Right Mothering

Why the #$%! Do We Swear? For Pain Relief

Kids a threat to civilization

On our way from ballet to Costco the other weekend, my daughter fixated on something that happened at her piano graduation recital a couple weeks earlier.  One boy in the class, older than the rest, selected as one of his pieces a song from farther along in the book than the class had thus far progressed.  My daughter had also actually learned the song, because it is well-known, which most of the songs in the book are not.  She knew, however, that it would not have been appropriate to play it at the graduation recital.  Why it would not have been appropriate was the topic of conversation in the car that day.

She began by asking why the boy should not have played the song.  I explained that although we too had gone ahead in the book to learn the song, playing it for the graduation recital is rude to both the teacher and to fellow students.  By playing a song that the class had not yet covered, the boy was saying to the teacher, “I don’t need you to learn this song” and to his fellow students, “I am better than all of you because I alone can play ahead in the book.”  Second, by playing that song now, he would have one less song to choose from for the graduation recital that covers that material.  Third, he had actually signed up for another piece, from among the songs we had actually learned, which many students had wanted to play, but couldn’t because he had raised his hand most fervently.

My daughter found this explanation fascination, for during this fifteen-minute car ride, she asked me at least three more times the very same question, about why this boy should not have played this piece at the recital.  I made my case three times.  She understood what I was saying, but the discussion fascinated her (just as do discussions about why soy can be bad for you and why smoking is a weakness in moral character).

I am thrilled that this topic fascinates her.  I know she had the right instinct – away from obnoxious behavior – and empathize with her need to understand in concrete terms why humility is important.  The bad behavior of others provides teaching moments and also affirmation of her good behavior.  Similarly, when a girl took snowballs and threw them onto the front steps of her school, I did not hesitate, within hearing of the girl and her father, to explain how putting snow where someone has once cleared snow is not very thoughtful of that person’s efforts.  Although the bad behavior of children and other adults can stress me more than it should, I just remind myself that it offers real-life cautionary tales.

We live in a metropolitan area populated by a majority of poorly behaving adults, most clearly evidenced by the their offensively inconsiderate driving habits.  I can only assume that they were all once poorly behaving children.  Because I must deal with these poorly raised adults each and every day, I am very sensitive to the sight of poorly behaving children.  So yes, I may not like your children (in response to the recent Motherlode post, “Do Strangers Really Hate My Kids?”)

Based on my own observations, the worse the behavior of the child, the greater the inattention of the parents to that child, at least in public.  Out in the world, my husband and I never take our eyes of our daughter.  We are vigilant, but we adore her, so we cannot not look at her.  In December, we were at a holiday celebration at our Sunday language school.  I was seated at a table, and my husband was chatting with another father.  Our daughter was cavorting with the other children in the middle of the room.  At one point, she walked over to a drum propped on its side and leaning against a chair and tapped it with her foot.  Within seconds, both my husband and I were at her side, each in our own language, asking her what she was doing.  She knew she had done bad and did not like us going on at length about her misdeed.  So we let up and moved on.  But she knows that we are always watching.

When we lived overseas, we lived in a country where parents made a point of ignoring their children on the playground as a statement about how they cultivate the independence of their children (attachment parenting is unknown in this country).  Children could throw sand, wield sticks, and otherwise terrorize other children without any repercussions (unless, of course, I was on the playground).  When we visited a neighboring country, each parent was within two steps of his or her child on the playground, and although the children were pretty wild, I felt so safe with my gentle daughter on this playground, because I knew that I was not responsible for protecting her from the bad behavior of the other children.  Now, is it a coincidence that the citizens of our country of residence are notoriously out only for themselves and those of the country that we visited are known for how deeply they care about others?

So, you see, the bad behavior of children is not charming.  It is the means by which nasty societies perpetuate themselves.

The  intersection of practical parenting and the theorizing of human behavior in the recent discussion of teasing makes me think of another useful-to-society, but shameful-to-the-individual act, that of cursing.  I recognize that cursing is eternal and universal (Swearing, The Anatomy of Swearing, Cursing in America: A Psycholinguistic Study of Dirty Language in the Courts, in the Movies, in the Schoolyards and on the Streets, Expletive Deleted: A Good Look at Bad Language), but am repulsed by the printing of English expletives on clothing in non-English-speaking countries and and the free use of these non-English speakers of these same expletives in their everyday speech.  If I ever hear someone curse in front of my daughter, I say something.  I also believe that cursing, like teasing, is best learned in the home.

But I myself curse.  I live in the metropolitan area with the worst drivers in America, where ‘right of way’ has no meaning, but I learned to drive in a place where civility and driving are not mutually exclusive.  My keen sense of justice (inherited by my daughter) makes driving the greatest source of stress in my life.  Cursing enables me to expel that stress at the moment when I encounter the stressor rather than later, when the stressor is absent but not my husband or daughter.

Unfortunately, my daughter is often in the car with me at these critical moments.  My cursing is rather tame – I never go beyond calling the other driver a jackass or idiot.  But my husband doesn’t curse.  Really.  I have never heard him utter a profanity, in any of his multiple languages.  He is more controlled than I am and doesn’t approve of even my PG-rated cursing.

When we visit the local aquarium, I nevertheless blush when my daughter points to the penguins and correctly calls them jackass penguins.  She even knows that a jackass is a donkey.  But in a context conducive to misunderstanding, I, admittedly, squirm when she correctly and inoffensively uses the very same word that I use offensively as a curse word in a bubble without any possibility of misunderstanding.

So, very early on (we didn’t have a car before she was three years old), I explained that jackass is only to be used to call the bad drivers we encounter on the road roads and only in the car as we encounter them.  And, by the grace of God, I have never heard her use the word in any context.  When baby number two arrives, with his or her far-more impressionable mind, I may need to find another outlet for my stress.

Two weekends ago, the New York Times Magazine published an essay on teasing that has generated a good deal of buzz.  The article is relatively academic and could just as well be left in that rarefied air, until the author delineates what he views as the practical implications of his research:

In seeking to protect our children from bullying and aggression, we risk depriving them of a most remarkable form of social exchange. In teasing, we learn to use our voices, bodies and faces, and to read those of others — the raw materials of emotional intelligence and the moral imagination. We learn the wisdom of laughing at ourselves, and not taking the self too seriously. We learn boundaries between danger and safety, right and wrong, friend and foe, male and female, what is serious and what is not. We transform the many conflicts of social living into entertaining dramas. No kidding.

As a mother of a five-year old girl, I have already seen her negotiating the world of queen bees and am relieved that she has assumed that role this year, for it is much easier to influence her exercise of that power than it is to react to the abuse of that power by others.  Teasing has not yet entered into the equation, or least enough for my daughter to discuss it with me, but I would not be happy to find out that another girl was teasing her.  I would be even less happy to find out that she was herself doing the teasing.

I believe that teasing needs to be done with love, and, therefore, that, especially with children, the proper place to learn about teasing is in the home.  My husband and I tease each other regularly, and it does ease tensions, when they arise, and my husband uses teasing most effectively in this way.  We also involve our daughter in our teasing of each other, but we only tease her ever so gently, because if we tease with too heavy a hand or at the wrong moment, we upset her, and we have too much respect for her feelings and for her emotional maturity to push it.

One type of teasing to which I am very sensitive, and which the essay does not refer, is the teasing that arises from jealousy.  My brother has always teased me in this way, and I now realize that he has always done it out of weakness and not affection, and for me, that makes it indefensible.  As a sort of virtue-theorist, I look to the motivation to judge the goodness of the act.  Teasing to ease tension is good; teasing to bring someone down a notch is bad.