Yesterday, I reached a new point in parenting, shame, and my own understanding of language. My two sons were in a heated argument that had digressed to the “shut up, no you shut up, no you shut up, no you shut up” stage. Both were talking (screaming, actually) but no one was listening. Blessed as I am with “daddy ears”, I could hear everything crystal clear. And my wife and I are of the mindset that two intelligent kids like ours are can eventually work out their problems without our intervention (most of the time), so I kept quite.
Then the other “F” bomb went off. I heard one of my sons call the other a “faggot.”
I screamed, called the guilty party onto the carpet, and asked him to repeat what he said. He went ghost-pale and whispered the word. It took three attempts to get him to say the word again audibly. I asked him to tell me what the word meant and he couldn’t. All he knew was the word was an insult. So we talked. I explained that that word was a derogatory word for gays and paramount to “nigger” in our house. Simply put, it wasn’t acceptable. The word cost my son a week of video game time (that’s what the argument was all about, I found out later) and something else much more important.
His pride in his knowledge and use of language.
When I went to his room to explain his punishment, he was on his bed, crying. He wasn’t upset that he lost access to the Wii for a week. He was upset with himself that he had used that word now that he understood what it meant. What surprised me was how internal his shame had been. I remember the first time I swore and really meant it. I was 10-11 years old, at a church function (the exact details slip my mind but it was a church function because that’s all I did as a kid), and I was swinging from a jungle gym. I put all my weight on one hand as I gripped a pole and pain shot through my hand and wrist. “Jesus Christ,” I said as I fell. I sat and waited for the punishment that never came. I had always been told that I would go to hell for swearing but the ground never opened up. Now, I won’t say that the lack of punishment sent me on a life of bad language, but I will say that I never developed that respect of certain words in certain contexts that my son has. I continued to play “Smear the Queer” (a version of dodge ball gone horribly awry) and to use “fag” as an insult. And so did everyone else I hung out with. What embarrasses me is that my son’s shame and his respect for certain words reflects a respect for people that I never learned through language, or at least not the way he has. So where he got it, I’ll never know. (I’ll have to give my wife–the non-reader and writer–the credit.)
I teach 9th graders and the other “F” bomb goes off so often, it becomes background noise to the kids (so do many swear words). Calling the kids on the carpet doesn’t stop it. Detentions don’t stop it. Lectures certainly don’t work. Calling parent doesn’t work, for the parents often don’t realize the extent of the disrespect. How do you teach anyone the connect of language and respect?