"Mum, what does motherfucker mean?"

I try reeeaaaalllly hard not to swear in front of my kids. It does happen though, because I'm human. A very sweary, quickly frustrated human who says fuck a lot. But I try really, really hard. 

When talking to friends with any kiddies within earshot I will drop out the swear sounds but still mouth the words or spell it out, but at home I say things like fuuu...dge and other such completely un-fucking-satisfying words.

After 7pm, when my babes are (usually) asleep, all the suppressed curses come bubbling to the surface. Every bloody second fucking word is a shitty swear. See? It's as if my body has a natural quota of swearing that must be completed by the end of the day or I'll turn in to a pumpkin or something.  

I grew up with my Dad making up huge sentences of just swear words when he was angry, but after getting a smack for saying fuck when I was three, I didn't swear again in front of my parents until I was an adult. Now they are subject to my foul mouth as much as anyone else because I figure they taught me, they gotta hear it. 

I used to swear a bit in front of Tricky when he was little, and because he was speech delayed and wouldn't say boo, it went on for quite a while. One day he piped up from the back seat with "bitch" and it put an end to the 24/7 trash talk pretty quickly.

Bobbin, on the other hand, is a parrot. She has been talking our ears off for months; we lost count of her words somewhere around the hundred mark. She will repeat everything she hears. EVERYTHING. Though not always 100% correct, so when she grabs your hand and pulls you to floor and says "sit"... well, yeah. She's constantly telling people to shit and I'm hovering around saying "SHE MEANS SIT!" 

Tricks is very in to words now; how they're spelled and what letters make what sound, and is always quick to ask what different words mean if he hasn't heard them before. It's led to some interesting conversations, "Mum, what does motherfucker mean?", being the one that has stuck in my mind the most (and never got an answer other than the ol' it's not a nice thing to say cop out), but other than that, he's not generally a swearer. Plus he is a bit of a tattle tale when he hears other people swear, and tells me or takes it upon himself to tell them off. "Nanna, that's not a nice word!". 

When you combine these two with a mother who was sleep deprived from looking after sick kiddies all night, the following happens:

Me: *dropping carton of milk * "Fuuuuuck!"

Bobbin: "Fuck!" 

Tricky: "Mum, Bobbin said fuck!!! Bobbin, fuck isn't a nice word, you shouldn't say fuck."

Great. We've all dropped the F bomb in the space of three seconds. 

We have adopted a variant of @emmasbrain's rules of swearing with him. Our rule is he can swear in our car, singing along to songs if it just us there. It's worked pretty well and I try to have songs without swear words whenever possible, but he is really in to anything Macklemore ("I rock that motherfucker") and his favourite song is Uptown Funk right now ("I'm too hot, hot damn!"). Though damn isn't really a swear word, it still sounds a bit wrong coming out of his mouth, so I count it as one now.  

I put the call out on Facebook for sweary stories and laughed my ass off last night reading them all. Here are some of my faves:

So my kids are not the only ones who swear sometimes. PHEW. And 60% of my readers are called Emma. Wait, what?

Tell me your sweary stories!