When my oldest son was three and my second son was about four months old, I was at work one day, when the phone rang:

Me: “Hello?”

Husband: “Do you know where the baby wipes are?”

Me: <seriously? I’m at work…> “No, sorry, I don’t know.”

Fast forward to that evening. A co-worker of mine who also had two children the same ages as mine, came over for play time for the kids and we were planning to have dinner together.

At a certain point, the baby needed to be changed and now I was looking for the wipes.

Me: “Liam, (my 3 y/o), did you and daddy ever find the wipes today?”

Liam: <very matter of factly> “No mommy, we couldn’t find those fucking wipes anywhere.”

Me: <after glancing at my girlfriend with a slight smile> “What did you say?”

Liam: “We looked everywhere and we couldn’t find those fucking wipes anywhere.”

Conversation when my husband got home:

Me: “I hear you couldn’t find those fucking wipes anywhere today.”

LOL - My son didn’t continue to use the word but it was pretty funny at the time. Watch what you say; they repeat everything!

When my oldest daughter (my first child) was young, she was Daddy’s little girl, sitting on my lap for hours to watch ball games, cartoons, etc. It was so nice to have her cuddle with me on the sofa, watching TV. Eventually, I got a little careless with what I was watching when she sat on my lap, and I may have watched some content which just might have been a little inappropriate for a 6-year old girl.

I remember one incident in particular. I got a kick out of the movie Midnight Run with Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin. It hit on all cylinders for me, with action, comedy, a fabulous cast, great music, etc; one of my all-time favorites. When it arrived on cable, it was hard for me to turn it off if I caught it while I was channel surfing. So, of course, one time, with my daughter on my lap, I flipped on the movie channel just as Midnight Run was starting. I couldn’t resist, and she and I ended up watching the whole thing.

Now, the one thing that Midnight Run had which I failed to mention is tons of swearing. If you’re familiar with Robert De Niro’s body of work, you won’t be surprised to hear that the F bomb is in that movie about 300 times. Didn’t bother me :-)

However, my wife at the time was a devout Christian. “R”-rated movies were not in her vocabulary. If I so much as mumbled “jeez” under my breath, her hair would stand on end and the Pope would be banging down my front door.

Well…. one day she took my daughter out to run some errands. My little girl, as always, was the picture of a proper little lady, in a pretty dress with bows in her hair. The perfect little princess, sitting in her car seat behind mommy. On the way home from errands, they ran into a traffic jam and my wife had to come to a quick stop. Suddenly, in the cutest little girly voice, the princess inquisitively asked about the driver in front of them - “What the f**k is that guy doing?”

I can still hear it when they got home - “Garrrrrrrrrrrrry, do you know what your daughter said?????????” Of course, I couldn’t imagine where she picked up that language. After my wife left the room, I think I laughed so hard I peed on the floor.

My son was 2 at the time, and I'd corrected him when he occasionally said, "I hate (broccoli for example) "No, honey, you prefer green beans." And so it went, until the day when he'd grown a tiny bit more than he had realized, and when the ball rolled away, he ran and grabbed it, then standing upright, banging his head on the underside of a very solid dining table that he'd been able to stand up under before... I saw the look as he sat heavily, gasping for breath, face turning red... I rushed over and hugged my baby, just before the wail I knew was coming, saying, "Oh, I hate when that happens!"
My little darling wailed, "When what happens?!"
I replied, "When I bang my head on something hard"
His wail quieted somewhat, with, "No, you prefer something cushy!"

Another time Rob was almost 4 and we'd read to him for some time, increasingly advanced books, such as Moby Dick and various pirate and cowboy stories far beyond Dick & Jane stuff. (he's 30 now) One day we took a trip to a nearby tourist attraction in the Florida Keys, where stray cats apparently hung out.
One was standing on a rock by the pool as the naturalist swished the hunk of fish in the water, talking about the sharks there. The cat reached out a paw, swiping at the fish meal, drawing a few chuckles from the crowd. As a nurse shark came up from below, opening its purse-like mouth, water was sucked in, with some splashing on the cat, as the hunk of fish was sucked into its maw abruptly.
The cat jumped back from the close call, and my son turned to me, excitedly exclaiming, "The cat recoiled in horror!" Finally, he'd seen this in action personally.
And once I got some insight into his dad's language when driving - that is until I related the story to him, and he curbed the talk. We were turning left out of a busy shopping center, and I looked anxiously and somewhat exasperatedly from side to side, awaiting an opening. My son, 2 plus, looked with me. "Go after that asshole", came the sage advice (!?) Stunned, I started at my baby son. "That's what dad calls them." My reply was simply, "Who?", to which he said, "You know the other drivers". OK Dad, let's tone it down a bit shall we...
So then I tell my hubby, who says, "Oh, he never really listens when I'm not talking to him..." Yeah, well maybe he does, lol
I think it was Barbra Streisand, "The Children Listen", Especially when we're not talking to them

Omg yes.

Long time ago, I was babysitting my two years old nephew.

He was playing with his puzzle letters and stuff toys while I was watching a movie from my phone.

When out of the blue, I accidentally exclaimed “such an asshole”!!!

I didn't realized my nephew was staring at me, baffled.

He then smiled at me and said: “Ass..howll” (with triumphant smile)

I panicked with what he said so I decided to distract him with the toys and song.

I was like:

Look at these: “Tiger” this is a Tiger “rawr".. While this is an elephant.

I even played a nursery rhymes and sing with him.

Like “The wheels on bus go round and round...” stuffs like that haha

Confident that he finally forget it, I let him sleep and do my things again.

Few hours later.

…..

His mom, my sister came from work. She immediately finds his son to check and play with him.

He said: Mom mom ma.. ma.

My sister was ecstatic to hear him say his first word. She even called me to witness it.

My knees cracked down when I heard him say “Ma.. Ma mam ashh shole”. While all smile, giggling on his first word unlocked.

My sister and I had a serious talk afterwards.

That was epic.

My daughter was playing by herself, and suddenly she said “fuck”. My wife asked her what that meant. She said, “It means the sink is broken.”

I never use that word, and neither does my wife, so I assume she heard it at school or at a neighbors house …

I told this story once to Art Linkletter, author of the best selling “Kids Say the Darndest Things”, and he began including it in his repertoire for personal appearances. I was in his audience once when he didn’t know I was there, and I heard him use it. But he substituted the weaker word “shit” for the actual 4-letter word my daughter had used.

I haven’t heard her use it again.

For my children, we also frequently say “oops” when they drop or spill something. It quickly becomes part of their vocabulary. My grandson would hold his spoon, say “oops”, and then throw it on the floor.

I’ve also been on the other side of this phenomenon:

Some years ago, before my mom died, we were talking about foreign language use at home. She spoke in her parents’ tongue, Slovak, whenever she wanted to communicate with her sister and have us not understand.

I said to her that the only words that I remembered her saying was something that sounded like “Yezus moy, marry mackabosa.” She was abashed and embarrassed. She said those words meant “My Jesus, Mary mother of God”, and were used as swear words. (I guess I knew they were always used in anger or frustration, but I had never known their meaning.) She seemed horrified that she had used those words so often that even though I didn’t know what they meant, I remembered them.

“Whoa buddy!”

Some of my family had come to visit. One was a 5 year old girl. We were going to go to the zoo and I was driving us there. On the way there someone cut me off. I don’t remember what it was that I was going to say. Only that it was something you’re not supposed to say in front of children. It was probably fuck, but I don’t remember.

However, what came out was “Whoa….. buddy!” I was starting to swear when I remembered the child in the back seat. I didn’t want her repeating “bad language” so I edited myself as I was saying it.

Almost immediately she started repeating it. “Whoa buddy! Whoa buddy!” over and over again. I figuratively wiped my brow in relief. It sort of became a bit of a catchphrase after that. The same three came to visit again about ten years later and that was the first thing she said to me. Made me laugh.

My sister her story. At the time she had a 5 year old daughter and a newborn baby. They didn't have a car so they rode the bus everywhere.

On day while cleaning her kitchen she heard the 5 yr old playing in the front room with her barbies. Talking benignly, the normal drawl was suddenly pierced by he daughter yelling loudly “Oh sh!t”

My sOster walked in to see her daughter continuing to play and talk for her barbies, and asked what happened. So he daughter politely explained. “this mommy was out with her two kids and they were running to catch a bus, and they missed the bus, so she was mad”.

My sister tried to hide her laughter as she realized she knew exactly how that barbie mommy felt.

When my 2yo daughter proudly repeated the F word, I knew not to react directly because that would only encourage her. I decided to “run some interference”. So, calmly, I said “Darling, you are trying to say ‘fiddlesticks’, aren’t you? You mustn’t EVER say ‘fiddlesticks’, because that’s a BAD word.”

I now realise that what made an impression on her was not the sound of the original word, but the emotional impetus behind it: I must have been very angry about something! So she happily accepted the substitution of words, but now uses “fiddlesticks” for anything which is really bad: disastrous, disgusting or irritating enough to justify a strong emotional reaction. For examples:

Me: “no darling, I can’t take you to ride your scooter because [my 9mo son] needs a nappy [diaper] change. It smells really bad!”

Her: “I want to see! Is it very fiddlesticks?”

Me: “why aren’t you eating your dinner?”

Her: “I don’t want to. It’s too fiddlesticks!”

Me: (reading a story) “So why did the Wiggles’ big red car stop working?” [Answer: because a bone left by Wags the dog was stuck in the engine]

Her: (thoughtfully) “I think that car was just fiddlesticks!”

Not me, but my father-in-law.

My youngest spent a lot of time around my father-in-law when he was in his formative years. Pap was a kind and generous man who was born in the wilds of eastern Kentucky in 1917. He was a passionate fan of all Kentucky sports teams and was firmly convinced that there was an international conspiracy of referees to cheat the Kentucky teams out of games that should have been rightfully theirs.

He would listen to University of Kentucky play basketball on the radio, and suddenly become enraged by a call one of the referees made. “Did you see that?” he’d shout, jumping out of his easy chair. “That was no foul, they cheated them!” And what would follow was a string of abuse targeted at the referees. My son, of course, had no idea what the displays were all about, just that grandpa was being driven to the edge by some cosmic injustice. The odd thing was, Pap was a soft-spoken man who almost never lost his cool. There was just something about the ballgames that punched his buttons.

I realized my youngest was spending too much time around his grandpa one day when he reached under a cabinet to get something he misplaced and banged his head full tilt into a drawer he had left hanging out. He dropped onto the floor on his butt, grabbed his aching little head, and howled out at the top of his lungs “GOD-DAMNED REFEREES!!”

It's not funny!

I said as I was struggling to have him stand still so I could dress him up .

And just the next day I heard my words thrown right back at me. I went still! It wasn't solely because of his unusually flawless diction but also the look on his face and the tone. It was me talking.

And now,

It's not funny… if I switch the TV off after he ignores my reminders.

It's not funny… if his baby sister crawls to him and takes his toy.

It's not funny… if I try to bear hug him when he doesn't want it

It's also not funny when I can't stop laughing at his meltdowns because the fan must work even without being plugged in.

Not anymore. My daughter is—so far as I know—fairly cleanly spoken, while not perfect. But when she was really small, she was eating some pancakes my mom, her grandma, made for her.

My mother asked her, “Would you like some more breakfast?”

My daughter replied, very sweetly, “No thanks, I don’t need any more of this god-damned stuff.”

My mother turned to me and her eyebrow raised—the same eyebrow that has always signaled that I am in trouble.

“Oops. Looks like I need to watch my mouth,” was all I could say.

This same daughter made her mother and me crack up once. She was all of maybe 20 months old and she came toddling in and said “Mom, Dad..[sister’s name] is being OBNOXIOUS.”

She was articulate early.

Yes, step children. They were about 6, 8, & 10.

Their mother told them they could have season passes as a large amusement park near where they lived, far from us, if we paid for it. About $1,000 total.

Their father and I were working our tails off , living in a nasty trailer because it was all we could afford what with the child support and needing to cover other things their mother didn't feel was included in the child support already being paid… Like their school lunches, shoes, medical bills, clothes… yeah. She was a very greedy, self centered woman.

No way we could afford that. Even if we could, it's not the kind of investment we would choose to make for them. We were trying to teach them the values they weren't getting from their mother.

So I used the phrase “ conspicuous consumption “

That, they still remember !

I'm from the United Arab Emirates, my first language is Arabic.

I do say “Oh My God!” More than I like to admit, in English, mostly sarcastically. My 2 year old girl picked that from me and now she says OMG all the time! Sometimes in appropriate situations and sometimes not. Hearing a baby say such expression in English when all other babies still struggle with Arabic makes people think she's a genius. When she obviously has no idea what it means, she makes everyone laugh in surprise regardless haha.

I agree with what your mother did, babies pick up the word “no” especially quickly because they realize the influence it has on any situation.

My friend and I were sitting in her car watching her young daughter finish soccer practice. A man crossing the parking lot toward us was lurching along carrying a giant mesh bag stuffed with about 20 soccer balls.

Quietly (in a B-movie gangster voice) to my friend, I said, “You got a lot of balls there, mister!”

Just as the man passed our open windows, my friend's younger daughter, about 4 at the time, came surging out from under the giant mound of clothes in back, stuck out her head and yelled, “You got a lot of balls there, MISTER!”

I'm not sure who was more startled, me or the poor guy outside. She was napping under the pile and I'd had no idea she was in the car.

Not me, but my younger brother…

He was a late parent, who had never planned to have children at all, and his lifestyle was pretty well fixed by the time his little son came along. Including all the language. This changed suddenly, the day he was out in the car, with small Max, about 18 months old, in toddler seat behind him.

A driver in front did something totally irrational and unexpected, and my brother had to jam the brakes on hard, to avoid a collision. Having missed the other car, he flicked his glance to the rear view mirror to check that his little boy was okay, and their eyes met. “Oh, for f***’s sake…!” said Max.

My brother no longer swears in front of his son…

You mean bad words?

No. So far. But yesterday I tought I heard my 7 year old daughter said “bastard”. To make it worse, she actually wrote the word, albeit her own way of spelling it. Even worse, she wrote that her sister is a bastard.

-Basted “sister name”-

That's what she wrote. So I asked her,

“What did you write here my dear?”.

I asked her as sweet as I could. It can't be bastard, please God please tell me she meant something else.

“I wrote that she's bastard”

“What do you mean? Why did you write that about her”

“Well, she told me something and she lied”.

“So what if she lied?”

“Well, I knew she's not telling the truth, so she's bastard”

I went blank. My mouth was gaping, and then I realised the word she meant. A different word with the same sound and fits perfectly in her sentences.

“Busted”

I have friends who decided, before their children were born, to invent a personal swear word for family use. I believe, though I’m not certain, that the word is krajznoks. They trained themselves to use that word rather than the better-known swear words, to delay the time when their kids would learn bad language.

When my friends used that family swear word, they would say it with great force and emphasis, and then would apologize to each other and the children for having used that bad word.

Recently, one of their children got into trouble for using that word on the school bus. The mom said to the principal, “But it’s a made-up word!!!” The principal said, “Yes, but it’s very clear he thought it was a terrible word.”

I'm sure any parent has experienced this phenomenon. Similar to this are 'family words' that have no meaning or a different meaning to those outside the family. My family was full of 'family words,' some generations old. As to my kid picking up on words or phrases I say, they are legion, but I'm going to answer in a slightly different vein.

My daughter calls me "daddy." There's nothing particularly remarkable about this except that we live in Japan and "daddy" isn't part of the lexicon. One day, while daughter was a but a kidlet, she was playing outside with her friends. At some point the kids were gathered around where I sat and one of them addressed me as, "Rina no daddy." This would translate as "Rina's daddy." Normally, it would have been, "Rina no otosan" or "Rina no papa." I suspect that my daughter referred to me as "daddy" and the kids just went with it. So it isn't just our children who pick up our words.

My daughter was always precocious and I had to be extremely careful about my language around her, since she soaked up information like sponge.

When she asked about why something was wrong, or why she should do it, if the explanation was too lengthy or mature for her to hear, I’d say, “it’s inappropriate for children.”

This seemed to be working out OK until after leaving work one summer morning (night shift nurse) I thought I’d stay awake and take her to the nearby beach to cool off.

One of my favorite Rolling Stones songs came on the radio of my child-safe Volvo. I believe it was “Shattered.” After a few bars of THAT, she pursed her lips, and said, “This song is inappropriate for children.”

Being exhausted from night shift, poor sleep during the summer, I didn’t have all my safety guards up. “C’mon, wouldya, I put up with that stupid Baby Bop and we’re going to the beach. It’s MY car. Stop giving me a hard time.”

When she was about 3, she claimed to have heard the F word from her babysitter’s daughter, who was 4. This seemed pretty unlikely to me, and she wouldn’t repeat it. Only much later, when she was 12 or so, and had more exchanges on the playground, did she admit to me that she and Arielle thought the word “finch,” yes, as in bird, was the F word.

This was last summer, when my boyfriend’s kids were 3 and 4. He shares a split-level with his Dad, so we’re all close and spend plenty of time together. He likes to think of himself as a “good ole country boy,” and has a bit of a blue streak. The kids were not yet grown out of the toddlerhood lisp, but they hung on every word their grandfather said. This lead to a few instances of my boyfriend sitting the kids down for a “We don’t say….” talk.

We took a two-hour drive to a low-key tourist location. The kids were really excited, and we were all talking the whole way there, with Dad grumbling about traffic, the drive, the fact that we were watching Frozen, blah, blah. The adults were hungry, so we decided to eat our lunch before taking a walk around the destination. The kids were getting antsy, and Dad was still grumbling.

Suddenly, the four-year-old looks up at him and says, “We don’t say ‘Got Damick,’ Grandpa.”

The three adults just stopped and all but fell off the bench with laughter. We finished up lunch quickly, and whisked the kids off to enjoy some activities. We all learned a lesson about watching our language around the kids. But if it’s just us adults…. yeah, we always pronounce it “Damick.”

When I was 4, I watched a movie called “They’re A Weird Mob” and was transfixed by some naughty words in the script. My mother told me that I used to sit quietly & softly repeat those words to myself over and over …
“Kings Bloody Cross, Kings Bloody Cross, Kings Bloody Cross …”

Two years later, my family sailed from Wellington to Sydney. When our rental car broke down, we shared a taxi with an Auckland man. Our driver was a local; a Sydney-sider.

As we headed back to the Rental Car company, my Mum asked me if I knew where we were. I had no idea of course.

She said “This is Kings Cross !”

I said, “No mummy, it’s Kings Bloody Cross!”

Everyone laughed aloud so hard - except our driver. He was not impressed one bit.

After my daughter was born, it became necessary to live in NYC during the week while coming home to Long Island on the weekends.

On one typical Friday night, I set out for “home”, car packed and my toddler asleep in her carseat. (This always worked very well for us.) Suddenly, a car swerved into my lane right in front of me causing me to have to jam on the brakes to avoid a collision.

A little voice from the back seat yelled “turkey” at the top of her little lungs, my favorite epithet for moronic individuals. Imagine my surprise!

By way of explanation, a turkey is the creature with the smallest brain for its size. I am thankful that to this day, it is our favorite expletive!

I was at the grocery store with my two-year-old buckled into the shopping cart, we’d been there about 20mins and only needed a few last items in the Dairy aisle.

As I go along I talk quietly, half to myself half to keep my kid informed.

At the beginning of the aisle: “Here’s our milk”

Part way down the aisle: “What kind of yogurt? ok, yes we can get the one with blueberries”

End of the isle, I didn’t see the cottage cheese on the way through so I go back up the other side, still don’t see it.

Part way down the aisle again: “Where the heck is the cottage cheese?”

…and right on cue my two-year-old turns to another customer passing us in the aisle and inquires of them quite clearly: “Where the heck is the cottage cheese?”

other customer: *bemused look*
me: *blush* *incoherent stammer* * “oh, look! here it is” *grab and dash*