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James_Miller comments on Open thread, Feb. 23 - Mar. 1, 2015 - Less Wrong
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How do you get a high verbal IQ, boundary-testing, 10-year-old child not to swear? Saying "don't swear" causes him to gleefully list words asking if they count as swear words. Telling him a word counts as profanity causes him to ask why that specific word is bad. Saying a word doesn't count causes him to use it extra amounts if he perceives it is bad, and he will happily combine different "legal" words trying to come up with something offensive. All of this is made more difficult by the binding constraint that you absolutely must make sure he doesn't say certain words at school, so in terms of marginal deterrence you need the highest punishment for him saying these words.
Is there a good reason why he shouldn't swear, in private, at least? I can see how swearing at school could get him and/or you in a fair bit of trouble, which should be reason enough on its own to stay on the safe side of speech when he's there, but if your True Rejection to his swearing in general is something to do with tradition or innocence or something like that, I don't see how you can rightly punish him for saying what he wants to say.
Alex, if you're reading this, please, seriously, be careful about what you say in public, especially at school. It's not fair that your father is liable for what you do, but that's the way the system works, and I think it's important to put yourself in his shoes so to speak, and think how you would feel if you were responsible for someone who was knowingly taking risks at your expense in addition to his own. Having said that, I feel you have the right to say whatever you want to say, up to and including strong swears, as long as it doesn't adversely affect other people. The catch though is that it's hard to know what will adversely affect other people ahead of time, which is why I strongly advise you to err on the side of caution. Remember that I am 16, and thus still a minor in the eyes of the law and society, as you are.
Because it builds a habit? It seems to me that when people are used to swear in one environment, it becomes easier to forget the context and swear in another. Sometimes the words come out of the mouth faster than the brain is ready with the analysis of the environment.
Tell Alex that swearing a lot weakens the value of your swearing as a signal. If you get a reputation for not swearing, then the one time you do, people will take you more seriously than if you used profanity on a daily basis. Also, swearing is a much cheaper signal than any alternatives you might want to signal with if you'd made your swearing meaningless.
This is the actual reasoning I (high verbal IQ, boundary testing 16-year-old) end up swearing < once/month.
Not sure if this will get the result you want, but it will approach what you want.
I just did this. He responded by saying that this means if I want him to be less offensive he should swear more, and then he said f---- you. My laughing in response probably didn't help my efforts to get him to swear less.
Sorry, hope my suggestion wasn't too counterproductive.
I don't think the signal value of swearing is "how much I want to offend this person" but rather "how strong my opinion on this subject is". Swearing at someone more will probably only make them more offended (if they get offended by swearing in that context at all). However, when the person who swears every day says that Policy X is f---ing scary, people will take them less seriously when the person who swears about once/year does.
Don't worry, it wasn't.
This is surely true. On the other hand, there are other ways to convey how strong your opinion is, and if I feel once-per-year-strongly that Policy X is scary, maybe I should be conveying that by some more informative and costly means than just dropping in the word "fuck". I tend to think that swearing works better as a mild intensifier, for relatively frequent use, than as a once-per-year thing.
I remember reading somewhere that swearing has a mild painkiller effect (e.g. stub your toe and go "fuck!", less painful stubbed toe), but only if the person doing it rarely swears. I don't remember where I read this, though.
Was the control group silence or yelling non-profanities? Because saying/yelling "ow" tends to be fairly effective.
This paper compared repeating a profanity to repeating an alternate arbitrary word, not "ow." (first hit searching "swearing pain" on google scholar)
I don't remember anything else about the thing I read.
It may only be personal, but in my experience it is the opposite, because that is like telling yourself "oh, how terrible this is," which of course does not make you feel better, but worse.
If I recall correctly, it increases tolerance for pain which isn't quite the same as "mild painkiller." The experiment measured how long you could submerge your hand in freezing water, which participants who were allowed to swear could do for a longer period of time.
All you need to do is be sure that the 10 year old will understand that, and you're done. Good luck.
("I did this as a 16 year old" is not really very informative about 10 year olds. And even then you were probably atypical for one.)
I think this can be explained to kids, and I don't think Alex is the average 10-year-old. "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" is basically a story about "don't weaken your cheap signals by misusing them", so a general case is clearly already explainable to kids. I'm pretty sure that Alex is smart enough to understand the concept if explained well, and that James Miller has the teaching skills to explain the concept. I've been using this as the reason why I don't swear before turning 16. I am absolutely atypical for a teenager, but Alex has been described as being more similar to the average LW reader than to the average member of the general population, so this may be applicable.
If the kid is smart enough to understand that, he can also reason as follows: I can tell that you really don't want me to swear anyway, regardless of that. And if I'm trading off frequency for impact, it's awfully hard for you to know the exact amount of swearing that optimizes impact. Both of these factors make it especially likely that what you're telling me is motivated reasoning, so I should ignore you.
Again, a kid wouldn't phrase it that way, but he might say something like "that isn't really why you want me to stop!" and basically mean that.
He may even be right. Unless you actually want the kid to swear to a degree that maximizes impact, rather than less than that.
The accurate answer to "why is that particular word bad" is "because everyone else thinks it is." This answer is also the same for every bad word. And it's not an answer subject to nitpicking.
If the word doesn't count, why is this a problem?
It's not a zero/one thing and there is a cost to punishment and enforcement so there exist words I would rather him not say, but don't want to punish him for saying.
Is the word 'gay' profanity?
It can be used badly, but it can be used in other ways too, so it isn't a "bad word".
Yes. The question was meant as a reply to your last question. The point is that it isn't a bad word per se, but it is still annoying at best if you run around using it a lot in all contexts.
1) Identify the conditions which reinforce more swearing and stop doing those things. If saying "don't swear" makes him more likely to swear, don't say "don't swear." This sounds obvious in retrospect, but is very difficult to implement in practice because it's frustrating to not have any idea what you should do instead.
2) Identify the conditions which reinforce less swearing and start doing those things more. It doesn't sound like you've identified those conditions yet. This is the most important step.
To what extent does ignoring the problem work? There are probably certain areas where you should be ignoring it, and certain areas where you need to get more creative. The problem with using a strong punishment as your method as you've identified is that it can only be implemented after he gets home from school. Rewards for good behavior are generally preferable under such a condition as rewards are generally better than punishment at maintaining behavior. The way his teachers handle punishing the situation is probably going to matter a lot more than anything you do.
I just read a book on behavior and that's the kind of thing I would expect to read in that book: Attention is generally a reinforcer. Swearing can be reinforced by attention. When you stop paying attention to swearing, swearing stops (extinction). Of course that will only stop the child from swearing when talking to you, not when it's in school.
What would happen if he did say those words at school? Would they expel him? Does he know what the consequences of saying those words at school are, and does he think these consequences are insufficiently bad to act as an effective deterrent?
Is he bullying or insulting people? Does he lack the machinery to detect social disapproval? Either situation would require specialized advice.
No and No.
Why don't you tell him the reasons you don't want him to swear? I assume you have reasons, but maybe you've never needed to articulate them before. I'm guessing your reason is something along the lines of "lower status people swear, I don't want people to think of you as lower status". I imagine a high IQ 10-year-old can understand that.
Also, if swear words are a fun and exciting thing to him, why not teach him all the swear words so he can increase his status among his friends?
Fear of this happening:
Vice Principal: "Your teacher says you said the word.....which is very hateful towards....."
Child: "Yes, I learned it from my dad."
Yes, and what can the Vice Principal do to you?
My son's teacher creates special projects for him to work on to better challenge him. I very much don't want that to stop.
OK, a valid reason.
I imagine that your son doesn't want it to stop either. Perhaps a roleplaying exercise (or just a discussion) about the implications and possible results of swearing at school would be in order?
Although it sounds like he does not plan to swear at school, and believes he has enough control not to let a swearword slip out. In which case it might be best to leave 'swearing at school' on the table unless he actually does it, in which case a lesson on contrition might be in order.
Swearing at home is a harder problem, I fear, if there's no clear and articulable reason why he ought not. Although I see you mention words that are "attacks on groups", which makes it sound like he's using slurs; if that's the case, I would suggest that a broader, serious talk about the historical context of them is in order. I expect he is plenty capable of understanding it. (But in explaining that, you will probably want to concede that some words are much worse than others, even in the realm of "things we'd prefer you didn't say at home.")
He doesn't ever say slurs with the intention of slurring a group, and we have successfully stopped him from repeating certain bad words by using the strategy you mentioned of giving the historical context and via the normal parental approach of picking our battles and being extremely firm on him not saying slurs after we have told him that a swear word is an attack on a group. Although anyone wanting to slur an entire group seems so silly to him that it's hard for him to emotionally internalize the harm some people feel at hearing certain words.
So you have successfully stopped him from saying bad things where you were able to articulate a reason?
Can you articulate a reason for the swear words that are still a problem?
Maybe this is a bit tentative, and I'm certainly not a parent myself, but:
Sometimes, having an authority figure tell you what to do can be status-lowering, even when the authority figure in question is trying to give you useful advice, or force you to do something which benefits yourself. Would it be possible to preface future conversations where you need to steer Alex in a different direction with a few statements that build up his self esteem, and end the conversation by praising him for doing a good job on something or other?
I'm an adult, and this sort of thing works on me, too.
I understand the pragmatic considerations for inhibiting swearing, but he seems so smart that he should be allowed to swear. You should just tell the school he is too smart to control, but they can try themselves.
I wish I was 10 so I could befriend him.
Are there some funny faux-swears (something that a cartoon pirate would use) that he could enjoy? Use those a lot at home.
That would have worked on me at five, but by ten I would have worked out what's coming from my dad and what's actually disapproved of by the broader culture, and if I was using the latter there'd be a reason for it. Not necessarily a very good reason, but a reason.
Not sure how good a model ten-year-old me is, though. I was a verbally precocious child.
What is the reason you don't want him to swear? Maybe you could tell him that.
We have told him that other people will think less of him if he swears, that some words are attacks on groups and hearing these words will cause emotional discomfort to members of these groups, and that his swearing causes his mom some discomfort. I have told him that while I am not inherently bothered by him swearing, I don't want him to do it around me because it will make it more likely that he will swear at school, but he claims that his swearing at home doesn't increase the likelihood of him swearing at school.
Rationalists make bets. Is he ready to make a bet on this claim? (Framing this as "bet" could be better than framing it as a "punishment". Of course there needs to be some reward if he wins the bet, otherwise there is no incentive.)
The 10 year old is probably risk averse on this, so would have good reason not to take such a bet--pretty much anything that he would lose for losing the bet is a loss that he wouldn't be able to absorb, and no sane parent is going to give him a punishment that is small enough that he can absorb it. Of course, being a 10 year old, he wouldn't use the term "risk-averse" and may phrase it in an awkward way or be unable to put his objection into coherent words at all, but that's basically what he'd be doing.
So the fact that he would likely refuse such a bet (unless he is overly optimistic, also a possibility) won't prove that he is wrong. As a parent, you could always lie and say "if you won't take the bet, that means you don't really believe it" but you would be lying, so whether you should do that depends on what you think about using bad reasoning to make kids obey.
On the other hand, it would be perfectly rationalist to say "I'm a grownup. I know how people, and especially kids, act. If I let you swear at home you will say it somewhere else, so no, I'm not going to let you swear at home." You're not criticizing his reasoning, you're asserting that you have better priors than he does, and you most likely do.
Tough! Many adults fail to understand that they're not perfect rational agents, so instead that their habits really matter. I guess on the bright side this could be a good opportunity to teach him that he should not encultivate habits that raise the psychic cost of virtuous behaviour, even if those habits are themselves not inherently vices.
A few thoughts:
It sounds like he's being rebellious. Separate the rebelliousness from the question of profanity, and discuss them separately. You might say something like "Asking questions if you genuinely want to understand something better is great, but asking questions to try to frustrate or annoy me is not. I'm getting the sense that you're doing the latter."
If he persists, put your foot down -- but be really clear that it's for the intent to annoy you, rather than because he's asking questions in an attempt to honestly understand something.
It may also help to ask him, openly and gently, why he's being rebellious. Sometimes rebelliousness comes from a perception that the rules are arbitrary or unfair. If you understand what he's feeling, you can be in a better position to address those underlying causes. For example -- Larks's suggestion that sharing the reasons you don't want him to swear may help. And maybe it would also help him to explain how this is a subjective issue, highly dependent on things like tone and social context, and perfectly clear rules are unfortunately impossible.
Telling someone who tries to wage status conflicts with you that you want him to stop fighting for more status is pretty pointless.
I'm not sure "status conflict" is the only possibility here; for example, the terminal value might be something like autonomy, or feeling genuinely listened to.
He is occasionally openly rebellious on a small scale. I suspect that being rebellious towards parents is a terminal value for many 10-year-old boys.
Good idea.
I suspect it's a more important terminal value for 11-year-old boys, and yet more important for 12-year-olds... :-/
I don't have kids so take this with a grain of salt. Just give a disappointed/disapproval look every time he swears. Maybe practice in the mirror. Let guess culture work its magic.
You or your son might find this lecture on swearing helpful: http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2015/02/on-swearing-lecture-by-rebecca-roache/ And here's the audio: http://media.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/uehiro/HT15_STX_Roache.mp3
With a small child, say a four year old, swearing is usually just testing boundaries and part of the natural process of learning language. But for a 10 year old it's likely that he/she is being influenced by outside forces. Perhaps the child is trying to emulate other kids. I strongly suggest you try to find the influencing factors and attack the problem from that angle.