid walking around pre-school saying “Shit” this, and “Fuck” that, it’s best to reign it in. So for years I did. I set a good example. It wasn’t easy, some of their classmates were real dickheads.

I was also sure to remind the kids that curse words aren’t “bad” words, as they’re often labeled. They’re just words. A part of life. Still, you need to be old enough to judge when they’re appropriate.

Like I can talk. We’re all still learning that judgement, aren’t we? The self control? Now that the kids are old enough (seven and eleven) to know how swearing works, they remain good about abstaining, while I’m much worse about blurting it out. My foot’s slipped off the brake again.

Recently I was in my son’s room, struggling with the settings on his iPad, and dropped a couple of F-bombs to ease my pain.

“He said the F-word!” my son immediately yelled to his little sister, down the hall bathing at the time. “We get to say it.”

I pressed on with my task in silence, dreading the inevitable. Then gave the device back to my son. “Fixed it,” I said.

“That’s fucking awesome, Dad!” he replied, patting me on the back with a smile.

“Did you say it?” called his sister.

“Yes,” he said.

“Fuck, I’m getting out of the bath!” she shot back.

She’ll get the hang of it.