A car journey home from my daughter’s nursery one hot afternoon sticks in my memory. Road etiquette that day was not good, including mine. Not immune to the fractious atmosphere, I expressed my frustration with a short expletive. My three-year-old continued to repeat it all the way home, not quietly. Windows rolled up, I kept mum for the rest of the journey.
A friend was asked to see the head teacher of her son’s primary school due to an incident of swearing. During the meeting, her son helpfully explained, ‘There is one thing I need you to know Miss, I do come from a swearing background.’ Unpalatable though a lot of swearing is from young children, the occasional word provides amusement and anecdotes for years to come.
The examples above demonstrate an obvious reason why children swear – they mimic what is said around them. Children’s exposure to swearing will vary. They will hear swear words from their family, family friends, on TV, in the street and so on. Not only will they pick up on the words said, but on the contexts in which to use them – expressions of anger, joy, frustration, amazement.
Swearing is unacceptable in early years settings. It is, therefore, important to think about how practitioners can tackle the problem when children do swear.
CASE STUDY 1
A nursery chain’s approach
Saudaa and Caroline, from London Early Years Foundation (LEYF), reflect on how they manage swearing:
‘When it happens, initially we ignore it, so no speaking about it and no eye contact, especially if the behaviour seems to be attention-seeking,’ says Saudaa. ‘We then reinforce appropriate words by role-modelling them.’
Saudaa continues, ‘We may be caught off guard sometimes and find it hard not to laugh. However funny it is, we try to hold back our amusement as it would express approval. We all know that, for young children, anything that provokes a good reaction is only going to encourage more!’
Understanding the concept
Saudaa explains that young children often use a swear word as they might any other vocabulary. ‘Children don’t often understand the concept of swearing and will use these words in contexts similar to those where they heard them. If they are using them in an angry or frustrating situation, it is especially important not to respond in like and potentially exacerbate the situation.’
Homing in on unwanted behaviour always carries this risk – it is delicate. ‘When explaining to the child that a word is unacceptable, we think it’s important to keep the interaction short and matter-of-fact,’ continues Caroline. ‘The most important thing is not to feed into swearing by getting cross or irate.’
An impassive reaction by the adult helps the swear word to lose its potency. A more emphatic or impassioned retort is likely to add fuel to the fire and increase the power of the word.
In an additional language
Saudaa and Caroline point out an aspect of swearing that is more tricky – that of children swearing in different languages.
‘There was a child in the nursery who repeated the same word whenever they were parted from their parent during their settling-in period. The manager at the time thought it was a term of endearment, only to discover from the parent that the child was calling her a cow!’ This is a more difficult area, though other children who speak the same language are likely to ‘tell on them’ as they get older.
Caroline describes how they respond if swearing is recurrent. ‘If it continues, we say something like, “I don’t like that word” and suggest other words to use.
‘I work with families if their child is frequently swearing, going through some of the strategies we use: ignoring it, modelling positive language, resisting the urge to laugh and, basically, not making it too much of an issue.’
Caroline adds that it can be useful to speak with parents about being aware of just how much swearing their child is exposed to. ‘When I have encountered parents swearing at their children or about their children, I speak with them and talk them through the negative impact on their child and the longer-term effects it can have.’
CASE STUDY 2
Supporting children with social and emotional needs
Angela, a teacher who supports children with SEMH (social, emotional and mental health) needs in a primary school in the London Borough of Enfield, is surprised that she doesn’t come across more swearing.
‘Working with children with social and emotional needs, it’s not surprising that I encounter children swearing in school, but it’s not as frequent as you might expect! When a child does swear, it tends to accompany a range of other negative behaviours,’ she says.
In her many years of experience, Angela has found that young children tend to express their feelings in a physical way, rather than swearing. However, Angela recounts a time when she was faced with pretty fluent swearing from one little boy.
‘The child was swearing quietly to himself as he was calmly doing an activity,’ she says. ‘He was repetitively swearing as he pursued the task. The function of it wasn’t clear – he didn’t seem to be frustrated or seeking attention. Initially, I was unsure how to best address it, but I decided to talk to him and ask him to stop, especially as the swearing was particularly unpleasant. I’m not even sure that he realised that he was swearing until it was pointed out to him.’
From then on, he would occasionally mutter the swear words but, over time, he stopped. ‘He had learnt the illicit nature of the words and was able to regulate his use of them,’ Angela says.
Speaking to parents
Angela has found that approaching the topic of swearing can be a sensitive issue for parents and carers. Though home-school relations are generally positive, Angela says that if the topic of swearing is raised, it is quite different.
‘More often than not, when I have spoken to parents and carers about their child’s use of inappropriate language, the response is that they don’t get it from home, but that the problem lies in the school,’ she explains.
Angela thinks that in such cases, the adult is embarrassed about their child’s swearing, perhaps seeing it as a criticism or reflection on them. This makes it more challenging to engage with specifically, so it is usually raised in the context of speaking about the child’s behaviour in general.
CASE STUDY 3
A consultant’s experience
Anni, an early years creative arts consultant, recounts two stories of children swearing.
‘I worked with a three-year-old who quite naturally swore every time she dropped something – “Oh, s***”, she would say when she dropped her toy.’
In response, says Anni, ‘We agreed that it would be best to completely ignore it and see how it went. We also decided that we would focus on introducing new and interesting vocabulary for her to try out.’
Over time, this helped her to take an interest in new words, and the swearing stopped.
‘At a later stage I had a chat with her mum to praise her daughter’s new language development, and also to say that it would be a good idea to avoid swearing or using any words that they did not want her to repeat,’ adds Anni. ‘Her mum completely got it and worked at home on words that were OK to use, and not OK.’
‘Goodness me’
Anni also remembers working with another child who would swear explicitly. In this case, the staff came up with a different way of responding. ‘At the time, the child was being assessed for ASD. We knew that he responded best to clear, unequivocal speech,’ says Anni. ‘So we would simply say, “We don’t say ‘f***ing c***’ in this nursery. You can say ‘goodness me’ or ‘gosh’.” Alongside this we introduced a gentle consequence – if he didn’t stop swearing, he had to spend some time inside.’
After several weeks of consistent responses from the staff and liaising with home, the child began to swear less.
CONCLUSION
Going on what has been said, we can see there is no single response to dealing with swearing. As with all good practice, a ‘one size fits all’ strategy for a particular age group or incident will not work. Effective responses come out of the staff’s knowledge of the individual child (and family) and the specific context of the incident.
Notwithstanding the above, I will close on a lighter note. June O’Sullivan MBE, chief executive of LEYF, draws our attention to the value of swearing. Praising Emma Byrne’s book, Swearing is Go*d F*r You, June says, ‘It confirms what most of us already know, that swearing has many useful roles in communication. It can be used to threaten, warn, amuse and, funnily enough, reduce a tense moment. Nothing can address a moment of anger with yourself like a strong “sh***”, or similar.’
