"You're Freaking Crazy"

[RayPowers]

I have to say I'm pretty lucky when it comes to the wife and I agreeing on how to raise our children. We agree on how we should or should not punish the children. We agree on how to educate them. We agree on religious upbringing. In general, I'm very happy with how well we get along in raising our children.

Except the use of cursing. My wife is dead against cursing being used around the children, and I agree. But my wife has taken it to a new extreme recently, when I got this call at work:

Wife: The kids were playing, and Kaitlyn was making funny faces, and Randy just told his sister "You're freaking crazy, Kaitlyn."
Me: Ok?
Wife: I told him that it was not ok to say freaking.
Me: Why? Freaking isn't a curse word.
Wife: Because he's using it in place of a curse word!
Me: Isn't that a good thing? I mean, don't we want him to use other words so he doesn't use curse words? Would you object to him saying darn?
Wife: I don't know. I haven't heard him say darn yet.

And so on. The general answer seems to be that she feels that since he's using freaking in place of a bad word, it's just as bad. I feel that using other words in place of a curse word is simply learning to communicate better and more politely.

I polled my guy friends and they agree 100% with me that this is ok. My wife says she polled the girls at our Kindercare, and they agree with her 100%. I thought the lounge was a good place to get some neutral opinions from both males and females of maternal age.

Thoughts?

Ray