And whatever you do, [children]find a way to experiment with language and with bad manners and all.
-Uly

Uly thanks for your 18 Aug 09 - 02:53 PM. I agree that experimenting with language and testing society's boundaries for "proper behavior" are two of the reasons why children and youth make up insult rhymes and songs, and repeat those that they have heard others say, or have read. But I suppose that part of the problem is that in Western societies such as the USA, society's boundaries for acceptable speech are already wide. And those boundaries already contain what many (or some) consider to be unacceptable language, unacceptable attitudes, and unacceptable ideas. So for that portion of the population (and sometimes I'm one of them), has problems with those particular children's rhymes & songs.

For instance, because of their excessive violence, and sexual references, in my opinion, most of the examples on this Mudcat thread Barney Song - I Love You (bawdy parodies) are waaay too far over my line of what should be acceptable insult rhymes for children and teens-and for adults. Because most of these examples were submitted by guests who didn't give their ages, there's no telling whether they were submitted by children or by adults. But I'm betting that at least some of the ones that I really really don't like were posted by children and are chanted by children in schoolyards and other places-probably outside of adults presence.

My point is that I follow my line of acceptablity where and when I can. I don't post examples like that on my website. The examples of rhymes that are submitted to my site meet my standards of approval for what I think are suitable for children.

However, Mudcat Discussion Forum isn't my website. So although I don't approve of most of the examples on that thread, I don't feel strongly enough about this topic to complain to the owner and moderators of this forum about those posts [beyond what I'm doing now].