Scientists says children should be allowed to swear at home, parents pissed off about it
A scientist believes that parents should not stop their children from swearing and instead, educate them about rude words. Dr. Emma Byrne, an expert in neuroscience, in her new book 'Swearing is Good for You: The Amazing Science of Bad Language' explains that parents should take the initiative in making their kids learn about rude words rather than them picking up bad words from their surroundings.
Dr. Emma believes that it is important to teach a child when is the right time to use a bad word. "I want to equip parents to cope with that moment of shame and embarrassment of their kid swearing in a place that was inappropriate," she said while appearing on Good Morning Britain.
"Instead of saying 'we are going to shut this conversation down', we should talk about why it is inappropriate," she further added, as reported by Independent. Before the segment aired on the television, families were interviewed about their thoughts on children being allowed to swear. In one of the interviews, a father said: “I don’t think it’s good parenting to let your kids swear." While his younger daughter added that she doesn’t use swear words because “they could affect other people’s feelings.”
Dr. Emma seemed to agree with the toddler as she said the “little girl” was right because “you have to think about people’s feelings.” She then said swearing isn’t “directly correlated with being awful to people. There are ways to be really vile without using a swear word," such as calling someone ugly or dumb and it all depends on children understand the impact it will leave on the feelings of others.
"If we don't talk about swearing with our kids and they learn to swear just from their classmates on the playground, they're not going to have a sense of how swearing affects people's feelings," she concluded. However, Anna Williamson, presenter and life coach on 'Good Morning Britain' was offended by Dr Emma's thoughts. "People take offense to it. Swearing is not socially acceptable. There’s a reason we can’t swear on live TV and it’s because it does offend," Anna said.
Anna further added that he understands the point about teaching swearing from an “educational” perspective but “it’s about creating those boundaries particularly in our children,” and that she would be mortified to hear children swearing in public. Dr. Emma's views also sparked anger on Twitter as many people expressed their concerns with her thoughts. "Unbelievable that we are discussing should kids be swearing at home absolutely horrific," wrote one user.
Another added, "This woman said that children should be allowed to swear encapsulates why kids are so messed up these days. She's effectively saying that manners and discipline have no place in the home." Another chimed in by writing, "Children should not be “encouraged” to swear but... Monkey see monkey do. You can protect kids from so many things but you can’t protect them from life."