WTF?

"There's no need for that kind of outburst", came a stern voice from the back seat of the car. "Sorry Bryn", I replied to my eight year old. What had prompted this telling off was my reaction to an elderly driver who had changed lanes right in front of me without any indication whatsoever.
"What the fff....flip", I had said, remembering just in time that I was not alone in the car.
In the old days when I was a good Baptist, my speech was as clean as an obsessive compulsive's house, but as my moral compass came apart at the seams, so too did my language.
Now, I don't particularly like to hear swearing, especially if it is the kind of coarse, meaningless, every other word is an obscenity, which you find all too often these days. Apparently swearing is harder to give up than smoking, and for many it simply becomes a way of life. However, neither do I subscribe to the much bandied about school-of-thought which says that only the uneducated swear because they don't have the eloquence to express themselves in any other way. Enjoying comedy as I do, I believe that a well-placed swear word can add to the humour of a piece whether written or spoken. I also quite like the freedom afforded by the kind of  'text speech acronym' swearing such as the title of this post. I would not have dreamt of actually calling the post by it's full name, but the acronym somehow seems acceptable. A bit like 'Obscenities Lite'.
So, what to do about children and swearing? However good you are as a parent about your language they are bound to pick things up from an early age. I remember Bryn aged 2 and scarcely able to talk coming home from the child-minder one day and saying 'You bar-smudge'. It was so hilarious that he'd got it wrong, so I ignored it and after a couple of days he didn't do it again. A couple of years ago, when I was clearing out his bedroom, I found a piece of paper in his bedside drawer. Written on it, in his best writing and with his favourite gold pen, was every obscenity he knew - quite an impressive list for a 6 year old including the word 'fuke'. Again, I didn't want to make a big thing of it, so I put it back where I found it. However, being a teacher I just couldn't help myself, and a couple of days later felt I had to say something. "You know the naughty word that begins with 'F', Bryn? It has a curly c and a kicking k at the end ok? Bless him, he got it right after that.