{"id":2182,"date":"2011-07-03T16:45:17","date_gmt":"2011-07-03T16:45:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.patheos.com\/community\/karenspearszacharias\/?p=2182"},"modified":"2011-07-03T16:45:17","modified_gmt":"2011-07-03T16:45:17","slug":"grow-the-cuss-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/karenspearszacharias\/2011\/07\/03\/grow-the-cuss-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Grow the Cuss Up"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>The class assignment was to write a personal essay. Teachers understand such assignments are a risk. No telling what students will write about when their starting point is a coming-of-age place.<\/p>\n

Some write of their parents divorce.<\/p>\n

Some write about their own broken romances.<\/p>\n

It is not uncommon to get essays about bullying, rejection and the overall isolation a student can feel in high school.<\/p>\n

She wrote about the way her daddy talked to her.<\/p>\n

Called her a c\u2013t whenever he was angry or frustrated with her, which seemed to happen a lot.<\/p>\n

The hardest thing she\u2019s ever had to do is to build a sense of self-worth while growing up in a home where her daddy felt it was perfectly okay to refer to her in such a demeaning fashion.<\/p>\n

The really bad words we use here in this country almost always are gender-biased. You are a M**** F*****. A C***. A P***Y. A B****H. Or a \u00a0Son of a B****C.<\/p>\n

The only bad words we have for men is fucker or fuck you.<\/p>\n

This sort of language has become so commonplace \u00a0that I have literally received thousands of emails and Twitter messages this week, many by Christians, telling me how plainly stupid I am for thinking Go the F*** To Slee<\/em>p is an offensive book and that I have absolutely no sense of humor.<\/p>\n

Very few of the thousands of statements made were reasoned arguments. \u00a0Most came couched in verbal assaults, almost all of them gender-biased \u2014 the C-word being a particular favorite among the rabid fans of Mansbach and his vulgarity-laced book.<\/p>\n

I could have written 25 opeds about child abuse and never received the sort of response to those essays that I did to the article criticizing Go the F*** to Sleep<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It appears that here in America we take our right to humor more seriously than we do the right for a child to live in a safe environment.<\/p>\n

A couple of years ago, the New York Times ran a piece about how shouting is the new form of spanking<\/a>:\u00a0Parental yelling today may be partly a releasing of stress for multitasking, overachieving adults, parenting experts say.\u00a0\u201cYelling is done when parents feel irritable and anxious,\u201d said Harold S. Koplewicz, the founder of the\u00a0New York University<\/a> Child Study Center. \u201cIt can be as simple as \u2018I\u2019m overwhelmed, I\u2019m running late for work, I had a fight with my wife, I have a project due \u2014 and my son left his homework upstairs.\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

In other words, today\u2019s parents are often stressed out.\u00a0And, as they have made abundantly clear through their words this week, when angered, they think nothing of cussing.<\/p>\n

More than one person has said that they think saying F*** doesn\u2019t have the weight that it did during my child-rearing days. It\u2019s just a word. It doesn\u2019t literally mean to procreate or to perform a \u00a0sex act.<\/p>\n

Although, I\u2019d like to point out that I was repeatedly told to go do just that by the audience who thinks the F-word has no meaning.<\/p>\n

The assumption that the problem I had with Mansbach\u2019s book can be summed up by the use of the F-word is just plain wrong.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t like the book at all because I think it is mean-spirited parody done poorly and packaged with eye-candy appeal that children of any age would be hard-pressed to resist.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Perhaps Mansbach and his friends are fortunate to enough to live in a bubble where parents who cuss among themselves with abandon can then flip a switch and in front of their children speak in only the most rationale, civil, polite and respectful ways. But\u00a0I find that most people who use abusive language as a daily practice are then unable to speak to children in a manner that honors those children, and doesn\u2019t demean them.<\/p>\n

I have a difficult time believing otherwise, given the scores of examples I received this past week of the coarse language they employ when somebody disagrees with them or challenges them.\u00a0I would bet my last Yankee-Dime that the bulk of those writing to cuss at me have used those very words when speaking to their spouses, partners, and children.<\/p>\n

Words are important.<\/p>\n

And so are their meanings.<\/p>\n

Which is exactly why those who were angry over the oped I wrote felt the need to use abusive language.<\/p>\n

To say that F-word has little meaning is to be disingenuous about why these same people resort to it whenever they are trying to verbally attack others.<\/p>\n

But to be clear, it was not simply the F-word that sparked me to write the oped. It was the entire tone of Mansbach\u2019s book and the placement of the words he used. As a writer, Mansbach understands the power of words and the importance of sentence-structure and phraseology.\u00a0He can claim the book is a parody all he wants but here are some of the lines I find particularly disturbing:<\/p>\n

\u2013 I know you are not thirsty. That\u2019s bullshit. Quit lying. Lie the fuck down, my darling, and sleep. <\/em><\/p>\n

-It\u2019s been thirty-eight minutes already, Jesus Christ, what the fuck? Go to sleep. <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2013 Hell no, you can\u2019 t to the bathroom. You know where you can go? The fuck to sleep. <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2013 A hot crimson rage fills my heart, love. For real, shut the fuck up and sleep. <\/em><\/p>\n

These lines follow each other like drumbeats on a page. The anger is building. A parent at their wits end. \u00a0A child intent on not sleeping. A parent intent on forcing the child to sleep.<\/p>\n

I raised four children, including a set of twins. \u00a0Out of those four children, one slept. The other three did not. The only way my son would sleep is if I picked him up and rocked him to sleep, which I did until he was three-years old. The twins would only sleep if I nursed them, which I did until they were 16-months old.<\/p>\n

But of all my parenting challenges, bedtime was the least of my worries. Seriously. I want to say to all these people who \"\"<\/a>bought Mansbach\u2019s book in swarms because they thought it so funny, that if you think putting a child to bed is your biggest parental challenge, you ain\u2019t seen nothing yet.<\/p>\n

You need to grow the cuss up.<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t have a clue.<\/p>\n

And those of you who wrote me all that rage-filled mail, you should take a day and go spend it at your local courthouse, \u00a0sit in on a child abuse case of shaken baby syndrome. Or volunteer at a local domestic violence shelter. Or check out the movie Precious and watch it.<\/p>\n

Or maybe you should just go to your local school and volunteer. Listen to the stories children tell about the way their parents speak to them.<\/p>\n

Get outside your insulated bubble and understand the very thing I wrote about in the oped \u2014 that for far too many children Mansbach\u2019s book reflects their daily lives.<\/p>\n

And the next time you want to make the argument that words don\u2019t mean anything, remember the high school girl whose daddy called her a c\u2013t.<\/p>\n

I can assure you he didn\u2019t mean it as a term of endearment.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The class assignment was to write a personal essay. Teachers understand such assignments are a risk. No telling what students will write about when their starting point is a coming-of-age place. Some write of their parents divorce. Some write about their own broken romances. It is not uncommon to get essays about bullying, rejection and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":90,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[17,20,70,164,206,25816,333,386,452,655,764,1240,1271,1400,1419,1449,1576],"class_list":["post-2182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-abusive-language","tag-adam-mansbach","tag-anger","tag-bestsellers","tag-books","tag-child-abuse","tag-cnn","tag-cussing","tag-domestic-violence","tag-go-the-fk-to-sleep","tag-honor","tag-opinion","tag-parenting","tag-rage","tag-reasoned","tag-respect","tag-shouting"],"yoast_head":"\nGrow the Cuss Up<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The class assignment was to write a personal essay. Teachers understand such assignments are a risk. 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