We understand that parenting is hard and there isn’t one perfect way to do it, but it can be easy to forget that when you encounter a parenting style that radically differs from your own.
Of course, everybody’s a little different so what may be practical and effective for you may not be as appropriate in the households of others. At the same time, when we hear why certain parents take unorthodox approaches to rearing their children, we can sometimes find that they make a lot of sense and might be worth trying ourselves.
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And whether we’re talking about matters like the existence of Santa or how to explain reproduction, there are matters that some parents struggle with that these insights can legitimately help.
But whether it’s out of curiosity or because we’re seeking a missing piece to the puzzle of life with kids, it’s worth hearing one mom explain why she lets her kid swear in the house.
Be advised that the video featured in this article contains explicit language
Back in 2020, a parenting coach and psychotherapist who goes by TiKToKmom uploaded a video that started off with her young daughter cursing.
In this little opening skit, she outlined what she described as the unhelpful parenting response of chastising the kid for swearing in the house and asserting that only she’s allowed to do that.
She then shared what she typically does, which was to address whatever problem is compelling the child to use that language before thanking her for remembering her family’s rules about swearing.
And while she would soon explain those rules, the mom first outlined why she considers it practical to let her daughter swear.
For one thing, she wasn’t terribly optimistic about the chances of curbing her own swearing while her daughter was still young.
But as we can see from this caption, she also didn’t consider it realistic to expect that most people her daughter encounters in life will talk like they’re from an episode of Leave It To Beaver .
As a result, she figured it made sense to allow the child to swear while her family is alone at home.
But even in that context, TiKToKmom established that her kid doesn’t have a free pass to say whatever she wants.
Although she had already implied that swearing was off the table while guests are over, we can see that her daughter also isn’t allowed to use curse words to put other people down or call them vulgar names.
As she put it, “She gets to graze in the pasture, but we have a nice fence around it in which she needs to stay.”
After laying out her case in the video available here, she acknowledged that each family is different and that similar rules may not work for others.
After all, parents who have no interest in swearing themselves won’t exactly have to worry about reconciling their ability to do so with any rules prohibiting that kind of language from their children.
