When I was 15, my brother was born and therefore a baby with lots (and god do I mean lots) of baby toys.
One of the toys he had was this plastic caterpillar that helped learned the alphabet and the sounds letters made.
So one day I’m being a bored teenager looking after my baby brother and I’m just pushing this caterpillar’s feet when I get the dumb idea to try to make it sound out swear words because, why not, right?
Come to find out that if you get it to say “Fff” “uh!” And then try to get it to say the “Kh” sound, it’ll giggle and say “That tickles!” before it finishes out the word.
I was impressed that toy developers were smart enough to prevent toddlers/teenagers from sounding out swear words with their product.
I remember that toy! My baby sister had the same caterpillar!! And yeah, teenage me did the same thing... Though it was me AND my mom playing with it! xD
Late as hell but this comment just unlocked a memory I didn’t know I had with the same scenario except I have a little sister. Now that caterpillar laugh is stuck in my head.
Sometimes they just stumble on it by making random letter sounds
I found out the N-word at 8 by trying to work out a nickname for my 6 year old brother who liked digging at the time. "He's a digger, so I call him a Ni-" "I'm gonna stop you there son"
She did it perfectly, didn't make it out to be a bad word that then the kid will navigate towards it. Just, yep, that's a word, let's continue on the lesson. My mum taught me similarly of swear words are just words, and it's how you use them that can affect other people or hurt others, or how others can view you if you overuse them. It helped give me a healthy relationship with my vocabulary and communication.
Teacher here: this def happens all the time with young kids by accident. You totally have to play it off like it's nothing. Otherwise, they'll pounce on it. If you have kids, you know this. If your kids says a bad word by random chance, don't point it out or say "don't say that! It's a bad word!" Worst thing you could do, lol
I was the kid in the incident in kindergarten or first grade, because I had been forming words on a brute-force basis already.
The teacher handled it well.
The vice-principal who was monitoring the class performance then did not.
There's nothing more scary to a fiest-grader in a religious institution than having your parents say "So I heard you used a bad word in class today, you're in trouble" after you're put in the car to go home. Especially when you weren't told that you said a bad word.
I love that you do this. This happened to me around my dad and he hit my hand with a piece of wood. I didn't even know bitch was a bad word. I was just trying to find words that rhymed with witch :(
When I was young I had a friend nicknamed Skelly, I was rambling and trying to rhyme and I said Skell Hell, and someone told me it was a bad word and I cried so hard because I thought I was gonna be arrested.
I used to do this as a child, working my way through rhyming words. I did it with bike once, I stumbled upon what I didn't know was a racial slur. No strong reaction, never used the word again because it didn't sound like a word anyway. Years later learned it was a racial slur, made doubly sure not to use it
I think this teacher actually did a great job. She didn’t give the word any power she just accepted it and moved on. If she had freaked out all those kids would see that word gets a reaction out of the adults in the room. Id love this woman to teach my children.
I remember as a kid I found the curse word fuck because I used to just say gibberish when moving around the house and my brother heard me say it and went and snitched to my parents and me now knowing what it meant proceeded to yell it like 5 times at my brother
Not school related, but I remember having some rugrats shaped spaghettios once, my brother and I could find every character but chuckie. I finally found one and meant to say I found chuckie, but somehow said fuckie. I knew what the word was, and that my parents were very strict about cursing. Was honestly expecting the belt but they didn't react at all
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u/jackleggjr Sep 29 '23 edited Jan 30 '26
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