Kids & Cursing: 'Modern Family' Toddler Typical, Scientists Say

Bleeped-out swearing may be okay for adults on TV, but what about kids? The ABC show "Modern Family" is about to find out by airing an episode this week about a foul-mouthed 2-year-old.

The show's theme already has critics at the anti-indecency Parents Television Council grumbling, but researchers who study cursing find that believe it or not, 2 years is about the age when kids really start to use "adult" language.

"Yes, 2-year-olds say f---," said Timothy Jay, a psychologist who studies psycholinguistics and obscenities at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. "Preschoolers are pretty well-versed in the lexicon, and by 11 to 12, we are looking at adult swearing patterns."

Starting early

The obscenity colloquially known as the "f-bomb" will drop from toddler Lily's mouth on Wednesday's (Jan. 18) episode of "Modern Family." The storyline centers around Lily's parents, Cam and Mitchell, who are trying to clean up their daughter's language before she appears as a flower girl at an upcoming wedding. (The obscenity will be bleeped.)

While the director of communications and public education at the Parents Television Council told FoxNews that the storyline is "in poor taste," it may hit close to home for many parents today. [10 Tips for Raising Happy Kids]

"Kids say swear words as soon as they talk," Jay told LiveScience. "We have 1- and 2-year-olds who say 'f---' and 's---' in our sample."

Jay and his colleagues have a dataset stretching back into the 1970s of words that schoolteachers, day care workers and other adults who work with children report hearing. Kids mimic words early on and pick up quickly on which words are "bad," even if they don't know the exact definitions of those words, Jay said.
Source:Yahoo