Should You Shelter Kids From Curse Words? This Mom Says No

You’re driving to school, blasting your favorite tunes, when all of the sudden — oh, sh*t. Wait, no, sorry. Oh, shoot. You forgot that song you were jamming out to doesn’t have the most kid-friendly language.

Your initial response might be to turn off the radio, or hide the song on your Spotify, never to be heard again. But, one mom says that that might not be the way to go.

Layla Shaikley, @laylool, posted a video to Instagram Reels about a time she and her 6-year-old daughter were listening to music in the car, and her daughter pointed out that she heard a “bad word.”

“My immediate reaction was to be like, Oh my gosh, let’s turn this off, that’s terrible,” Shaikley said. “But then I stopped and I backtracked. I was like, Huh, what an ineffective way to communicate.”

Instead, Shaikley realized this was a moment for a lesson.

“We have two options now. We can either stop listening because we really don’t like to hear these things, or we could choose to ignore it and move on and realize that we don’t speak like that. We’re more mature than that. We speak in an articulate way that really makes the points we want to say land,” she said.

Shaikley explained that the reason she chose this option is because she knows she can’t protect her daughter from ever hearing a curse word, but she could impact her attitude towards them.

“I can trick myself into believing she’s gonna be in a car with her friends one day and say, ‘Hey, let’s turn this off. They said a bad word.’ But she’s not,” she explained.

The truth is, you can’t protect your kid from ever hearing a bad word, and honestly, do we want to? I mean, the clean versions of Taylor Swift songs just aren’t as fun. But seriously, sheltering kids from ever hearing inappropriate language doesn’t teach them how to handle it when it comes up.

“I’m gonna make sure she knows that there’s always a more effective way to talk. People can choose how they communicate, but she should communicate in a way that’s effective and aligned with her values,” Shaikley said.

“I feel like as parents of young kids, we work really hard to protect and bubble our kids into these realities that just don’t exist outside the confines of our own cars or homes,” she continued.

Parents in the comments appreciated Shaikley’s perspective on the situation.

“We have to be realistic and set up our kids for social success not naiveness,” one user agreed.

“My son is also 6, we stay super neutral and just explain that some words are used only by grown ups and when he’s a grown up he can decide how to express himself. I feel like the bigger of a deal you make out of the ‘bad’ words the more appealing they are to kids,” another added.

So parents, don’t worry. Hearing a few swears does not a potty-mouth make. In fact, it might even help kids be better prepared for the world around them.

This article was originally published on scarymommy.com.