swear_jar
Health,  parenting

Do You Have a Swear Jar?

I am $1.20 in the hole. My youngest daughter made me a bet that I had to take for the weekend. She challenged me to quit swearing. Ten cents a swear word. So I set up a swear jar.

swear_jar

 A dime? A couple of my friends huffed angrily that I was taking advantage of my daughter by not advising her that she should have made it a loonie a swear word, but the amount wasn’t the point. I am not proud that I swore twelve times over the weekend (within hearing range of my child. She might have missed a few angry Dammits when I was out on my own there the other day, dragging the remainder of the cardboard to the curb.) I recognize this is a habit I need to break. But you know what? I don’t smoke or drink heavily, neglect children or make obscene prank phone calls for kicks. I don’t even swear for kicks. It’s the ‘I am super frustrated mode’ of this writer.

I didn’t swear ever when my kids were younger. Ever. I protected their little virgin toddler ears with the force of a mama bear. But the slide has been kind of progressive since they hit puberty. Work, plus stress, plus school and now summer craziness has ruined my filter. And their level of summer sibling fighting right now has us all in a frenzy. They fight as if their lives depended on it. “She got more Cheerios.” “She gets more of your time.” “She touched me.” “She looked at me and stuck her tongue out.” “She won’t get out of my room.” “I wish I never had a sister.” “She’s disgusting. She farted/ picked her nose/opened mouth while chewing.” It’s enough to make a person rethink the merits of the sibling relationship. So there’s that. They sometimes push me to my limits and then I swear. Hence the swear jar.

swear_jar

Swear Jar

Also, on occasion I am frustrated by the simple every day challenges of running a business while managing household and children too. And I swear. It happens when the computer is too slow or when the Internet is glitchy. Not proud of it, but it happens. When driving kids here, there and everywhere gets to be too much I end up blurting an expletive also. I wrote about that last year actually. Taxi Mom Syndrome. So here’s my question for you. I am certainly not the only Mom who struggles with this. What do you do at your house to stop yourself from swearing? I’d love to know how you stop yourself from dropping an F Bomb when the kids are pushing all the buttons you’ve got.

Do you have a swear jar? Has it worked?

Mom of two beautiful active girls, traveller, fitness junkie, social media consultant, and keeper of the sanity.