My 13 year old son constantly swears. Its F this and F that and FFS. He yells at his siblings like "here F*CKING have it!" And yells at them to STFU all the time. He swears at me too. Saying F*cking whatever! Always in an agressive tone. I'm so sick of it. Its awful. His little siblings hate it too. What do I do? I tell him to stop. I take away the xbox. He just keeps swearing all the time.
3 Replies
I would set clear rules around it - ie) I don’t fucking care, swear like a sailor, but there is a time and a place - do not swear around children, do not swear towards people in anger ever.
I would selectively ignore when they swear in conversation with you, praise when they replace a swear with flippers etc for young children, and come down super hard the first few times they break those rules. He’s being aggressive towards you a woman and his young siblings - it’s a power issue but you absolutely must make it clear now it is behaviour that will not be tolerated. Teach alternative outlets, help him get to the problem before it gets to that level, teach him to take 5 and leave the situation - even when you’re speaking to him.
Do not react emotionally. Ignore it completely and use it as a cue for you to Deescalate the situation. Then when you’re all calm, don’t let it go! Make sure come back to it and he faces it.
Thank you. I just feel completely at a loss how to get hit to stop. And thats great advice.
Perhaps at first come at it from a jokey point. Late at night just you two, say, “hey Bobby, I need to talk to you about your fucking language… it’s fucking bad hey? You fucking know it don’t you?!” Look I get it, but it’s really important that you, actually nobody, swears at the younger children” and I was always the same if anyone ever swore towards you - or even they did now and you didn’t like it. explain that for children, it a form of aggression and intimidation, it’s adult-world in their eyes, so they feel they’re in a really bad/serious situation, it’s so scary to them that it is seen as verbal abuse. Make a joke between the two of you to come up with stupid replacements.
I would then have the same conversation another time about women as well.