I was reading the Jonathan Coulton forums today and someone was asking if it was ok to bring their 6 year old to a show, on account of JoCo having some swears in his lyrics and occasionally in his monologues.

That reminded me of an experience I had a few years back which has given me my current philosophy on kids and swearing.  I was down in So Cal for GenCon, that great geek extravaganza.  I met up with one of my gaming buddies and his friend, who also brought along his son, who was maybe 8 years old or so.  His son was with us almost the entire time, played every game, read the rules and was generally the coolest kid ever.  Now, my buddy is not exactly PG.  In fact, if they gave out NC-17 for language, I think he might get one.  That evening at dinner I asked the father if he was concerned about his son picking up bad habits.  He said no, his son knew what the bad words were and if he were to use them, he'd get into trouble.

That was one of the most sensible bits of parenting I think I've ever heard.  Now, I certainly don't plan on going around cussing like a sailor around my new baby, but I can see that at some point it makes sense.  I think the challenge is determining when your child is old enough to take on the responsibility.  The problem with small children is they don't understand the word and may just say it 'cause daddy does.  I imagine somewhere around age 5, or so, if only because once they start going to school, they're going to hear it anyway.  It is at that point that it will be on their heads to resist the urge to cuss a blue streak anyway.

I think I was taught a little too well to control my cussing, which is funny, because my mother is surprisingly profane at times.  (Sorry mom, your secret is out!)  It actually took me a number of years to feel comfortable swearing.  I believe that swearing is an important social skill as well as a valuable stress reliever.

In the years since I learned to cuss properly, my cuss-coefficient has varied.  It's usually a function of who I am hanging out with at the time, as my level of cuss adjusts to ambient level.  There have been a couple of times where I have had to make a conscious choice to scale back, due to nearly dropping an F-bomb in a work meeting. 

This fits in with my General Theory of Parenting, which is that we are here to prepare our kids for the world, not shelter them from it.  Guess we'll see how that works out.