When Ms Esther Foong-Tan’s daughter was three years old, she told her elder brother to “f*** off”.
Ms Foong-Tan, 38, was shocked as swearing is not allowed in their family, but it turned out to be a teachable moment. She recalls resisting the urge to react emotively. She calmly asked her pre-schooler Phoebe if she knew what the expletive meant.
Phoebe thought it meant “to go away” and was “grossed out” when her mother gave a brief, age-appropriate explanation. Phoebe, now aged nine, has not used the profanity since.
“How we respond to our children swearing will determine if they continue to use vulgarities – sometimes in secret, unknown to us – or if they stop,” says Ms Foong-Tan, a family life educator.
She is a co-founder of parent group SGFamilies, and she and her husband Elvin Foong, 41, are co-founders of The Treasure Box Singapore, a company that provides families with parenting resources and training. Their son, Nathan, is 11.
Most children swear as a rite of passage, and research suggests that kids are doing so at a younger age than before.
In 2010, American psychology professor Timothy Jay presented data at the Sociolinguistics Symposium held in Britain, which found that children as young as two were using swear words, an earlier age than had been recorded in the three decades prior.
Prof Jay, who has published extensively on the topic of swearing, said that the rise in vulgarity among adults coincided with a similar uptick in the number of young people using offensive language.
It is developmentally normal for children to try out swear words, says Dr Natalie Games, a clinical psychologist at Alliance Counselling, which offers counselling and psychotherapy services.
The reasons are multitudinous and depend on the age of the child.
Older children in their tweens or early teens may be navigating how they fit in socially or they may want to feel that they are “being a little bad”, says Dr Games.
Younger children, like pre-schoolers, who use curse words are usually exploring language, she adds.
Since testing boundaries in using profanity is almost expected in children, parents should be prepared to respond, says Dr Games.
Here are some suggestions on what to do when your youngster swears.