So, after growing weary of constantly monitoring his language, we devised a new plan. Instead of teaching Malcolm to stop swearing, we would teach him how to do it correctly and appropriately, so he could avoid confrontations with authority figures and get along with other kids. Not only did we have to teach him when and where profanity was acceptable (because he can’t distinguish between the social contexts of the playground and the classroom the way a non-autistic adolescent would), we had to teach him the meanings of the words, so he could use them properly.

We walked Malcolm through the definitions of various swear words and the phrases in which they usually occur. “S—” is poop and means something is worthless or hiding something that is wrong or worthless. “F—” is sex and indicates doing something harmful to oneself (“F— me”) or someone else (“F— you”). Things got complicated here, because we didn’t want to teach him that sex is inherently bad (that’s another essay). We also struggled to teach him that “f—” has many variations and is often just used as a placeholder for more socially acceptable adverbs and adjectives. “Damn it” is a curse and is a way to express displeasure with someone or something. “A——” refers to your anus (he knew that) and is a name for people who are unpleasant to be around.