Dear Prudence: I taught my niece a sex-word. Whoops.

[cereta]

Dear Prudence,
My sister won’t speak to me because I taught her daughter a naughty word. I was playing Scrabble with my 8-year-old niece, who is very smart. She always kills me when we play and it’s kind of embarrassing for me. But this one game was close. I had the opportunity to play all my letters to spell “fellatio” ensuring I’d win the game. I thought a bit about whether I should play this word or just lose graciously. Pride got the better of me and I played the word. My niece didn’t believe it was a word and looked it up in the dictionary. This lead to numerous questions about sex that I wasn’t prepared for. So I told her to ask her mother. When my sister found out what I’d done she hit the ceiling. She was furious at me that I’d taught her this word. Now she won’t speak with me. I’ve considered apologizing but I don’t think I did anything wrong. She would have learned the word eventually anyway. When I was a kid, I learned far worse words younger than that.

Bud! Fellatio is only 11 points in Scrabble! Even with the 50-point bonus for using all of your tiles, this was the wrong hill to die on. It is a bad idea to teach your 8-year-old niece about blow jobs, no matter how much you thought you knew about oral sex when you were a kid. (For everyone who doesn’t believe Scrabble can lead to a situation like this: Play with my family sometime.) I admire your commitment to winning and share your salt-the-earth strategy when it comes to gamesmanship, but you should know better. Apologize to your sister, and don’t play Scrabble with your niece again.

Comments

Missing the point, but so is Prudence

[redbird]

There's going to be at least a double letter score in there somewhere, if not a double or triple word score. Put that in the right place, with the fifty-point bonus, and it could be over 100 points.

More seriously, what the hell does "I applaud your commitment to winning and share your salt-the-earth strategy...but you should know better" mean? "I applaud your commitment to winning and share your strategy, except that I'm booing it here and don't actually share your priorities"?

That said, the advice in the last sentence seems reasonable.

[cereta]

Curious to see responses to this, because I'm mostly kind of rolling my eyes at the LW. Like, what did you think was going to happen? I've HAD that "okay, so this is one of the other kinds of sex people have" talk with a nine-year-old, I still wouldn't be thrilled if someone brought the concept of oral sex into a conversation with my daughter at more or less random.

Look, if the word had come up on tv, or she overheard you use it on the phone, maybe. But that you created this situation so you could beat an eight-year-old at Scrabble doesn't really impress me. Note: I am not really of the, "intentionally let kids win" school of game-playing, but as an adult, you've already got a huge vocab advantage over pretty much any kid that age. Did you have to win so much that you made it weird?

[jadelennox]

Take a snap of the board and your tile rack, take a snap of your niece and blur the photo, play another word, and make a facebook post.

It's not up to aunts and uncles to teach 8 year olds about sex. Even if they do decide to give a birds and the bees convo because the parents refuse (which is not what happened here), you don't need to teach the word "fellatio" at that age, as a non parent, for no particular reason.

[ellen_fremedon]

This is why I don't play word games with kids.

[tielan]

The LW's attitude rubs me the wrong way.

Putting a sex word out there to defeat an 8 year old is problematic to begin with, but the defence of "she would have learned the word eventually anyway" is craptastic and "ask your mother" is just a cop-out after the can of worms was opened. Yeah, she would have learned the word sooner or later, but more likely at an age when her mother would be more ready to answer the questions, and not through some adult trying to exert his (her?) superiority over a freaking 8 year old...

[cereta]

Yes, THIS. I mean, inadvertently bringing up something sexual around/with a kid is a classic comedy schtick, but the LW knew what they were doing and did it to win a game against a little kid.

[minoanmiss]

So much this.

[liv]

This is a tough one for me. I agree, the LW shouldn't have done something they knew was problematic just to beat a little kid at Scrabble. And yes, there's a difference between deliberately losing just because your opponent is a child, and going all out to win no matter what when there's such a big age gap.

At the same time, I'm generally morally opposed to censoring children's vocabulary, and I don't consider (especially formal) words for sex acts to be "naughty" words. I generally think that if a child is old enough to look up words in the dictionary and interested enough to ask pertinent questions rather than just going, oh, boring grown-up sex stuff, then they're old enough to learn the definition of fellatio. I do respect that some parents might feel differently, though, and it's not like LW was blindsided by their sister objecting to her 8yo learning this stuff. So I lean towards the view that LW should have lost the game rather than playing the word, and I definitely agree that now it's happened LW should apologize.

[cereta]

At the same time, I'm generally morally opposed to censoring children's vocabulary, and I don't consider (especially formal) words for sex acts to be "naughty" words.

I've been struggling with that, too, and I think for me it comes down to...gah, I don't know how to put this without sounding sex-negative. My kid asks a lot of questions, but she's still pretty much, "...eewww" and often a little embarrassed and uncomfortable about the whole thing. She wants to know, but I don't think she's ready to just have it come up in a game of Go Fish, you know? It's not going to traumatize her or anything, and as long as the adult kept playing Go Fish (she could play cards for HOURS), she'd move on, but I would still side-eye an adult other than me or her father who intentionally brought oral sex into a conversation that had previously been about the merits of Wonder Woman v. Supergirl. Something about the context in this situation just makes me roll my eyes at the LW and say, "Oh, come ON."

[liv]

Thanks, this does help to clarify my thoughts. If something to do with sex just happens to come up in conversation in front of a kid, it's a lot easier for the kid to work out the general concept from context, and also easier for the adults to add anything needful, and age-appropriate, to the explanation, because they can relate it to the conversation where the word showed up. But using a word just out of the blue as in a Scrabble board, and certainly doing so intentionally (as opposed to, say, momentarily forgetting that the word might have a sexual connotation), is a lot more of a problem. And it's a really good point that the child, as well as her mother, may have been embarrassed, which makes it more unfair to play the word just for the sake of a winning Scrabble score.

[elialshadowpine]

I'd say it in part depends on family. My family was pretty serious about word games, but they've got nothin' on my fiancee's family, who play Scrabble like it was an Olympic sport. Those people are scary in their Scrabble devotion, and kids are expected to keep up. That said, I doubt they're the types to use "naughty" (to quote the LW) language.

My family, however, was a completely toss-up on who could dive deepest into the gutter. I remember more than one occasion playing Hangman or something during a road trip where the conversation went as such. Actually, there's two variants.

Variant 1:

Mom: "Where in the world did you learn that word?"

Me + Sister in unison: "Dad."

Mom: *now glaring daggers at father*

Variant 2:

Mom: "Where in the world did you learn that word?"

Me: "From a book."

Mom: "What book?"

Me: *names book Mom had recommended the previous week*

Mom: "........ IT HAS THOSE WORDS IN THERE!?!?"

Me: "Uh-huh. Did you forget to check again?"

My family, ladies and gentlefolks.

That being said, the LW's family sounds a bit more, uhm... conventional, yeah, let's go with that... than either my family or my fiancee's. Oy.

[greenygal]

Aside from anything else, the combination of "I told her to ask her mother" and "I didn't do anything wrong" irks me. Like, if you found the eight-year-old asking sexual questions to be uncomfortable, maybe you should apologize for deliberately putting your sister in a position where she had to answer them?

[likeaduck]

I...kind of feel like being an adult playing Scrabble with an eight year old means accepting the responsibility of maybe having semi-educational conversations about and new-to-them words you play? Like, depending on the kid/how well you know them/how much they know about sex, "fellatio" could be a fine word to play if you're comfortable being able to have that conversation in a way that works for both of you, but this person clearly wasn't...and also I am on team why are you trying so hard to beat a child at Scrabble.

[xenacryst]

With everyone else here, and rolling my eyes, too. I mean, it's not about the word, it's about the situation introducing the word initiates. And you're not ready for that situation, so you force it onto your sister instead - how is that appropriate? I mean, the word could have been holocaust or infidel or incarcerate. Are you ready to have political/historical/religious discussions of a potentially deep and disturbing nature with your niece? No? Then don't purposefully introduce them to the situation!