8 YO won't stop cursing, PLEASE help

[IrishMom55]

My son is a handful already (we're in the process of getting him tested for ADD) but his new thing now is cursing (hell, damn, crap, freaking) and putting up his middle fingers. No matter what I do - ignore it, acknowledge it, punish him, talk to him...he keeps doing it. He tells me that "something is making him do it" and he'll just look at me in the middle of having fun, quality time and calmly say 'hell' or 'freaking'. Yesterday we were watching a movie and I couldn't see his hands, twice he said 'sorry for putting my middle fingers up'. At one point while I was watching the TV he said 'hey Mom, what's up?' and I looked at him to see both middle fingers up. I shut the TV off and told him to go into his room. Today I called him from work to see how his day at school was and he burst into tears and said he mumbled a bunch of curses in school, no one heard them but he was afraid he'd be 'grounded for life'. I calmed him down and told him I wasn't angry, but as we were getting off the phone he mumbled something and asked if I heard it...I told him no, but that if it was something fresh I didn't want to and he said 'I said f*ck'. On top of everything else I'm dealing with with him, this is really draining (especially since I have a 20 year-old who thinks he knows it all and says that it's my own fault, because I don't just ignore it). Any ideas? Thank you.

[holly228301]

well who is he spending time with? he picked this behavior up from SOMEBODY... he didn't just make it up himself. once you find out who he is picking it up from, i would then limit his exposure with that person. don't allow him to watch any tv except educational programming. make him copy verses out of your religious text (whether it is the Bible, the Koran, or what ever your text may come from) if your not religious, maybe the dictionary will work. tell him maybe that can help him think of better word choices, if he copies them maybe he will learn them. The middle finger i think is a different issue, if he is just putting it up while he is watching TV it might not be out of being defiant/vulgar... and i would just ignore it... like when my kids were little, they managed to ALWAYS hurt their middle finger, and come and show it to me (middle finger sticking up of course) and it wasn't out of vulgarness... so i ignored it... but when they learned what it meant they would do it to be funny, and i told them, do it again, and you will be in trouble (spanking or now that they are 7 & 8 they go to their room and write a note about how sorry they are and that they will not do it again.

ALSO perhaps, if you are worried that it is something that he can not control, i would seek help from a psychologist and ask him if he thinks it might be tourettes syndrom