Differing opinions scare you? Maybe I was just brought up differently (foreign mom, and spent a ton of time in Indonesia growing up which is where most of her family ended up after leaving Iran.)

I've just never understood the whole teaching your kids to fear words. My mom's family is Persian and I grew up in a pretty small town during Iran-Contra and was almost middle school aged during operation desert storm, so I obviously got a ton of shit over it at school. My mom taught me to just stand proud and that words couldn't hurt me. My parents taught me to fight as well, and I also learned that one fight against a bully is all it took to never get bullied again.

If you teach your kid that words can "hurt" others, you're teaching them that words can hurt them. I'll teach him that you can't use inappropriate language in the wrong place because it could get you fired or perhaps beat up, but I will never, ever teach him to be afraid of words.

My wife is an immigrant (Chinese) and was also bullied growing up and also had no idea why people are so afraid of words. You teach kids to fear words and you have the result we have now, all these kids having psychological breakdowns over words.

And yeah, have a one year old.