The Swearing Bug

For Cindy Addison, it was the words used at her son's surprise party that left her surprised.

It all started when she put a few trick candles on her 4-year-old son's birthday cake. "After a few tries, Jonny got so frustrated trying to blow the candles out that he told the cake where it could go," she remembers. "I don't think he made a wish that day, but I know I wished I could have crawled under a rock."

The first time your child curses can be startling, that's for sure.

"Kids tend to start swearing between the ages of 3 and 5, although children with older siblings may start swearing at an even younger age," says Dr. Cathryn Tobin, pediatrician and author of The Parent's Problem Solver (Three Rivers, 2002). Preschoolers have a knack for picking up words, especially new ones spoken with any kind of emotion. Eventually, your little baby is going to blurt out something foul, no matter how sheltered you think she is.

There are many reasons kids use bad words, but it's rarely for the reasons grown-ups use them. "Swearing is a child's safest way of feeling what it's like to be a grown-up," says Lauri Berkenkamp, coauthor of Because I Said So: Family Squabbles and How to Handle Them (Nomad, 2003). Then again, they could be cussing to get a reaction, to establish their independence, or to innocently imitate what they've heard someone else say. "The thing to remember is that kids love attention, even if it's negative," says Berkenkamp. That's why knowing the right way to quell your little cusser is extremely important. Here are some rules to swear by -- or rather, to not swear by.