Don’t Wash His Mouth Out with Soap: Why Toddlers Swear

By: Elizabeth Redhead Kriston, MS/CCC-SLP

***This Blog post was originally written for and purchased by Parent.co. It never ran due the absorption of that site by Mother.ly

“Look at my fire f**ck,” exclaimed the exuberant two-year-old I had just met. He was shaking his new prized truck at me as he beamed with pride. Red faced, his mother apologized for her son’s foul mouth before chastising him for swearing.

When I asked another family if their cherubic looking tot said any words, the parents became visibly nervous as they twisted uncomfortably in their seats and blushed. They looked at one another as if asking for permission to share some deep, dark family secret, and then blurted-out, in unison, “She says shit, a lot. We don’t know why she says it. We don’t talk like that around her. Why would she say shit? What’s wrong with her? She won’t say mom, but she says shit all the time.”

It turns out that this little girl was not trying to swear or even tell others to use the bathroom. No, she was simply a conscientious hostess at 18 months and wanted everyone to be comfortable so she directed others to “sit.” See, she was being thoughtful and kind not weirdly concerned about bowel movements

I can’t help but feel pride when I share my foul mouth toddler’s story with these families. My daughter had an unexplained affinity for sticks. No expensive toy could replace her constant search for and obsession with sticks. The only thing that calmed her or entertained her was shaking a stick, dragging a stick, hitting things with sticks, etc.…

She was a new talker at this time and had not mastered the skill of clear speech. Saying one consonant in a word was hard enough, but two in a row was impossible. So of course, whenever she spoke of her beloved sticks, the “st” sound did not come out quite right. Her “st” morphed into a lonely “d” sound.

Despite her inability to produce all the sounds in the American phonetic system, she did have a rich vocabulary. She was able to use adjectives like big, long, and brown to describe her sticks. She also loved to tell everyone about her sticks. Strangers and loved ones alike were regularly regaled by her mellifluous descriptions of her favorite toy.

My husband and I, having been blessed with twisted senses of humor, found this to be an amazing opportunity to shock others and make ourselves laugh until we couldn’t breathe. So, at every opportune moment we would prompt our daughter to tell others all about her favorite toy. Ever obliging when it came to talking about her sticks, she would toddle up to strangers (with our close supervision of course) and shake her newest stick at them. With a twinkle in her vibrant blue eyes the words would spill from her cupid’s bow mouth, “Wook at my big, brown, d**k! Do you wike my d**k. It’s a wong “d**k”

Stunned and bit concerned, the stranger would inevitably begin to stammer as they inched away, hands up and waving like they were trying to swat away her little words not wanting to talk to my baby girl about her “big, brown d**k.” We feigned apologetic looks as we unsuccessfully tried to stifle our laughter. Once the stranger disappeared, we would saunter on down the beach or through the park looking for our next victim.

Occasionally, I will meet a toddler that could make a sailor blush (is that metaphor still okay to use?), and that’s because that’s how their parents talk. Think Ralphie in A Christmas Story. Though most parents may not swear in creative strings of cusses as they try to fix a temperamental furnace, children will pick-up a rarely uttered expletive. Kids tend to learn words more quickly when they are hollered with passion. So, when mom drops a carton of eggs or smacks her thumb with a hammer and blurts out a passionate “F**K,” every toddler with in ear shot will mimic that word.

Most kiddos do not describe their toys with graphic words. The ones who do imitate words heard from the fouled mouth parents don’t really know what they are saying, at least not at first. If adults react to these mistakes with disapproval or even laughter it will nurture that word. Then they’ll have a toddler who says bad words to get a rise out the adults in her life. For the most part, the curses of our toddlers are innocent mistakes.

Why your Child Says F**k for Truck and Other Mistakes

Learning to talk is a tricky business. I argue it is the most complicated skill a baby must learn. It involves the coming together of nearly all of our body's intricate systems with precision. Our bones, muscles and breath, must be strong and healthy. Our memory and knowledge must be sharp. Our neurological system must be firing and wired.

If anyone of these things is not working just right, learning to communicate with words is hard if not impossible. Little toddler brains are still developing. All of those systems are learning to work together in synchrony so that a first-word and then an expansive vocabulary of words can be known and then said.

Practice makes perfect in all skills we develop. A baby doesn’t just walk, they have to go through a series of milestones to slowly and methodically develop the strength, balance, and coordination to walk and then run. Speech is the same, but harder.

Experts have been studying language for centuries. It wasn’t until the mid to late 20^th century that scientists in the fields of cognition and language explained what to expect in typical speech development, and why toddlers sound so funny when they talk. Toddlers change their speech in predictable ways to allow them to communicate their thoughts, wants, and needs until all those systems develop and coordinate.

Some Predictable Patterns

·        

      The littlest of speakers delete weak syllables and say things like “nana” for “banana.”

·         Many first words have an added vowel or a duplicated syllable like when mom becomes “mommy” or bottle becomes “bubba”

·         Most kids will eventually leave off sounds (final consonant deletion) at the ends of words so “juice” becomes “ju.”

·         Bringing the end sound up to the front is another common error. That’s why your kid calls for the “gog” not the “dog.” Assimilation is one term for this sound change pattern.

·         The “f**k” for “truck” scenario is a bit more complicated to explain. I won’t bore you with the details of Fronting, Deaffrication and/or Cluster Reduction, but trust me when I say, “it’s okay.”

·       Some sounds we say by letting air out in a stream like /sh, s, f/. Others we say with bursts of air like /b, t, d/. Young kids have trouble controlling airflow for sounds like “s” so they use a bursting sound like “d” instead. This is called stopping that’s one explanation of how “stick” turns into “d**k.”

·        Many sounds are made toward the front of our mouths like “b” and some are made in the back of the mouth like “g.” Sometimes the front and back distinction is subtler like “sh” is more front than “s.” Toddlers learning to talk might lean toward making sounds more toward the front also known as fronting. In this case “sit” will become “shit.”

There are many more normal speech patterns that new speakers use. Most resolve by 3-5 years of age. While many families express concern with the “baby talk” stage, most mourn it when it fazes out. I for one am glad that my daughter no longer plays with sticks, but I do miss using her as a pawn in my quest to find humor in the world.

The best thing to do when your kid swears is to ignore it. The other option is to run with it and make your kid swear at everyone who will listen because before you know it the baby talk will disappear.  You’ll wake-up one day and find yourself standing face to face with your teenager who just blurted an expletive that was perfectly clear and intended. That, I promise, is not so cute.

Find books to help kids learn to speak clearly at www.dynamic-resources.org. Look for the Word Menders Series.

Check this chart for more on phonological processes: http://www.playingwithwords365.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Common-Phonological-Processes-Chart.pdf