14/05/2026
One thing that surprises a lot of parents and teachers of PDA children is the swearing.
My eldest child barely swore at all until he was a teenager, and even now it’s mostly around his friends. But my middle PDAer? He swears like a sailor — and always has. He was saying the f word at 2 years old. We definitely didn’t model it at home when they were little, so it wasn’t something he learned from us.
Some PDA children seem irresistibly drawn to taboo language. The shock value, the emotional intensity, the reaction it gets, the sense of power or control in moments of overwhelm — it can all make swearing incredibly compelling. For some, rude words also become verbal stims, impulsive blurts, or ways of regulating big feelings.
And honestly? Some of them just find it hilarious.
My middle child has always been one of those children who is magnetically attracted to the words people don’t want him to say. The more emotionally charged the reaction from adults, the more likely the word is to stick.
Thinking about it now, I’d actually twigged onto this approach long before I’d ever heard of PDA.
I remember looking after my first KS4 tutor group as a trainee teacher. We were playing hangman on the board and one girl got up for her turn. Her answer turned out to be “sh*ty banger.”
The whole class froze and stared at me, waiting for the explosion. Waiting for the outrage. Waiting for the power struggle.
I just shrugged and said, “You’ve missed a t.”
The room erupted laughing and we just carried on.
And honestly, that moment taught me something important very early on: when adults don’t hand taboo language all the power in the room, it often loses its intensity very quickly.
If my learners swear, I don’t punish them or scold them. If it’s a smaller word and it’s not directed at me or anyone else, I’ll usually ignore it completely. If it’s one of the bigger words, or it’s being used intentionally to hurt or upset someone, I address it gently through conversation — if and when the child is regulated enough for that conversation to happen.
We talk about what the word means, how other people might feel hearing it, and where certain language is and isn’t safe to use. Not through shame or punishment, but through connection and understanding.
And honestly, some of the children I work with haven’t picked up a pen in years. If a child who has been unable to write is suddenly willing to engage and put words on paper, I’m not going to sanction them because those words happen to include swearing. That’s a win in my book.
Because for PDA children especially, power struggles around language rarely teach emotional regulation. More often, they increase dysregulation, anxiety, and avoidance.
There’s also a huge social stigma around swearing. People are often judged as unintelligent, uneducated, or “rough” because of the language they use.
Having grown up on council estates and later worked in rooms full of university professors, I can confidently say some of the sharpest minds I’ve ever met have also had the biggest potty mouths — on both sides.
Words are just words. What matters is intent, context, regulation, and whether someone is being harmed.
Vocabulary, intelligence, kindness, emotional depth, creativity, and capability cannot be accurately measured by whether somebody occasionally says “f**k.”
That doesn’t mean there are no boundaries. PDA children still need guidance around context, safety, and respectful communication. But shame, punishment, or harsh reactions around swearing can easily escalate things rather than reduce them.
Every PDA child is different. Some hardly swear at all. Others seem determined to test every forbidden word in the English language before secondary school.
You’re not a bad parent if your 10-year-old PDAer can out-swear a builder. And your child isn’t “bad” either.
Photo is of scrabble tiles moved to spell ‘bum’. The result of an activity I’d asked a learner to complete. They’d been asked to find 3 letter (CVC) words, using the tiles. A win is a win.
