Children are our great patience and teaching masters and they mirror our own stupidities to us the most.
My friend's children are smart and very shrewd.
The other day the daughter said, "We don't need a babysitter because we're not babies anymore." She's 10 years old. And I laughed because I remembered mentioning before that all the previous babysitters struck sail and ran away. Indeed. If you don't feel up to children and their permissive mouths, you will seek to suppress them rather than ally with them. And the brother who is two years older also commented: "Yes, why should we have a babysitter who orders us what to do and what not to do, as if it were the case that we say yes and amen to everything and obey all the time. If it were so, then we wouldn't need an adult!"

It was a brilliant logic and I felt enchanted by this wisdom. My own way of dealing with these truly little beasts is that instead of making them small, I challenge them. I don't treat them with kid gloves or like a know-it-all and when they get on my nerves, I say, "Don't get on my nerves."

With my own son it's less easy, that's why every family actually needs a village to raise a child.

I think, cussing happens from adults who don't respect themselves (and are afraid, actually, of children).