My son has basically ended a friendship

[glowing]

13. If this "friend" was saying this word at 8 yrs old, then he was probably repeating the word.

I know my 8 yr old son wouldn't come up with a new word choice without having heard it first and then test it in front of me to see where it factored in on the scale of bad to really bad. I don't like him to say Fart, but its a given that its going to be used more often in his circle (at school its tooted or nothing at all- flatulence is probably stretching him a bit far at the moment). The other day, he floate "friggin". And technically its not exactly a swear, but it is very much intended to mean another word. He had heard it from one of the older middle school boys that he's been friends with forever. Since a couple of them have hit the middle school age, they are in a different growing stage now that they've entered middle school. So, we have to monitor repeating words he may learn from the older boys and let him know what's ok and what's not.

Anyway, if my son was to say the n-word, then he would have had to learn it from an adult or an older child who had influence on him. And at the point that the child was 8, the parents should be telling the child that saying certain words is not ok (unless the parents were using that type of language themselves).

Also, I wonder what the child's neighborhood mix was and his family's economic situation was. For exampleL: If the family is struggling or in a situation where the family would look at another ethnic group as the reason their life and their situation sucks, and if they live in a poorer neighborhood with a lot of poverty, the family may not be happy about their situation... It might explain the progression of the child from repeating as an epithat, to playing and hanging out with neighbors and immerging into what you call "ghetto" dress and speak. Perhaps the family lives in the "ghetto"?