Potty mouth Potter parents.

Today I was discussing with an old friend a very touchy subject in the mothering world. SWEARING.

For most mothers, swearing is your child's way of saying, "I have the worst parents ever." or "They're raising me all wrong." For most mothers, hearing your child swear is the best way to show that you're a bad mom.

But the thing is, we swear. We're swearers. We HAVE to. There are few things in this world that will take the sting out of stepping on a mini bulldozer then whisper yelling the D word. Whisper yelling, "Oh barnicles!" just doesn't get the job done. You need a cuss word.

Let's say you just walk into your child's room and find that he/she has done some...painting, with some "Au natural" paint supplies. We're talking poop people, and it's everywhere. Eyes, ears, mattress, hair, ceiling, your shoes in the downstairs closet. The smell alone is enough to end marriages but the MESS...who is going to clean this up? That's right, you are. But not without a whisper cuss. For me, a simple "what. the hell heck"  does the job.

But what happens on those rare occasions when your little beloved hears your wonderful whisper cuss? We all know what happens, they repeat it. They repeat it until you threaten abuse or abandonment and even then you're not promised a miracle. We're the swearers, they're the repeaters. And these are the days of our lives. 

As a swearing parent it has become essential to evolve our vocabulary to meet the needs of our ever growing, educated children. For instance:

Whisper cussing comes first.

Whisper cussing followed by putting yourself in time-out comes second.

This is the end of the whisper cussing stage and the start of spell cussing. 

For those pure-of-heart mother's who may not know what spell cussing is, I will explain. 

Husband: "Hi loving wife, how was your day?"

Loving wife: "Oh. My. Gosh. It has been a day from h.e.l.l. Your son painted his name on the toybox..with his poop!" 

Spell cussing will get you by for a little while, but those kids are clever. So clever that they are able to assess the spell cuss and determine if it's just an expletive or if it pertains to them. 

For instance, after spelling " h.e.l.l." to the husband, the child sees that nothing really happens, the conversation continues. However, the child sees that after the loving wife spells, "i.c.e c.r.e.a.m?" to the loving husband, the family is then served delicious ice cream. 

This ends the era of the spell cuss and opens the door to the code word spell cuss. This is the shortest of all the steps as the child has become aware of the game, and is considered a risk. Most parents skip this step altogether and move on to the final and most effective step.....

The technology cuss.