By Erickka Sy Savané
“Shut up before I bust you in the f*cking mouth!”
I
turn around to see Peaches, cursing out her pre-K son. It’s crazy
because, unlike the moms that I hear from two blocks away from the
school, mouths running like Usain Bolt, Peaches is usually pretty quiet.
The little boy holds his head down as she continues her tirade.
“Come on,” I say, grabbing my daughter’s five-year-old hand.
“Why’s that lady so mad?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes mommies get mad,” I tell her.
“Well, she was real mad!” she responds.
Continue
Like
seeing road kill, thoughts of Peaches going ham on her kid leave me
unsettled, and I can’t stop thinking about how damaging it must be to
the little boy’s psyche. It reminds me of a few months ago when I was
having a play date with another mom here in Jersey City, and after
trying unsuccessfully to get her seven-year-old daughter to listen, the
mom said, “You lucky I don’t bust you in the mouth!” My ears did a
little twitch, which she must have noticed because she laughed it off,
“I just say that to get her attention.”
It’s kinda interesting though, that two moms from the neighborhood are both cursing at their kids. Am I missing something?
I
do my best to shelter my kids from the four-letter words that I grew up
with. The ones my Granny used so liberally to pepper her conversation. I
also monitor what they watches on TV. But it seems as soon as I walk
out the door, someone is dropping f-bombs. Most times, it’s kids.
Especially, the teens. And it makes me wonder if perhaps I’m
out-of-touch with what’s going on today. Is this way of sheltering them
from such language even good for them? Am I bringing them up to be soft
and incapable of dealing with the world’s sharp edges?
Just
the other day, I was speaking to the friend from the playdate, and she
was telling me how she’s teaching her daughter a “black code” (aka a way
of interacting with the police that won’t get her killed). She’s
teaching her to say, “Yes, officer, no, officer, what can I do for you
today, officer?” She says it’s a conversation that she wanted to have
with her when she was older, but it’s more important to have it now,
when she can point to the TV and use all the police killings as an
example.
GoodGodAlmighty! It seems like a lot to put
in her young head! I ask if it’s even realistic that her 7 year-old
daughter will get stopped by the police? She looks at me like I’m the
one who’s crazy.
“With what’s going on in this country right now, anything could happen to any of us.”
Actually, growing up, my mom taught me and my brother a code of conduct with the police too: Always be respectful and don’t reach for anything. But I got away from it, thinking that it was a way of being that served a prior generation. But today, things feel worse.
I
call my best friend Lee to see if he thinks I’m raising marshmallows.
He’s from Newark and has a huge family of sisters and brothers, nieces
and nephews who are doing well. “Do these cursing moms have the right
idea?” I ask him.
He says, though his mom could get
sharp-tongued with him growing up, she always caught herself before
blacking out. But language like that was common. “That’s just how we
talk, but it’s not just us, it’s Spanish, Italian…I don’t think they
really mean they’re going to bust them in the mouth,” he says. On
whether he thinks there’s any benefit to cursing at kids, he says, “Only
if you believe in toughening them up for the streets. But it’s your job
to set them up for something better.”
The next day,
when dropping my daughter off to school, I end up talking to her
teachers. They say they hear parents swearing at kids all the time and
it poses a real problem for them because the kids don’t know how to
listen when they’re speaking to them in a regular voice.
I
think about the times when my kids haven’t been listening and even
“Good morning!!!” comes out with three exclamation points. The reason I
pull back to a normal tone isn’t always because they’re listening, it’s
because I don’t want screaming to become the only thing they respond to.
Like those kids that think “lil’ n*gga” is actually their name.
I
won’t knock these moms for their choices, to each her own. But going
down that path is not for me. Should I feel the need to toughen my
daughter up, which isn’t a bad idea, I’ll get her into karate.
This article appeared on Madamenoire.com
