Children

Children and the word

Every parent meets this one: the four-year-old who says it perfectly, in context, at the worst possible moment. Here is what is known about when children learn it, whether it does them harm, and what to do.

When they learn it

Timothy Jay's longitudinal records of children's speech, the largest dataset there is, show swear words appearing by age two, a repertoire of around thirty to forty taboo words by the time children start school, and adult-like patterns by about eleven or twelve. Children acquire the words from parents first (children whose parents swear at home swear more themselves, which surprises nobody), then from older siblings, then from peers. Crucially they learn the taboo at the same time: a three-year-old who says the word knows it is a special word, because of the reaction it gets, long before they know what it means.

Does it harm them?

There is no good evidence that hearing ordinary swearing harms children, and there is quite a lot of evidence that it does not. Jay's review of the literature found no study showing damage from exposure to swearing as distinct from verbal abuse, and a 2011 Brigham Young University study linking swearing on television to aggression in teenagers has been widely criticised for confusing correlation with cause. Verbal aggression directed at a child, with or without swear words, is a different thing, and is harmful. The word is not the problem; the hostility is.

The practical harm is social. A child who swears at school will be told off, and one who does so at a friend's house will be quietly uninvited. British primary schools treat the word as a behaviour matter, not a safeguarding one, unless it is aimed at a person.

What parents do

The approaches that people who study this recommend are unglamorous:

• Do not react. The word is learned partly for the reaction. A small child who gets a laugh, or a gasp, has found a button. Blank neutrality removes the reward.
• Explain, briefly, that some words are for some places. Children understand register early. "That is a word grown-ups use when they are cross, and we don't use it at school or at Grandma's" is more effective than "that is a bad word", which is an invitation.
• Distinguish the word from the target. Swearing at a stubbed toe and swearing at a sibling are not the same offence, and children can be taught the difference.
• Model what you want. A parent who swears freely and forbids it is teaching that the rule is about power, not words. Children notice.
• Expect adolescents to swear with their friends. It is a marker of group membership and nearly universal. The battleground worth choosing is where they swear, not whether.

Schools and the law

English schools have wide discretion; the word is usually handled under the behaviour policy and, if directed at staff, can be grounds for exclusion. The DfE's guidance on searching and behaviour does not mention swearing specifically. Sex and relationships education does not cover the word, though it probably should, since children will meet it in every context on the internet before they meet it in a classroom. The BBFC's age ratings, and the PEGI ratings for games, use "strong language" as a criterion for 15 and 16 respectively, and the word appears in books set for GCSE English, from Larkin to Of Mice and Men's "bastard" and Kelman's successors.

Books and screens

Melvin Burgess's Junk (1996), Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003), the Skulduggery Pleasant and Noughts and Crosses series and most modern young adult fiction contain the word. The Carnegie Medal has gone to books that use it. The prevailing British view among librarians and teachers is that the word in a book is a description of how people talk, and that a fourteen-year-old who has never heard it has been living somewhere very quiet.