Maybe We Should Be Letting Kids Curse.

ME: “Please, PLEASE: you NEED to take the Tylenol.  We have to bring down your fever.”

[This is called “in medias res.”  It’s where I start a scene midway into the action and you get instantly invested in the story.  For full immersion, you should know this exchange takes place at 11:30 PM, Christmas day.]

SLOAN, AGE 8, CRYING: “I don’t know how to!  You said it was really easy, but what if I choke or something?!  I’m scared!”

ME: “We’ve been doing this for an hour.  I know this is as hard for you as it is for me. Just pop it in your mouth and take a swig of your drink, then you can be done!”

[Sloan cringes and doesn’t take the pill.  I put my face in my hands.]

ME: “Look, I recognize I’m asking you to do something grown-up, so I am going to grant you a grown-up privilege: if you take the medicine, then you may say a curse word to vent your frustration at this whole ordeal.”

[Sloan’s face changes instantly.  She looks at the pill with mixed fear and longing.]

SLOAN: “…Which curse word?”

ME: “Dealers choice.”

[She takes 3 deep breaths, puts the Tylenol, partially dissolved from 6 failed attempts to swallow it, on her tongue, and downs half a bottle of Gatorade before she comes up for air.  Her eyes are saucer wide, and she shows me her empty mouth.

SLOAN: “I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT!”

[Deep intake of breath, like she’s preparing to yell to a passing helicopter]

“TRIPLE BITCH!!!!”

ME: [completely loses my mind laughing.]

…Christmas at the Gallagher home this year was, undoubtedly, a triple bitch.  First, I got sick, then the toddler got sick, and then Sloan got REALLY sick.  She’d eventually test positive for the flu, but we wouldn’t know for a few days because she went from mild cold symptoms to pure misery on Christmas eve when the doctor’s offices are all closed.  If the potential dates a kid could get sick were written on that big wheel game from “The Price Is Right,” then Sloan’s flu hit that little $1.00 space that makes the contestants jump around like their socks are on fire.

^{Like this, except instead of 25 large, his prize was ruining an 8-year-old’s Christmas.}

So while my wife’s extended family met to eat a big meal and exchange gifts, Sloan and I stayed home, ate macaroni and watched the Cowboys game.  When other kids were pretending to be asleep while listening for Santa, Sloan was still up, trying to take liquid medicine and throwing it all back up (hence the pill—it was our last resort).  When other kids woke their parents up at 5 AM because they couldn’t wait for sunrise to open presents, Sloan woke us up at 5 AM because she felt terrible and also couldn’t wait for sunrise to open presents.  Hey, it’s the flu, not bubonic plague; some things are still gonna happen.

So the offer of curse word immunity seemed pretty reasonable to me.  The kid had had her Christmas thoroughly messed up and didn’t have a lot of avenues to vent her well deserved frustration. 

When I have my day ruined, I have a huge range of options to help relax and mitigate my emotions.  I don’t just mean alcohol or other adults-only vices, either.  Personally, I stay up super late playing violent video games, and at some point go to an all-night  fast food joint for the kind of gargantuan burger that cows record true-crime podcasts about.  I have autonomy to decide what I need to emotionally recover.

But Sloan can’t do that.  Her bedtime is 8:30. She doesn’t get unlimited screen time when she needs to veg out or games designed to vent anger.  If she drove to Whataburger by herself at 1 AM to order a double bacon burger, the employees would probably call the police.

There’s a whole world of major and minor vices that adults can use to help mitigate our emotions when it feels like the world is out to get us.  What do kids get?  A room they can sulk in and Daniel Tiger giving them some preachy speech about Big Feelings™?

^{Respect as ever, Daniel, but this was a bigger deal than your popsicle failing to meet expectations.}

Maybe I’m in the wrong about allowing her to bellow profanity (I’m almost certainly in the wrong about finding it hilarious) but I stand by the decision.  I hated being her age, because everyone tells you to ‘act your age’ without any of the tools that help adults keep their cool.  Everything about a kid’s life is controlled by someone else.  I set her schedule.  Her school dress code dictates clothes and hairstyles.  She goes where I drive her and eats what I cook.  There’s no coffee when she’s tired, no comfort food when she’s stressed, and no real solitude until she’s old enough to be left home alone. 

How well would you do if that were your life?  I wouldn’t last a week.  Even a day might be a stretch; at this point I’m not even sure my heart can still beat on its own without at least a little caffeine in the morning.

So yeah, I’m calling it: so long as she keeps it away from teachers and other adults who might use it as a reason to make the kid’s life hard, I don’t mind if she says a bad word or two when life doesn’t go her way.  Nobody ever got hurt from bad language, and more than a few of my comedy role models turned their filthy mouths into lucrative careers.  If it helps the kid get in touch with her emotions without turning to more self-destructive means of coping, I’m ready to look the other way on this from time to time.

…also I’m gonna start using “Triple bitch” as my go-to curse word because that is absolute poetry.

_{Feel free to buy me a cup of coffee at paypal.me/inessentialreading if you enjoyed the column.}