[Oz-gifted] Oh, dear! Those Older Children!

[Lisa]

Ellen Hrebeniuk wrote:
> L is in Kindy <snip> "When some of the Year 
> Sixes miss the ball, they say 'F***!'"  <snip>  Those Evil Older Children are corrupting my little boy!
>
> L is quite verbally gifted and sooner or later will ask us what That 
> Word means (we don't swear).  Or something else, like rape.  How have 
> other people dealt with such questions? 
>   
We've had to deal with the schoolyard swearing from both sides! It comes 
of having 3 boys.
The eldest, well he picked up the swearing from school.
The youngest, with 2 gifted, verbal, older brothers, was competent in 
insults, swear-words, and many adult concepts before he got to school.
Then, we had to face the parents of his year 1 classmates, who were 
horrified that their children were being corrupted by our youngest.

In every year level, there are children who are the oldest in their 
families (and relatively naive), and children who are the youngest of 
the bunch, and are aware of many things that possibly they don't need to 
be! And others like your son, who are collecting vocabulary and possibly 
concepts that would go over the heads of most kids their age.

With ours, all we've been able to do is try to ensure that he 
understands the concepts and words that he is using.
With swearing, we've told him what the word *actually* means, and then 
the (usually completely different) context in which it is used as a 
swear-word.
LOL, we've pulled our hair out over the schoolkids current trend to use 
the word 'gay' as an insult, meaning 'not cool', or 'I don't like it'.
As in 'That game is so gay'. 'I don't want to play that, it's gay'.
I think that sometimes, they get sooo sick of the lectures on word 
derivation and history of usage, that they stop using the word. <evil grin>

Lisa