Shownotes
If your child suddenly starts repeating a curse word over and over again, you are not alone. Whether they heard it from you, a sibling, a friend, or somewhere else, toddler swearing is surprisingly common. The challenge is that many parents accidentally make the behavior worse without realizing it. In this episode, I share a funny story about my own child, explain the psychology behind attention-seeking behavior, and walk through what actually works when kids start using inappropriate language.
We’ll talk about why strong reactions often reinforce toddler swearing, how positive parenting techniques can help reduce the behavior, and why staying calm is one of the most powerful forms of parenting help you can give yourself. If you have ever felt embarrassed, frustrated, or unsure how to respond when your child starts repeating bad words, this episode is for you.
In this episode, we cover:
- Why toddler swearing is often driven by attention-seeking behavior
- Why strong reactions make attention-seeking behavior more likely to continue
- The role of positive parenting techniques when addressing inappropriate language
- Practical parenting help for responding calmly and consistently
- What an extinction burst is and why toddler swearing may temporarily get worse before it gets better
- How positive parenting techniques help shift attention toward appropriate behavior
- Why understanding attention-seeking behavior can make parenting feel less stressful
If you are looking for practical parenting help, want to better understand attention-seeking behavior, or need strategies for handling toddler swearing, this episode will show you how positive parenting techniques can help make the behavior stop without power struggles.
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Transcripts
[00:00:00] Leah Clionsky: Have you ever messed up and sworn in front of your little kid, and now you can't get them to stop saying that curse word over and over again? Well, it can happen to the best of us. It certainly happened to me. So today on this episode of Educated Parent, we're gonna talk about how to make it stop. Just a warning, I am going to use some bad words on this episode.
[00:00:27] Leah Clionsky: None of the stories are fun if I don't. So if you have a child in the car who you do not want to copy me saying those bad words, wait on this episode. Wait until later, listen to it by yourself, and hopefully you can laugh at my expense So this is a relatively story-heavy episode, I think. , First I'm gonna talk to you about my dog.
[00:00:52] Leah Clionsky: Then I'm going to talk with you about a real-life situation where I ran into cursing from my child that I started, and then we'll talk about why the usual approaches we try to get kids to stop cursing don't work, and what you should do instead. So I have, , a lovely goldendoodle named Butterscotch. , He actually came from an employee of mine who had accidental puppies, and if you follow my Instagram, you'll see Butterscotch pop in up there sometimes.
[00:01:24] Leah Clionsky: But Butterscotch is a really good boy. He has really worked on lots of training. He generally listens pretty well. But the one area where I still run into problems with this dog is on long walks, if he sees another dog, there are times where he gets so excited, he just starts barking and barking and barking at them, and I can't get him to stop, and I hate it.
[00:01:47] Leah Clionsky: It ruins my walk. It stresses me out. It's really not fun. It makes me kind of paranoid. I'm looking around for dogs, and I also always feel, like, judged as a pet owner when my giant dog is barking, and I know he's not aggressive, but he certainly looks badly behaved in that moment. And so I decided that when he was going to bark, what I was going to do was yell at him.
[00:02:13] Leah Clionsky: Um 'cause I was like, yeah, like negative reinforcement, right? So if he barks, I'm gonna yell. I'm gonna say, "Stop barking," which also shows everyone around me, right, that I am taking this seriously. I'm going to tell him to stop and, and then that will stop this behavior. I'm gonna sound really angry.
[00:02:31] Leah Clionsky: So we're walking along, and Butterscotch is barking at some poodle, and I'm there, "Stop it, Butterscotch. Stop it. No. Bad dog." And of course, he's just barking more. Like this behavior is getting worse and worse. And I'm like, well, clearly I am not a dog psychologist. I must be doing something wrong. So I bring in his dog trainer, and she asks me what's going on and what I'm doing about it.
[00:02:55] Leah Clionsky: And she says, "Okay, Leah, the problem is your strategy here is not working because you don't understand this behavior. What is happening with Butterscotch is that he actually is not aggressively angry. He's really excited. And when you start yelling when he is barking, you're not punishing him. You're actually getting him super, super excited, and you're reinforcing the behavior.
[00:03:22] Leah Clionsky: Instead, what you should be doing is giving him treats." And I'm like, "What? I'm supposed to be giving this dog treats while he's embarrassing me in public?" She's like, "Listen, Leah You're gonna use the treat as a distraction. So when you see another dog coming before Butterscotch sees them, you're gonna start getting him to focus on you instead of the other dog and giving him lots and lots of treats.
[00:03:46] Leah Clionsky: You're gonna pull his attention away, get him focused on you, and then you're reinforcing that behavior. And I'm like, "Well, will he think if I give him treats when there are other dogs that, like, I'm reinforcing the barking behavior?" And she's like, "No, that's not what it's about." So I'm like, "Okay, clearly I misunderstood what would actually work in this situation."
[00:04:08] Leah Clionsky: So I started following her approach, and I'm happy to tell you we are experiencing a lot less barking. Is it perfect? No. But I can see now that the problem was is that I misunderstood what would make this behavior go away and what would make it improve because I don't fully understand dogs. The reason I am telling you this story is that I often see parents in this situation with swearing in young children, where they think that they're doing something that will stop the swearing and they're accidentally making it worse.
[00:04:43] Leah Clionsky: And I'm not blaming you, like this can happen to the best of us. Clearly I, again, did not know what I was doing with my dog. But there are things we can do when our kids swear that will make it better. And by better, I mean not better use of curse words, which would be funny, but better in terms of getting them to stop.
[00:05:00] Leah Clionsky: So here's what happened to me. So if either my husband or I is gonna be the one to say a bad word, it's gonna be me. , I'm pretty good at censoring myself around the kids, but if I hurt myself, that's when I'm likely to mess that up. So one day I dropped something on my foot and I just said, "Goddamn it."
[00:05:22] Leah Clionsky: And I look over and there's Alex, my four-and-a-half-year-old grinning at me with that little Dennis the Menace look. And he goes, "Ooh, goddamn it. Goddamn it." And he's just looking at me and I'm like, "Uh, oh shit." And he's like, "Goddamn it, shit." I'm like, "Oh my gosh. Alex, stop talking," right? Like this is just gonna get worse and worse and worse.
[00:05:42] Leah Clionsky: So now he's realized, he's figured out something to say that I clearly do not want him to say. And I'm sure this has happened to you. Whether it was you who slipped up or some other adult around you or something they heard on TV or something they heard from a peer, right? They heard a thing and they don't know what it means.
[00:06:05] Leah Clionsky: All they know is when they say it, adults are going to react. So he's there looking at me, "Goddamn it, goddamn it, goddamn it." And I'm like, "Oh no," like what's going to happen next? So of course, that weekend we had a grandparent over and Alex looks over at her and he says, "Goddamn it." And the grandparent says, "Alex, we don't say that word.
[00:06:30] Leah Clionsky: That is a bad thing to say. No." What do you think Alex says eight million times all day long? Right. I'm watching this happen. I'm like, "Oh no, this is the worst way you could react." So does reacting negatively to the word make the problem better or worse? The reality , is that yelling at, scolding, or reacting strongly, either by laughing or by being very angry at that behavior, you are now in a cycle where you are reinforcing it.
[00:07:04] Leah Clionsky: So let's step back and look at the psychology of little kids, which I understand so much better than dog psychology. Here's what little kids want most: our strong attention. Do-- Does it need to be positive attention? No. It just needs to be very, very strong. So if they can figure out a way, a button to push that will get that attention, they are gonna go for it.
[00:07:31] Leah Clionsky: And they don't understand what they're saying, right? , Even if they're saying something truly awful, lu- luckily, goddamn it is on the more mild end of curse words. They don't know what they mean. If they tell you to go F yourself, they don't know what that means. They just know that if they say that, you're gonna be super, super angry.
[00:07:49] Leah Clionsky: And also, it's that embarrassing thing going on too, right? If you're getting calls from teachers saying, "Oh, you know, little so-and-so is saying this word in class," you're just like, "Oh my gosh, what will everyone think?" Just like me with Butterscotch when he's barking at other dogs and I'm like, "Oh no, I'm being dog-shamed."
[00:08:07] Leah Clionsky: And then that makes us want to scold it more and more and more. And again, the more attention we put on this behavior, the worse it will get Now, I have good news about this behavior. Bad words do not actually harm anybody. So it's something your child is saying, but they're not hurting someone. They're not doing something that is causing real damage, and that means it is a behavior that you can ignore.
[00:08:37] Leah Clionsky: So when I tell you to ignore a behavior, that means that you're going to take that attention you wanna give, you wanna be there like that grandparent saying, "No, no, no, we don't say that word," and you want to turn that off, because what they want is for you to react that way. That is what they're going for, and they are really good at picking up on it.
[00:09:02] Leah Clionsky: So if your child is swearing, here's how I suggest you handle it. I would one time explain to them that this is a bad word that we're not supposed to use that can get them in trouble, in just a completely informational way. So you wanna take the intensity out of it, because there are some kids where if you just are like, "Hey, this is a bad word.
[00:09:26] Leah Clionsky: When we say it, we can make other people feel offended and upset, and if you say it at school, you might get in trouble. So it's not a very good thing for us to say." So I would give an explanation like once or twice in a pretty neutral way. But once you do that, this kiddo knows now that it's not a good thing to do, , but they're gonna keep on doing it So when this happens, you're gonna do the hardest thing you've ever done.
[00:09:55] Leah Clionsky: You're going to ignore this behavior. So you are going to pretend when little Alex starts saying, "God damn it," that he is not saying a single word right then. , That behavior gets no attention at all. I'm not gonna ignore Alex, right? Alex is wonderful. Alex is adorable, but I'm not gonna react to, "God damn it."
[00:10:18] Leah Clionsky: It's not worth it. I'm not gonna pay any attention to that word. So this is what will always happen. You have your child saying, "God damn it, god damn it, god damn it," and you're gonna ignore it. And what will happen first is your child will say it more. This is called an extinction burst. This is because they're trying to see, "If I say it more, will Daddy yell at me?"
[00:10:44] Leah Clionsky: Right? Like, "If I increase the intensity of this, will Mommy get upset?" So they're experimenting, because at this point, every time they've said it, maybe you have reacted strongly to it, and that's normal and healthy of them. Just like, , if, you get something every time you do a certain behavior, every time you push the start button in your car, your car turns on.
[00:11:10] Leah Clionsky: If one day you push it and your car does not turn on, the first thing you're gonna do is push the button, like, eight times to see if that will start your car. Normal human. Only after that repetition will you realize, "Oh, there's something wrong with my car. It's not gonna work." So the f- when Alex says, "God damn it," nothing.
[00:11:28] Leah Clionsky: I'm not reacting to that. I'm not... I'm pretending he did not speak. I'm going about my other things, just letting him yell, "God damn it," because it does not matter, god damn it. So you're gonna turn your attention off. I'm gonna wait for it to get more intense. And then after a while, it's really boring to sit around screaming something you don't even understand, so he'll say something else like, "Hey, Mommy, is this a lion?"
[00:11:52] Leah Clionsky: And I'll be like, "Oh, it is a lion." So the third thing you do is the minute that that specific behavior stops, you turn your full attention onto anything else. And any appropriate thing he says, I'm gonna pay attention to. I'm gonna give it my full attention, and I also might praise him, like, "Hey, I really love how you're using polite words."
[00:12:12] Leah Clionsky: At which point he might look at me and say, "God damn it," to see if I'm gonna react. Nothing. So if you do that, and you can get everyone else around you to do that for a little bit of time, the behavior will stop. The hard part is allowing yourself to really turn the attention off. Again, it's no fun swearing like that unless you're getting someone else's strong reaction.
[00:12:38] Leah Clionsky: Now, if you're dealing with a teenager or someone much older who under- really understands this, this is where you could have a calm and consistent consequence. That's where people get into things like swear jars, where you're like, "Oh, I'm not that interested, and also you have to put a dollar in here." Or, um, I'm like, "How do we even do that now?
[00:12:56] Leah Clionsky: I'm subtracting a dollar from the account you're allowed to spend money from?" However you wanna do that, something like super consistent. The difference is, is that you just want to not be reacting, because that is the purpose of that behavior when kids are doing that around us. You can do this. You can ignore this behavior.
[00:13:16] Leah Clionsky: It's really, really hard, but it really does work really effectively. And again, you're not harming your child by not reacting to their swear word. You're not being a pushover. In fact, , by not reacting to this, you're showing your child that they-- there's nothing they can say that is so outrageous that they can make you lose your cool.
[00:13:35] Leah Clionsky: And I hold that inside when I'm trying to ignore something specific like that. Ignoring is my personal hardest skill as a parent, I'll just tell you directly. But in those moments, it really does work, and I would like to tell you that we no longer hear the word "goddammit" coming from Alex, although, let's be honest, sometimes it still comes from me.
[00:13:54] Leah Clionsky: All right. I hope this has been a helpful and maybe funny episode of Educated Parent. I hope that you are able to move forward with less cursing from toddlers in your life, and I hope you have an amazing
[00:14:07] week.
