Trump: Discussing Civil Discourse with My Kids

My 16-year-old called president-elect Trump a F_ _ ck-twit today.

Our kids come by it honestly. When she was having dinner with her grandparents at the age of 3, she politely finished her meal, stood up, said “F _ _ck it,” and walked away. I have no idea where she learned that!

We’ve always told our kids that words are not bad; context is. Therefore, swear words have been fine in our household. Use them to hurt people, there will be consequences. Use them for humor or to make a point where other words just aren’t as poignant?  Fair game. It’s been a little rocky, but has led to some interesting conversations about civility with our kids.

Because I’m sympathetic to the comment, I wanted to laugh. She gets points for compound word creation, but this would be a context violation based on our house rules.

Before I had kids, I silently scoffed at people claiming words can be a form of violence and leave lifelong scars. Now I’m sure people scoff at me. But it is a reminder that no party or ideology holds the high ground when it comes to degrading our political culture, the state of civil discourse and the undermining of our democratic foundation. I know few people, including myself, that have not contributed to the mess in which we find ourselves. This has been a year of hate speech on both sides and a deepening of our, “winning at all costs” political culture.  I don’t doubt that civility will again be the topic of conversation at the dinner table tonight.