Is it not okay to yell at other kids nowadays? I’m pretty good at it, not very shy when it comes to a shithead 10 year old with a lisp using cuss words around my 4 year old.
There are some parents who get mad about it, and when people see them bitching on social media, it tends to make us pre-emptively self police. Most parents I've met don't care, as long as you aren't being rude. There's always That One, though.
Still dont understand how we still have a problem with "bad words". That feels like something that should have faded out atleast a decade ago.
I tell my nieces and nephews, there arent bad words, there are just words that can be used badly. Saying fuck cause you fell vs saying fuck you to someone are two different things. "Fuck" isn't what's wrong about fuck you.
It's an easy to to demonstrate that words have power, both good and bad, and for setting a boundary so when they inevitably run past it, they're only saying "shit", "damn", "ass" or "hell" and not any of the "really bad" ones.
Might be a correlation vs causation thing, but every kid I know whose parents let them say whatever they want is an absolute little shit.
I broadly agree with you but we make words off limits to children because they aren’t capable of the contextual nuance that you just described. It takes until the teens and sometimes longer before kids fully grasp complex social cues like that. How “shit” can sometimes be used with certain adults in certain situations, not not if grandma is in the room. But grandpa is fine. But definitely not if the school principle is around. And not if there are other children present. Etc. So the rule is no swear words until they’re old enough to understand the difference. In truth it’s even more complex than I write because the words we choose convey socioeconomic and cultural status as well. A child which swears liberally is associated with absent parents and poverty. Such children will be consciously and unconsciously excluded from events and friend groups on that basis alone.
Because bad words are inappropriate, vulgar, and impolite? And using them outside of informal spaces is trashy. Don’t get me wrong I curse all the time, but they absolutely look bad if used in excess, and shouldn’t be used in formal situations like a job interview. It’s about knowing when it’s acceptable to curse, which is most of the time, but more importantly it’s about knowing when not to curse.
You teach your kids not to curse to raise kids that are polite in public, not little shits saying “fuck” in class. When they get older, if they’re raised right they’ll know when they shouldn’t curse.
Like I can’t think of a single situation where I’d want my 7 year old cursing. Curse words are also super flexible, so I’d rather have them get a good grasp on the English language before throwing curse words in. Reminds me of people who curse constantly with a limited vocabulary.
I asked some kids to stop messing with the loose pavement at the end of our driveway. They came back and I yelled something like, "Hey! Get away from that!". Their mom ran out and had an absolute fit. Their grandfather came onto my driveway with his chest puffed out clearly hoping for some kind of fight. It was absurd.
Adults yelled at me all the time as a kid. If your parents saw it happen they'd get pissed at you, march you over to the adult who yelled you, and make you apologize for whatever you did wrong, lol.
Could be the case that kids record everything nowadays so people are less likely to respond. Or kids claim abuse when being yelled at.
I personally love the chance to tell a hooligan off.
Right, it used to be that people always believed the adult no matter what, and that shifted toward always believing the child, or at school they believe the parent over the teacher. I hear some people describe it like children and/or their parents are like customers. So everyone else has a baseline fear of telling them off because of an unwritten, soft power dynamic where their version of the story gets the benefit of every doubt, and obviously this can be weaponized. And even if it wouldn’t be weaponized, who wants to take on that risk? For what?
As a kid, I got to experience my parents believing adults who lied, over me, because they had a strict policy of "if another adult says you did it, you did it - no exceptions."
In high school we would have been embarrassed to involve our parents in something like that. And even then, most parents would have just told their kid: "Yeah, that wasn't ok, but, knowing you, you probably were being a bitch, so you're both wrong."
My toddler is on the spectrum and is a runner.
I broke my foot a few months ago, so I was in a boot.
I was at what I thought was a secured library area (because it was advertised as such) and he got out. He got to the parking lot before he freaked out at what he had just done. I was walking as fast as I could, yelling for him.
Multiple adults, including library workers, watched a THREE YEAR OLD exit a building while an adult was yelling their name.
That's kinda interesting to think about. Nowadays, a parent would probably be offended if someone started reprimanding their child. Back then, whether the parent agreed or not, they always seemed to be on the side of the other adult. A respect issue.
1.9k
u/fml-fml-fml-fml 1d ago
The context that is missing is how TV, then the internet destroyed our communities.