12 Nov 2009

Burping and Swearing

Duncan has been working on some important skills. His current favourite video is shown below. He's watching it right now beside me and just cracking up. He keeps saying it's a "TV Burp" thinking about the TV show we watch together sometimes.



His ambition it appears, is to emulate the burpability of Buddy the Elf, and he's been practicing hard. It's such a delight to hear him burping or, to use the terminology of my childhood, rifting, when we're in the car together. I suspect that if I stay stoic and blandly keep telling him to be polite he'll get tired of this soon enough.

Like many nine year old boys, he's discovered the power of cursing. It could be worse. He knows that I don't want him shouting rude words (at least until he can determine when it's not going to upset people to hear him). He's sort of tempering it; now while playing his Gameboy he expresses his frustrations with "What the!" He sometimes shouts "oh F...OX!" but I know what he means. Little rapscallion.

6 comments:

abfh said...

I'd suggest distracting him with more interesting words that aren't really curse words. You could shout, "Oh, RAPSCALLION!" the next time you drop something, and then make a big show of looking embarrassed that you said it...

Elizabeth Mahlou said...

It will pass, but it is uncomfortable for a while. I can tell you what will not work. When my youngest son, Doah, a mentally challenged youngster, was going through the bad words phase, we were traveling home by plane. The man beside us helped Doah to his seat, and Doah said to him, "Thank you, dumbf***." I was so embarrassed, but the man laughed it off. Then, lunch was passed out, and the man helped Doah put up his tray, and Doah said again, "Thank you, dumbf***" I told Doah that one more time and he would have to pay me a nickel (he used to collect nickels -- he loved wrapping them and taking them to the bank) for every bad word. Well, as we were getting off the plane, Doah looked up at the nice man beside us and said, "Goodbye, dumbf***." So, I told him that I wanted a nickel from him when we got home. When we arrived home, he went to his room and brought me a roll of nickels. "I only need one nickel," I told him. "You only said one bad word." He looked at me, stretched out his hand with the roll of nickels, and smiling, said, "Gonna say more!"

So, that punishment is clearly not an effective one!

bullet said...

I walked into it the other day :{. I banged my leg very hard on something and without thinking the words "of for f****s sake!" came out of my mouth. Ahem. The following conversation then ensued:

Tom: "Are you talking about foxes mummy?"
Me: (thinking very quickly). "Yes, I am.
Tom: "Where are the foxes?"
Me: "The foxes are in the woods."
Tom: "Mummy, what do foxes are in the woods mean?"
Me: It means they are in a place with a lot of trees.
Tom: "And what do 'they are in a place with a lot of trees' mean?"

Etc etc.

Lisamaree said...

Boo does a beautiful headtilting rendition of the opening credits to "love actually" including the bit where Bill Nighy says "fuckit" - it only took one diverted trip to the Dvd shop to give him the message. And by diverted I mean I got back in the car and drove 12 miles in the opposite direction.
I must admit that swearing is one autoclytic that our verbal kids get right. I might get cut off in the car and he follows my "eegit! " with a far more appropriate "arseh0le!"
bless! xx

Larry Arnold PhD FRSA said...

Alas it never passes, I do recall my first aquintance with Cuss words back in my Junior school no less. I have to say however in my more contemporary aquantance the majority of NT society in my particularly working class enclave have not increased any of there inventivness since in the coprolaliac expression, and whilst I can claim an undiagnosed tourettes trajectory, I do believe I can also be truly inventive in my use of scatological and copulatatory adjectives.

My personal favourite invocation to those who offend me is to challenge them to go F themselves if they have either the agility or the endowment :)

And if the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Pope have never said similar I would be not only dissapointed but in total disbelief.

Manuel said...

hahahahahaha.....it;s just like living with The Cousin....!