Having a son who is "on the spectrum" can lead to some very interesting conversations about language. In fact, one of Carson's obsessions is with "bad words." The first thing he asked his host sister when we visited her in Germany last summer was, "What are all the bad words in German?" Without missing a beat, like a true elementary school teacher, she replied, "We have no bad words!" Luckily, the only "bad word" Carson picked up from our trip was "Nein!" which he likes to say often as difficult young boys do.
Last year the bad word he asked about was "sex."
"Is sex a bad word, Mom?" he asked me one morning on the 8 minute drive to school.
I tried to explain about context. "It's not bad to ask what is the sex of the animal." I gave an example.
"Well, my friend said that he was having sex with his crayon box. Is that bad?"
"That would be an inappropriate way to use the word. You are right."
And I thought the topic was dropped, until one night he was talking about something and this time asked about a different word - FUCK. I don't know why, but I have told Carson in the past the true meaning of bad words, I guess so he can replace them with the tamer version. For example, I've told him to say poop or crap and not SHIT. Say butt or henie, not ASS. So on this day, he asked me what the word FUCK really meant and why it was a bad word. And told him simply that it meant sex which returned us to our earlier conversation about sex not being a bad word.
"But, Mom," he said in a confused tone, "I thought you said that sex wasn't a bad word. How do you know it's not."
So I said the first thing that came to mind, and that was, "People don't say, 'shut the sex up' when they are mad. They use the F-word." That seem to satisfy him, and, luckily, he hasn't asked about it since. However, I am still wondering, did I dodge a bullet or plant a bad seed? Only time will tell.
