We discourage butt, gosh, dumb dumb (or variations thereof like dun dun, which my lawyer-like son tries to argue is not at all the same thing), stupid and probably a few others I can't think of at the moment.

On the other hand, we as a family refer to a lot of errant behaviors as foolish and to one behaving badly as a miscreant.

Mostly the same list.

But one word which I detest and get on their case about rather often is can't.

Jordana,
I'm all for properly naming behavior. Somewhere in his nascent theological education my oldest son picked up "Philistine," as in, "can I get this toy, Mama, or is it for Philistines?"

LOL. About five minutes ago, I informed our children that they were only allowed to call each other by their given first name. Period. Because they can think up their own "bad" names quicker than I can ban them!

I'd like to ban HOO-AHHH. They accidentially picked that up at church (military-speak for "anything except no"). They'll ask each other questions just for a chance to belt out HOO-AHHHH with excessive enthusiasium. It just seems so unpatriotic to ban it, when they look up at me with "but thats what marines say and I'm just practising to be a good-guy when I grow up". At least the weather is warming up, so now they can take it out in the yard.

Mine has not tried the seven "Carlin" words on us (yet). We try to discourage name calling. Without a brother or sister he has not had too much of a chance to hone that skill. For now we are trying to limit his use of "Hunh?" and "hate". His mother and I still fall into the trap of saying "Ooh, I hate when that happens", so we need to be on our toes as well.

I can understand the frustration with the word "fair", as that tends to be used as a weapon. How often can you say "It's not fair because I'm the dad (or mom), that's why"?

We have banned the words Ted and Kennedy from use in the proximate. They have to be seperated by one of the other banned words.

Tim

Our list is much like yours, "please" and "thank you" are required, etc. No such thing as a kid who is too polite! Lately, though, the two year old is in the habit of screaming from 2 rooms away "MOM!" so then we of course yell "STOP YELLING", so not sure if the essential point is getting across ;-)

Retard. We have a disabled son who is actually quite bright, but when two of his older siblings started using this against each other, we had to put an immediate stop to it.

proactive
impacted (as a verb)
action item

When my son became a teenager, getting him to use words, any words, was a challenge. The monosyllabic utterings became banned. Uh-huh, un-huh, yup, nope, yeah, etc. I required him to say at least 5 sentences a day while making eye contact. After awhile he became smart and began paying attention in English class and told me that "Hi!" was indeed a complete sentence.

"Shut up" Now that my kids are both in college, there's not much left of the old lists. But "Shut up" remains as something we would never say to one another - it's just too demeaning.
And to those of you with smaller ones - trust me, the bathroom humor and goading nicknames really do fade away with time. I promise.

How about:

Honkey
Cracker
White Trash
Redneck
White Boy
Hillbilly

Doh! or Duh! are banned in our house.

"hate", as in "I hate broccoli" or someother foodstuff. Rather, "I don't care for..." or "I prefer not (whatever)".

Speaking of which, "whatever" should be banned as a reply to someone. It usually shows disrespect to the other person's opinion or thoughts.

The seven are a natural. Also included are "suck" "I don't know" "liar" and I'm trying to ban "totally."