The other day my eldest (aged 10) and I were playing Zelda, and I mentioned we needed to get back to a certain room because there were some bad guys we needed to kick. She said something in a questioning voice and I said “What was that?”
“Kick ass?” she said.
I asked where she’d heard that phrase and she said “I don’t know”. I asked if she was sure and she said yes.
I told her that was a pretty rude phrase and she shouldn’t say it again. She said
“Whew, thanks for telling me Dad, before I used it out in public!”
We had a nice talk about not using words we don’t know the meaning of before finding out said meaning. I suspect she got it from commercials for this movie.
We tell our kids they aren’t allowed to use new words unless they hear one of us use it (unless it’s a Latin word :-). This really solves a lot of problems.
Innocence is priceless, and so hard to keep.
I’ve done that with British slang in my 20s. 🙂