I thought we'd gotten through it. It was a craptastic few days, letting him have the freedom to use the word. But then we had friends over for dinner...
Humor Parenting

What Happened When I Let My Kid Say “Crap”

I thought we'd gotten through it. It was a craptastic few days, letting him have the freedom to use the word. But then we had friends over for dinner...

By Jacqueline Miller of Boogers Abroad

My son was 10 years old when we moved to a new school in a new city and new state. Surprisingly, it also came with some new vocabulary.

Right away, child-of-mine picked up on the fact that his classmates were saying, with some frequency, the word “crap,” a syllable I’d strictly forbidden from crossing his sassy little lips. And when he first heard a teacher shamelessly utter the expression, right there in front of her pupils, he decided we needed a little chitchat on the subject.

Using his powers of persuasion and logic  — which are both impressive and infuriating — he convinced me to let him try out this previously banned four-letter word. But I wasn’t thrilled about it, and he knew it.

And so it went. Naturally, he had a very hard time suppressing his newfound fascination with the pseudo-swear. “Crappity-crap-crap-crap!” Suddenly, I was cohabitating with a pint-sized, PG-rated sailor.

“That’s crap!”

“What the crap?”

“Holy crap!”

So we had to set some ground rules. Those three expressions above, yeah, they were nixed immediately. When I proposed he could try “What the heck?” instead of “What the crap?” or “Holy moly!” instead of “Holy crap!” he guffawed at my old-lady ways and I glimpsed the teenager he would most likely become.

Uncool or not, he knew he had no choice but to relent to the Mommy-in-Charge. And so, thank goodness, he began to dial it back.

“That’s crap!” transformed into “That’s junk!”

(Sigh. Is that really any better?)

And we came upon a consensus: No “crapping” in public or in front of family. And no excessive “crappity-crap-crapping” just because you have working vocal cords.

He knew this was a test of his maturity, possibly even a gateway to other privileges, and fortunately treated it as such. In fact, he’s managed to find a palatable balance amongst all this crap, and now he sparingly uses the once-controversial expression.

However, there was one unforeseen hiccup I should have seen coming a mile away. But nope. Oh no. I walked right into it.

Just days after this new idiomatic freedom was bestowed upon my child, we had friends over for dinner. Gleefully, he announced to everyone in attendance: “My mom lets me say the C-word now!”

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About the Author

Jacqueline Miller is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in Scary Mommy and Her View From Home. She lives in the Midwest and uses a pseudonym for her family’s privacy. Find her at www.boogersabroad.com and https://www.facebook.com/boogersabroad.