Teach Your Children Well 191either. The skills we’re teaching are fairly basic. It’s just
that consequences don’t teach them.
So if swearing is usually a sign that a child doesn’t cur-
rently have the linguistic skills to express frustration
adaptively, then responding to swearing with “I refuse to
be spoken to like that!” or “Go to your room and come
back when you’re ready to talk to me the right way!”
wouldn’t get the job done (unless your child actually
lacked the knowledge that you didn’t want to be spoken
to that way or wasn’t motivated to speak to you the right
way).
Mother: We had a bad incident this week, and I’m
not sure I handled it well.
Therapist: Tell me.
Mother: Well, I was making pancakes for breakfast.
Derrick came into the kitchen and said he didn’t
want pancakes. I told him that’s what was on
the menu—
Therapist: Sorry to interrupt, but did you mean to be
handling eating pancakes with Plan A?
Mother (smiling): No.
Therapist: Just curious. Go on.
Mother: So then he called me a name and ran out of
the kitchen. I ran after him and told him he was
grounded for a week for calling me a name. He
told me to get away from him. I insisted on an