In our house there is much discussion as to what constitutes a bad word. Both boys have had their share of saying naughty words at the worst possible times. I will spare you the details.
This is how Full Speed kind of understands it. “A bad word is okay if you use it to name a thing but if you use it to call someone a name, then it is bad.” For example, if you sneeze and you get snot on your arm and are simply identifying the grossness all over yourself as snot, that’s fine. However, if you see your little brother, smack him on top of his head and call him a ‘snot,’ then you are in trouble. I know this seems like an odd rule but it works in a few instances like with bottom or poop. Believe me, we’ve run the of gamut this rules’ possibilities.
This all came into play on our ride home from school today. Little T.Puzzle is singing and being generally silly. Full Speed says, “You’re weird, T.Puzzle.”
I intervene. “Please don’t refer to your brother as weird. It isn’t nice.”
“Mom, I was just saying it as a thing; I wasn’t actually calling him weird.”
The only word that came to my mind was bad. Really bad. No matter if you named it a thing, a person or a highly confounding situation brought on by my five year old.
Writes for all Mommies 