warning: this essay contains profanity… obviously

Let’s get this out of the way: I taught my 7 year old daughter how to say “Fuck” last night. 

To clarify, I did not accidently let profanity slip out of my mouth after a seven year winning streak. Nor have I, for 7 years, been the parent who gave up the dream of never swearing in front of my child and therefore let it rip whenever the mood arose (letting the notes come home from preschool as they may). 

I know it may be eye-rollingly saccharin of me, but I love words and have rather a lot of respect for them. I adore a good curse word every now and again. However for the better part of 7 years, I have been completely surrounded by tiny minds that are just taking in language, its meaning and its power. Not swearing around them was not an attempt to be virtuous.  It’s just that their little minds could not (in any way) appreciate a good, “oh, for fuck’s sake!” or “you are being a total ass-hat right now!” As they had no language landscape, the effect would be lost. I didn’t want to steal that from them. Cursing has just felt completely out of place in my life with tiny children.

Some day, I knew, they would get to learn in that scandalous way of mid-late childhood (or early, depending on your friends) that there are words that will make grown-ups turn their heads and look at you differently. There are words that have power and are edgy and you get to ride that edge for the rest of your life. It is one of our birthrights as language-speaking humans. Will you be a person who chooses words carefully or flippantly? Will you insist on constantly peppering your sentences with profanity, regardless of your chosen profession (as one of my favorite clergy woman does), or will you decide that you have no need for slang and curses? These are decisions my children get to make as they grow. 

And most children learn that these strong words that are fun to share with friends are also words that you certainly can never share with your parents. What would they do if they knew that you even knew such words?  Would they look at you differently? It is the beginning of a tiny wedge– a false one of course, but a wedge nonetheless– where kids try to retain the image of what they imagine their parents want to see in front of their parents (one of the innocent child who has not heard bad words) and another image outside of their life at home.

But at some other point in the past 7 years I made, what was for me, a radical parenting decision. I don’t want a wedge. I like being close with my kids (and my husband for that matter). I value it highly. I value it more highly than I value teaching my children about being proper and constantly polite. I value it more than being judged than others. I am not easily be deterred.

I do not mean that I want to be buddies with my kids instead of their mother (I’ve heard that lecture before). Honestly. Ask anyone who has seen me with my kids– I’m not a pushover… all the time. I am a lover of structure. My kids know the rules and what will happen if they do not follow them. I count to three and follow through. They bus the table after dinner. One of the parenting reviews I most cherish is from a friend who said I was “loving but firm.” I’m still riding high from that one. 

But what I mean is, at least in the United States at this period in time, we seem to feel that children and parents should not know one another in their completeness. That there are topics and parts of our personalities that should be off-limits to one another. So we ignore them and hide them from one another. I feel that this is to the detriment of us all. Why shouldn’t we know one another deeply and fully? What is so taboo about that? 

It saddens me and also confuses me. I am not squeamish about any particular topic, so why not discuss all of them? I have sat with dying people, I have listened to enough Savage Love Podcast that human sexuality does not make me blush or squirm. I have worked in hospitals, changed diapers, seen what being closeted about anything gets you, and just want to live as honestly with my family as I can and not let stupid, worldly shit get between us.

Which leads me to the F word. We were brushing teeth and my younger (5 year old) daughter asked me what a curse word even is? “Like, what is one of the words? What do they mean?”

And so I taught her (and the 7 year old brushing next to her) the word “hell,” because I thought it was one of those words that had an actual meaning and there are times they will hear it used when it’s not a curse. I told them this. And I told them that you have to be careful how you use it because it’s just one of those strong words. They get that.

And my 7 year old said, “I know there’s an “F” word, but I don’t know what it is. My friends just say, “Firetruck” instead. But I don’t know the real word. Do you know it?”

And here we are. Of course I know it. It’s such a great word. I use it on occasion (see the first line of this essay). I enjoy the reaction I get when I use it, especially as a young clergy woman.

So I had a choice. Tell her, “no, I can’t tell you. It’s a naughty word that you should never use” (code for “just don’t use it around me).  In my mind, all that is doing is inviting her to learn it from some slightly creepy older boy on the bus (for the record: I have no idea if there is a specific creepy kid on the bus. But there is in the proverbial school bus I just made up in my head). And after she learns this, she also then feels ashamed and as if she cannot tell me what happened (Yes, this is what I imagine. Welcome to my dark-parenting mind).

But because of my decision, I changed the story to this: when she and her friends are all lying around, one late at night in college, all arms and legs dangling over one another, remembering the time they first heard the F word, my daughter will have to say, “my mom told me…” And she’ll be forced to recall that I quietly took her aside from her younger sister (because she’s still too young) and said, “you would get in serious trouble at school but…” And we giggled and looked conspiratorially into each other’s eyes. She’ll probably have to come up with a disclaimer for her friends about how weird her mom is, or what a hippie-house she grew up in. I don’t care. 

More likely, she won’t remember this at all. And what I’m hoping is a moment that she’ll recall when she wonders, “hmmm, can I tell my mom this? Oh, yes! Of course I can! She accepts all those crazy questions and doesn’t dismiss or shame me!” will probably be something she instantly forgets and replaces with a memory of when I completely lost my temper the next morning when she interrupted (for the 5th time) the only conversation I’d had with my husband in a fortnight. 

My deep hope is that even if she doesn’t remember the moment, she will at least remember the feeling and that the feeling (or its residue) will stick in her foundation somewhere. And she’ll know somewhere in her heart that even as she grows, I will not demure from hard conversations, and that if she asks, I will always, always tell her the truth.