Stubborn Child Swearing? Use this Parenting Tip!

In this stubborn child parenting tips video, "strong-willed child specialist" Kelly Nault, covers the BEST ways to extinguish 4-letter words from your angry child's vocabulary. Kelly's a "strong-willed child specialist" who helps moms inspire their stubborn children to listen, but without yelling, bribes, or caving in… so everyone can finally enjoy a peaceful AND fun home!

WELCOME! I’m so glad you’re here… If you’ve got a stubborn, or sensitive child, who melts down at the drop of a hat, or performs regular award-winning child temper tantrums you’re exactly where you need to be. ‘

In this video … we’ll cover the best ways to extinguish those 4-letter words from your stubborn child’s vocabulary AND whether you even should! Yup, you have a choice here. PLUS, we’ll talk about the ins and outs of swearing and how it changes depending upon the age of your kiddo.

Before we dive in… if we haven’t met. Hi, I’m Kelly, from JoyfullyParenting.com, and I have the great honour of helping moms and some special dads inspire their stubborn children to listen, but without yelling, bribes, or caving in… so everyone can finally enjoy a peaceful AND fun home!” BTW if you like this video please like  it and pass it on.

Just this past week I had three of my Stubborn Child Solutions FB members share their frustrations around swearing. When asked Stephanie what she had tried for the cussing and not listening she said this:

“I’ve tried telling her neither is okay and that she can’t say those words and give her different words to say and I’ve tried telling her she has to listen to mama, but neither is working. I’ve even taken rewards away from her, too.”

Talking a lot and taking away privileges like devices is super duper common. The trouble these rarely work for stubborn kids. Why not?

Strong-willed children are often righteous! How about yours?

So if you use discipline to punish them, and they DON’T see it coming, they’ll often quickly tell you some version of…

“But THAT isn’t FAAAIR!!!!!!”

So what’s a parent who wants peace in their home, the meltdown to stop AND to get their kid to stop swearing do?

You see, many of us get REALLY triggered by swear words. So much so, our reaction (even when we’re doing our best to hide it) is combative.

BUT the key is to manage our reactions. And we can do this by doing two things:

    1. Use “spotlight parenting.” What do I mean this? Basically, I invite you to focus on what you do love. See most of us get triggered and fight our kids… or, go into a huge lecture about telling them that these are bad words. The trouble is many stubborn kids use swearing as their trump card, as a way to control us, the situation. So by giving it lots of attention you’re actually feeding the swearing monster you don’t like. Make sense? One of the best things to combat swearing is to ignore it.

    This is especially true for preschoolers. And this can be super hard to do, but this means no laughing, no bringing attention to it. That’s right take the spotlight off and start talking about something else, or use a distraction action, like “WOW would you look at this window” and then find something fascinating to talk about that you see outside.

    Now if the swearing continues you can absolutely say something like: “That’s  not a polite word. When you’re ready to use your polite words I’d love to talk with you.” But move on and don’t get into lecture mode. Get busy. Start washing the dishes, start getting your coat on, do whatever you need to to take the attention away. Got it? Good!

    2. But if your angry child is genuinely angry this is the perfect time to help them “name it to tame it.”

    This is your opportunity to help them discover what they truly are feeling… what they truly are angry about. “Hey, it seems like you’re really angry right now.” Now they might say, “I’m not angry I’m pissed off!”

    "Really, so you’re super angry? Tell me about it.”

    Let them blow off steam. Far too often we want just rush over the anger, we don’t give our kids enough of a voice, don’t realize when they are truly hurt. The trouble is hurt kids, hurt back. One of the quickest and easiest ways to bleed off hurt is to LISTEN. REALLY listen.

    “So what’s going on. Tell me more.” The cool thing is you often don’t need to fix, or solve it, just HEAR them out.

    But there’s an important stubborn child warning I want you to be aware of and it’s this…

    In our desire to have our kid’s do better we can often have them do worse. Here’s what I mean…

    If we make swearing, or anything else for that matter, forbidden fruit we will struggle. “Don’t do ____!” (fill in the blank) is translated by most stubborn kids to mean DO THAT and NOW! Can you relate?

Got a question? Like to know how to use positive parenting with your strong-willed child? Then join me in my FREE Stubborn Child Solutions FB Group here. I give great angry child parenting tips and answer members unique parenting questions, so they can get their stubborn child to listen.