One morning back in Sydney, in the middle of putting his socks on, Artie asked me, “Mama, how do you say ‘fucking’ in Chinese?”
I was trying to put pants on Chompy, who, when I paused to react, twisted out of my arms and ran out of the room.*
I looked at Artie with what I hoped was a neutral expression. “I don’t know,” I said. “We don’t talk like that.”
If he found this odd – because Tom and other adults occasionally do talk like that – he didn’t say so, and instead turned to pull on the other sock.
I held the little pants up to face to muffle my chuckling. In truth, I don’t know how to say “fucking” in Chinese. For all my bilingualism, I never learned.
—
About a year ago, Artie and his cohort’s insult du jour was “bad guy” or “baddie.” If Artie and his friends were angry with each other, they would shout with pointed fingers, “You’re a bad guy! You’re a baddie! A baddie!”
We parents would react in mock horror and coax them to not use such mean language with friends. It made me laugh because, God, how benign. But I’m not three. Some of the kids on the receiving end of these insults would burst into tears and rush into their parents’ arms. I would try my best to see it from their perspective. But I’m not very good at that. Behind my faux-empathetic face I was usually thinking, “Ah, you better toughen up, kid.”
Because there are far worse things to be called. And because kids are relentless.
The more we told them to stop calling each other names, the more they doubled down.
Now at four and a half, Artie’s big gun bad words of the moment are “poo poo”, “bum bum” and “you’re the worst!”
Turn off Paw Patrol? I’m the worst. A “big poo poo bum bum.”
Tell him he can’t have ice cream after school? I’m the “worst poo poo mama poo poo ever.”
A friend grabbed the last pretzel at the playground? He’s a “poo poo bum bum baddie” pretzel snatcher.
These childish insults aside, he’s a pretty articulate guy who delights in words.** Maybe it’s the age – after all, he’s still acquiring new words the same way he goes about acquiring whatever else is catching his fancy right now (Hot Wheels cars, gemstones, stickers, seashells): that is, gleefully.
I remember that feeling. I remember learning curse words for the first time, letting “shit” and “crap” snap out of my mouth like firecrackers, knowing I’d been armed with new verbal weaponry. But that feeling is fleeting because everyone’s learning the same words at the same time, so how do you distinguish yourself?
Then came the art of creatively deploying non-curse words as insults. Sure, they weren’t sticks and stones, but well-placed, ill-intentioned turns of phrase could still stop someone in their tracks and make their cheeks flush. It’s called a “burn” for a reason. I’m arguably still in that stage (I once heard someone call someone else a hemorrhoid in a TV show and still chuckle every time I think about it. Which is often). But as a young budding wordsmith, I took much joy in hearing my classmates hurl at each other gems like “bunghole” and “hernia”.
So it’s not that Artie doesn’t know other words aside from “poo poo”, but so far they’re the only ones he intentionally uses as insults.
“Knock it off,” Tom will say sharply, if the number of “poos” erupting from Artie’s mouth is beginning to reach gastro-esque proportions. “I don’t want to hear talk like that.”
And maybe that’s part of the problem.
A common piece of parenting advice is to ignore the behavior you find objectionable. I’d like add “truly.” Ignore the behavior you truly find objectionable. Because for all my shouting and hounding and coercing Artie for eating like a slob and taking an hour to get dressed every morning, he still eats like a slob and takes an hour to get dressed. He still says “You’re a poo poo” to me and Tom and his friends multiple times each day, even though we tell him over and over again not to.
But in the hierarchy of bad words “poopoo” is a bit lower than “crap”, which I use with abandon. And though Artie has definitely heard us say at one point or other all the other “bad” words, he doesn’t seem interested in adding them to his vocabulary.
A few months before Artie turned four years old Tom was walking home with Artie on a hot summer day. They walked passed the neighborhood gelato shop, smartly located right next to Artie’s daycare.
“I just want a fucking ice cream,” Artie said casually, wistfully.
I wasn’t there, and wanted to know how Tom reacted.
“I didn’t,” Tom said. “I was a bit surprised, but I just said, ‘Ah sorry little Bear, not today.’ Then Artie called me a ‘poo poo’ and walked away.”
Around the same time, a friend shared her own encounters with her son and the ‘f’word.
One day her kid, L had out of the blue, started muttering, “Fuckin’ mate. Fuckin’ mate. Fuckin’ mate.”
So far, it happened twice that week. The first time he was just playing LEGO and just started chanting softly under his breath, as though invoking some curse on his enemies. The next time was just walking down the hall, head bobbing along to some invisible beat, “Fuckin’ mate. Fuckin’ mate.”
I burst out laughing, because neither of his parents talked like this.
“I know!” my friend said. “I don’t know where it came from. What do I do?”
I told her about the ‘fucking ice cream’ incident and Tom’s non-response. “He’ll stop,” I assured her.
A few days later a fellow classmate of Artie and L’s came out crying as we gathered at daycare pickup.
“L said the ‘s’ word to me!” she wailed to her mother.
L’s mom and I exchanged glances.
“At least it wasn’t the ‘F’ word,” I said, giving her a knowing look.
It didn’t occur to either of us that L would know what the actual “s” word was – I mean he had stepped right over to the ‘F’ word a while ago, so we both assumed the little girl meant ‘stupid’.
L’s mom bent down to apologize on L’s behalf and to comfort her.
“I’m sorry honey, I’ll talk to L about his language.”
The little girl’s mom shook her head kindly to indicate it wasn’t a big deal; the kids were just being kids and besides, she had mentioned before that her daughter was in a dramatic phase. The slightest slights could set her off. But still, attentive parenting and active listening and all that.
“What did he say, honey?” she asked.
The little girl was now wracked by sobs. I wondered if she would ever recover. Sticks and stones, man! But she eventually got control of her breath.
“He (sob)…. he (sob…sob) he said… ‘fucking….poo!***'”
And even though we were all dying of laughter inside, we maintained straight yet subtly contorted faces. We thanked the little girl for the information and L’s mom went off to finally address what could no longer be ignored.
*I thought, “Fucking Chompy.”
**Just the other day I asked if he wanted to finish a cinnamon bun. He responded, “No thanks. I personally don’t like this flavor very much.” Maybe I am too easily impressed, but I personally found it impressive, if redundant.
***This incident reminded me of a Chris Pratt appearance on Graham Norton I rewatch every few months and shamelessly retell (poorly) as though if it were my own before telling people to go watch it.
VERY HIGHBROW 