I'm Teaching the Kids My Favorite Four Letter Words

Like many of you who have kids, in lots of ways, I am raising mine for your sake. After all, my kids will be playing with your kids, learning with your kids and hopefully influencing them in the best possible manner.

Like many of you who don’t have kids, in lots of ways, I am raising them for your sake. After all, my kids will be benefiting from your tax dollars, shape the vibe of your community, and hopefully influencing you in the best possible manner.

I’ve always been a bit of an odd-ball mom because I never spoke “baby talk” to my kids, even when they were babies. Instead, I have unapologetically spoken to them as if they were adults, using proper words, descriptive words, and wonderfully complicated words. Words that could and should be used in real life conversations.

At ages eleven and nine, the acronym WTF has entered into the conversation. WTF indeed.

Whenever I am abruptly confronted by life crashing into my innocent babes, I am always shocked by the soon-ness of it, hesitating with the weight of my response pressing on me, as in the moment I feel my response could sway them to a life of crime or the presidency.

In the end, I almost always opt to give an honest answer. What, they wanted to know did ’W.T.F.’ mean? So I told them. This lead to a conversation about four letter words and why they shouldn’t use them. And it wasn’t because they are “bad words”. That’s the easy response, and where’s the fun in that? So in a ten minute car ride, this became my first (serious) four-letter-word talk. It went something like this:

I believe we shouldn’t use words like that because the words we use say something about who we are—to ourselves and to other people. Vulgarity says we lack vocabulary, that we are crude, disrespectful or aggressive. Words are powerful, living, beautiful things that can create or destroy in equal measure. They can inspire the hearts of men to go to war against slavery, give faith to the faithless, or spread hatred and ignorance to embolden people to the most extreme, horrific behaviors imaginable.

Every time we speak is an opportunity to become, to build a fortress of character, and create a legacy of impressions. What story do you want to tell people and to yourself about who you are? You won’t always choose the right words; I don’t, but understand you always have the choice. So please, choose well.

And know that the best four letter words will always bring you possibilities rather than limitations. Then, I ended by sharing some of my favorite four letter words; self, work, true, love and hope.