Watch your language!

Cursing is everywhere in today’s culture, but who wants it coming from a 5-year-old?

Feature story for Memphis Parent magazine

November 2011

“Oh, fudge!”
It’s the expletive that leaves little Ralphie sitting with a bar of soap thrust in his mouth in 1983’s modern movie classic A Christmas Story. The irony in the film, of course, is that Ralphie learned such language from his father whose stream of obscenities is comic fodder for the film, yet handled as a series of nonsensical gibberish when provoked.
Most films, however, do not handle such language this way, and most movies are available to our children at the push of a button these days. There are parents, too, who don’t couch their language in nonsensical gibberish, but in the real, TV-MA rated variety.
For parents like Teresa Leary Jenkins, the mother of 12-year-old James and 4-year-old Phoebe, swearing is not tolerated, either by her children or adults in the family. Having said that, she acknowledges that, despite our best intentions, everyone slips.
“I don’t advocate him [James] cursing and I always say, ‘Intelligent people don’t curse and you need to figure out ways to get your point across,’ but I do know that as adults we lose our temper and, as children, they lose their tempers as well,” says Jenkins. “I think sometimes we hold our children to this really high standard and it’s better to monitor it and not try to control it but try to help them work through it.” … (read more)