Do we really need to fly the f-bomb in public?
Child psychiatrist issues a warning for children in America
Maybe we can agree on one thing: Let’s stop plastering the word “F**K” on flags, bumper stickers and car door magnets. Maybe it could be a new year’s resolution?
I almost drove into a tree when I passed a “F**ck Biden” flag attached to a house just two doors down from a local church. It should come as no surprise that, just a few blocks away, sat an elementary school. So children attending kindergarten to 6th grade walked past, reading the message, day after day after day.
More recently, the F**k Biden flags have been replaced with F**k Harris flags.
People also may buy flags that say “F**k Trump.” (I haven’t spotted any during my drives around the state of Michigan this election cycle.)
Yard signs with graphic language pepper lawns across our great country, too. It’s unbelievable that doctors and lawyers and professional people proudly put up this content for public consumption, like a Christmas display in the off-season.
Seeing enormous flags splashed with the F-bomb — attached to pickups and driving past the Thomas Edison Depot Museum in Port Huron and the popular DoubleTree by Hilton hotel nearby — is not inspiring. It’s gross.
I asked a city official if police ever consider the tourists and ask people flying obscene banners to leave the area. He said law enforcement is advised to stay away from agitators who aren’t obviously breaking the law.
In New Jersey, a woman named Andrea Dick fought and defeated obscenity charges filed by her township in response to her “F**k Biden” and “Biden Sucks” flags and banners. The First Amendment and right to free speech prevailed.
As we head into the final hours before the 2024 General Election, and then days afterward that will include uncertainty, I urge adults in this crazy world to think of 6-year-old Vinny Micallef and all the children like him.
Sitting at a flag football game, firefighter David Micallef, 39, listened to a parent nearby tell another parent (accompanied by his 12-year-old son): “When I am mowing and there’s a Kamala sign, I just run it over and tell them I didn’t see it. Fuck ‘em."
Micallef, who lives in St. Clair Shores, Michigan, told me, “What a time to be alive … This is normal now?”
Language evoking cruelty and violence
This apparently is normal now but not healthy.
Using violent language around children when talking about political candidates, suggesting the use of violence against political opponents, is horrifying.
Our children are listening.
Dr. David Rosenberg, chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Wayne State University and a child/adolescent psychiatrist, said something needs to change and change soon.
Or we’re in trouble.
Children and teenagers are so incredibly impressionable, and they follow the lead of adults around them — even if they want to be independent.
“I think there’s a fundamental societal change,” Rosenberg said.
Politics now include images and language that evoke violence and cruelty.
“The message we’re sending is so anti-democracy and what we’re trying to be about,” Rosenberg said. “As parents, we want to model that having different opinions is OK. You may not agree with those opinions but you don’t have to tear down the other person using the f-word. Rather than using arguments with facts, people are just shouting down opponents and tearing them down and that’s not OK.”
This normalizes toxic behavior that shows children that the way to win is not on the strength of your arguments or character or compromise, Rosenberg said.
”These are things they need to learn to be a high-functioning person in society,” he’s said. “These are impressionable years. There’s a very real danger that this learned behavior becomes a habit that is hard to unlearn. Good parents raise children who ask questions and children who challenge and compromise. It’s a big part of success in life — in relationships, interpersonal and workplace.”
Teaching children that it’s unsafe to talk for fear or triggering violent language, or anger or obscenity sends a “chilling” message, Rosenberg said. “How we react to this election anxiety, how we’re talking about it, matters.”
Watching everything: Hardwired
If parents don't change their behavior stat, this behavior becomes “hardwired” in children and families, he said. “If you’re taught to threaten someone you don’t agree with or someone who doesn’t share your point of view, the stakes couldn’t be higher. Once hardwired, it becomes very difficult, if not impossible, to change.”
Clergy see it.
Teachers see it.
Law enforcement see it.
Mental health professionals see it.
“What kind of society do we want to live in?” Rosenberg asked. “Teenagers are watching everything we do — hearing every swear word and watching our actions. We may not be able to get back to where we want to. There is an ever shortening window of opportunity to preserve and protect our way of life.”
Thing is, he said, America always talks about protecting its children.
“Now is the time to act, if we really mean it,” Rosenberg said. “When we get so passionate that we must be right at all costs, it’s chilling.”
Words we choose to use
David Micallef, who has spent the past two decades as a firefighter, is both a fire captain and an ER nurse. He has spent his life focused on saving lives. He reached out to me in September to talk, as a parent, about this political cycle.
“We try to instill things like kindness and caring and compassion,” Micallef said. “Typically, we reward that and praise that.”
The family has dialed back its consumption of news, though Vinny still enjoys the NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt: Kids Edition. His 3-year-old sister notsomuch. Trying to filter the news these days isn’t easy.
Whether parents are Democrats, Republicans or non-partisan.
Former two-term South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, a Republican and former ambassador to the United Nations appointed by then-president Trump, said during an Oct. 29, 2024 interview on Fox News that supporters of the former president needed to dial back their use of harsh language.
“They also need to look at how they're talking about women,” Haley said. “… You've got affiliated PACs that are doing commercials about calling Kamala the C-word. Or you had speakers at MSG (Madison Square Garden) referring to her and her pimps. That is not the way to win women.”
In 2008, then-presidential candidate John McCain shut down conspiracy theories about Barack Obama’s heritage. “No, ma’m,” McCain said. “He’s a decent family man.”
John McCain didn’t win the election that year.
But he left a legacy.
Shhhh: Trump v. Harris in the classroom
Vinny’s dad discovered that a conversation he had with his little boy had been captured on the home’s doorbell camera.
“This was the first time he’s ever asked anything about any election, ever. I just think kids are always watching us. They’re attentive to their world, even though we have to tell them for the 78th time to pick up something,” David Micallef said. “When I say, ‘Be patient with your sister and be kind.’ Or, ‘I know. you want to play with your sister but you need to play gentle.’ Language matters.”
Video below captured a candid discussion between a father and son in late September 2024:
Parents just trying their best
David Micallef approaches life much like he approaches fire.
Every situation is so different, and firefighters can’t have predetermined ideas about how to fight that fire. They must go in and figure out the fire, like figuring out a mystery. Then they can fight the fire effectively.
Caitlin Micallef, 36, works as an aide at the elementary school her son attends in Michigan. One group of kids started chanting “Trump” in one of the first grade classrooms, and then another group started with, “We like Harris!”
The teacher pointed out that no one was old enough to vote and urged them to talk about other things.
“I feel like this is a tricky time,” Caitlin said.
“There’s a lot of different messages coming through. I personally am hesitant to talk about it with other parents and things,” she said. “I just try to keep it simple. We want to keep an open dialogue, stay open-minded and come from the mindset of curiosity. You want to educate but protect them from certain topics. Parenting is hard.”
Especially now.
As a former reporter at The Des Moines Register and lecturer at the annual Okoboji Writers Retreat in Iowa, Phoebe Wall Howard is part of the Iowa Writers Collaborative.
Great eye opening article on what examples we use in both language and action that teach our children how to behave in future generations,! People need to hear this loud and clear. Thank you. I'm definitely sharing your article with others.
"Perhaps the only precept taught me by Grandfather Wills that I have honoured all my adult life is that profanity and obscenity entitle people who don't want unpleasant information to close their eyes and ears to you.” ― Kurt Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus