My 4-Year-Old Said ‘F*ck’ — and I’m Not Even Mad

Here’s why I’m not going to punish my daughter for using swear words

Photo by Jeremiah Lawrence on Unsplash

My 10-month-old was crawl-stomping (he’s kinda aggressive when he wants to get somewhere fast) into the bathroom just as my daughter had emerged from the bath.

‘Fuck the hell!’ she said (translation: fucking hell).

I mean, she gets that kind of response from her parents who are always saying ‘oh gawd, here comes the little beast!’ or ‘arghh, here he comes!’ because he charges in, wrecks everything, then leaves to do the same somewhere else. Not that we usually use a swear word in that instance, but she captured the sentiment, I suppose!

Plus, I don’t usually say ‘fucking hell’ so she didn’t pick that up from me (my go-to is to usually mutter ‘for fuck’s sake’ under my breath), but look, we’re Australian and most of us are down here spewing out inappropriate words in every sentence.

I did actually tone it down on the swearing when my daughter was a bub. Partly because I wasn’t keen on her daycare teachers having to let me know she was that toddler teaching all the other toddlers naughty words.

But maybe also because once I hit my thirties I stopped partying. How does that correlate? Well, I used to be surrounded by people…