When my daughter was about two, we had a young guest over for supper. It was spaghetti, a couple of bites in our young guest dropped their fork and hollered, “I hate onions. “ My daughter also dropped her fork and examined our guest and her own plate to discover this monstrosity offending creature called onion. It took her a year to drop her disgust of onions, whatever they were.
Shortly after this experience, I banned the word hate in our home. Correcting constantly to say, “ I don’t like that.” With the addition of more children, I again had to implement the, “ we don’t say hate.” They got creative as they got older, they loathed, despised, couldn’t stand… something. If they say hate nowadays, I hope they have a good reason! Hate is a festering emotion, it seems so permanent and well hateful! That day with onions I saw how catchy it was. An opinion that can be quickly adopted by others.
You are welcome to opinions and can hate onions if you want. The bigger picture is the words we give our kids to articulate need to be kinder. Throwing around words on the daily in their presence is bound to be tossed around freely from their mouths. Kids do reach an age when they know if they are good words are not. Hate is not a bad word, I just think it has a specific place in this world.
When I was younger, watching, I think Lassie, she was caught by bad people. I was so upset I called the offenders a bad name, I knew the word was bad, but no clue what it was. My mother pounced from the other side of the room using both my first and middle name. I was mortified that it was upsetting her… dad said it, fixing cars?! All my kids are grown now and if there was a swear jar … probably would be full. I never heard them swear till they were grown… I wonder if they say hate?
Momma Wouldn't Say 