Mom writes letter to 4-year-old while cursing ‘intervention’

A worried mum has asked Santa for help to organize an ‘intervention’ to tackle her 4-year-old’s swearing.

Although many children are told not to swear, the reality is that swearing is part of everyday life for millions of adults.

A survey of 1,500 US residents by Preply, an online language learning marketplace, found that the average respondent swore 21 times a day. The survey also found that the average age of 11 Americans started swearing.

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In the US, Tommy Doyle’s swearing would be considered advanced for his age, and his mother Gemma Doyle has a pretty good idea where he took his bad language.

“Definitely my mother, who visited last month from Ireland,” Doyle said Newsweek.

Doyle and her family recently moved to Perth, Australia, and while Tommy seemed to be taking the change in his surroundings in stride, Doyle said he had been “swearing a lot lately.”

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Until recently, his mother thought he was innocent enough. “He never used it in the right context, so I thought he didn’t understand and was just looking for attention,” she said.

That changed after a recent trip to Kmart to get Halloween decorations. While they were out shopping, Doyle told Tommy she was “so excited for Halloween,” and he replied, “Yeah, mom, I can’t wait.”

In the moment, Doyle decided, “We need an intervention here.”

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Fortunately, he knew the right man to help: Santa Claus.

“He is very excited about Christmas this year and he mentioned Santa Claus a few times for me,” Doyle said. “He randomly asked me a few weeks ago if Santa could see him when he wasn’t sharing with his brother, so the idea came to me then.”

A plan was set in motion: Doyle would pick Tommy up from school with a letter from Santa Claus himself. She decided to record the Christmas-themed intervention, thinking that “if it worked, it would be great for other parents and carers”.

In the clip Doyle posts on @gemma_doylex TikTok account, she can be seen reading the letter from Santa “writing to you from the North Pole”. In the letter, Santa tells Tommy how impressed he has been with how he has settled into life in Perth.

“As Christmas approaches, we’ve been busy checking in on all the boys and girls to see how happy they are, because we know that happy boys are good boys, and good boys deserve good things,” Doyle read, descending to the business at hand.

“We understand that when you’re really excited you like to use big F words and we understand that sometimes adults accidentally let this word slip, but this is not a word that pretty boys and girls should use , so if you could try to stop using that word that would be amazing,” she continued.

The words seemed to get through to Tommy – although it should be noted that he let out a quiet utterance of the word “s***” after Doyle had finished reading the letter and the camera filming them was knocked down.

He is also heard asking, “If I do it (swear) quietly, can he hear me?” Doyle replied, “He hears everything.”

Despite those initial bumps, Doyle said the plan worked almost perfectly. “He really hasn’t said the f-word since,” she said. “He said it once, but then he said, ‘I’m sorry Santa.’