Children saying bad words and profanities

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As sensible parents, we tend to react vehemently when we hear our 2 or 5 year old children use bad words or profanities. Here in my country, our elders would wash our mouth with soap or let us chew chili as a form of punishment. My niece said a very bad word and in shock, my sister reacted by smacking her mouth and scolded her. I also reacted the same when I heard my 5-year old said something bad but I learned my lessons already. As parents, we should learn to get hold of our immediate reaction of meting out punishment. Here are some helpful tactics to use when we hear our children use propafinities that I got from an old magazine: 1. Measure the motive - ask your child what does he/she mean using such word and in my case, it turned out that my child doesn't actually know what it means and is just using it as a sort of expression 2. Study the source - no matter how we protect our children, they get exposed to different environments and tend to repeat them. Knowing the source would enable us to set limits. As in my case, my child learned it from one of her playmates. Now I no longer allow such playmate to play with my child without adult supervision all the time. 3. Set limits - we just have to tell our children what is acceptable and not acceptable in clear and understandable terms. 4. Explain the expression - we should explain to the child why he/she should not use such bad words or profanities. Just like my niece and my daughter, they dont understand the expression that they are using and telling them that such words is offensive & puts down people enabled them to understand why we are reacting in such manner and why they had to be punished. My daughter and niece never used bad words or profanities again and I even heard once that they are also teaching their playmates whom they hear use such words not to use them because those words are bad and offensive.