Swearing parrot

[Birdforme]

As some of you are probably aware, we adopted a gorgeous 13 month old Alexandrine parrot. She came from a less than ideal background & we have found out so far that she is able to say “Mother F*cker” and “F*cking Hell” VERY well! She can also say “Hello Lucky” and “What you got there” and other things we haven’t quite been able to make out as yet.

We have just been ignoring the swearing & saying other things to her instead. Will she just eventually kind of forget them if they’re not being reinforced or do we need to do something more to redirect her?

She‘s only been here for two days now & she’s obviously still adjusting to her new home & will be for a long time. I just want to make sure we handle it correctly straight away do we don’t have to go back later & do something else because we did it wrong the first time. The last thing we want is to confuse her even more.

I’ve noticed that she’s MUCH more relaxed & outgoing when my hubby is at home. It’s like she takes cues from him that she’s in a safe place. My hubby is at work today & I’ve left her cage open but she’s not interested in coming out. She’s happy in there I think - chattering away to herself & playing with (aka destroying) her toys

I’ve just gone over & talked to her, gave her a blueberry & a few seeds. She seems wary but her eyes aren’t pinning which is good. I don’t want to overwhelm her so I’m just letting her be. Do you think that’s ok? This is her just now.

 

[Monaco]

Not reacting at all is all I can think of... Honestly I'm still hearing phrases from monaco's first home. She typically uses them in context to something happening around her. If you can find those triggers for the cursing you'll have more to work with as far as figuring out how to prevent it or trying to replace it with your own phrase if it's not something you can prevent. Sometimes I trip or drop something and she will holler "whoooeeeee" kind of a whee and wooo smashed together. Sneezing gets her going with a passive aggressive thing she likes, so I try "bless you!" even when she sneezes, but I have yet to make a dent in it. It doesn't bother me like it did her first mom, though.

I know that the new things she chooses to say have been things genuinely backed by emotion when I say/said them. Maybe you'll get lucky and it will be more like an attention getter or "trick" with your girl... Here's hoping for the blessing that is food motivation.

 

[Birdforme]

Not reacting at all is all I can think of... Honestly I'm still hearing phrases from monaco's first home. She typically uses them in context to something happening around her. If you can find those triggers for the cursing you'll have more to work with as far as figuring out how to prevent it or trying to replace it with your own phrase if it's not something you can prevent. Sometimes I trip or drop something and she will holler "whoooeeeee" kind of a whee and wooo smashed together. Sneezing gets her going with a passive aggressive thing she likes, so I try "bless you!" even when she sneezes, but I have yet to make a dent in it. It doesn't bother me like it did her first mom, though.

I know that the new things she chooses to say have been things genuinely backed by emotion when I say/said them. Maybe you'll get lucky and it will be more like an attention getter or "trick" with your girl... Here's hoping for the blessing that is food motivation.

We were kind of rushing around with my kids getting ready for school do that may have been it. That’s when the swearing escalated. I’ll have to watch the next few days to see if it’s that.

She did scream when we left - I could hear her walking to my car. It was like “Nooooo don’t leave me!!”. She seemed very happy to see me when I got home a whole 15 minutes later. I’m sure she thought we’d be leaving her on her own for the foreseeable future. I guess she has to learn in her own time that we go sometimes but we aren’t gone long & we always come back.

 

[Monaco]

We were kind of rushing around with my kids getting ready for school do that may have been it. That’s when the swearing escalated. I’ll have to watch the next few days to see if it’s that.

She did scream when we left - I could hear her walking to my car. It was like “Nooooo don’t leave me!!”. She seemed very happy to see me when I got home a whole 15 minutes later. I’m sure she thought we’d be leaving her on her own for the foreseeable future. I guess she has to learn in her own time that we go sometimes but we aren’t gone long & we always come back.

Uh oh! I hope it's not triggered by hurried activity... I bet that's not uncommon. Maybe you can get a ritual to accompany a rushed exit where she gets a treat before she has a chance to add her observations to the mix. It's making me laugh, but it may be best to do nothing. A few experiments are in order!

 

[Khizz]

I'm not sure but I've heard about some people round here trying to train them to say something similar-sounding to the curse words. So maybe something like "flipper" for the second one. The first one is harder, a British TV show character I love always says "motherflipper" instead

 

[sunnysmom]

I think if you ignore the swearing but praise or give her attention when she says other words it will hopefully encourage her to mainly use the "good" words. But I don't think you can un-teach what she already knows.

 

[Birdforme]

I think if you ignore the swearing but praise or give her attention when she says other words it will hopefully encourage her to mainly use the "good" words. But I don't think you can un-teach what she already knows.

That’s what we’ve been doing. Might be a bit of trial & error. Why people go out of their way to teach parrots these words is beyond me. Needless to say, her previous owners weren’t exactly the sharpest knives in the drawer

 

[tka]

Ugh, I hate it when people teach their parrot to swear. It can make the parrot very hard to rehome.

I think what you're doing - rewarding the behaviour you want to see, ignoring the bad - is exactly right. Ignoring really does mean ignoring - no snickering, gasping, any reaction at all really.

Perhaps you could teach some similar words? I remember playing Fuzzy Duck/Ducky Fuzz in the pub years ago - perhaps a parrot yelling "fuzzy hell!" is preferable!

 

[Birdforme]

Ugh, I hate it when people teach their parrot to swear. It can make the parrot very hard to rehome.

I think what you're doing - rewarding the behaviour you want to see, ignoring the bad - is exactly right. Ignoring really does mean ignoring - no snickering, gasping, any reaction at all really.

Perhaps you could teach some similar words? I remember playing Fuzzy Duck/Ducky Fuzz in the pub years ago - perhaps a parrot yelling "fuzzy hell!" is preferable!

Yep we totally ignore her - like she doesn’t exist. Then we reward the “good” words. Seems to be working, it’s reduced the amount of times she’s been saying those words. Might try the retraining for “mother f*cker” because that’s pretty awful for her to say.

 

[sunnysmom]

Ugh, I hate it when people teach their parrot to swear. It can make the parrot very hard to rehome.

I think what you're doing - rewarding the behaviour you want to see, ignoring the bad - is exactly right. Ignoring really does mean ignoring - no snickering, gasping, any reaction at all really.

Perhaps you could teach some similar words? I remember playing Fuzzy Duck/Ducky Fuzz in the pub years ago - perhaps a parrot yelling "fuzzy hell!" is preferable!

I was just going to write that. It does make them difficult to rehome. We have a bird at the rescue now that swears up a storm. Some people think it's funny, unfortunately, and go out of their way to teach them to swear.

 

[Sparkles99]

So I've been thinking up words to replace theirs that sound phonetically similar, at least that start the same way & have the same number of syllables. I've no idea if replacing the words is even possible, but it's worth a shot.

For the first, what about: mother funny, mother fuzzy, mother tucker/ plucker/ mucker (ends the same way)?

For the second, what about fuzzy/ funny or tucker/ plucker/ mucker + bell/ well/ dell?

To work, I think you would have to choose one replacement & stick with it. It could be a psych experiment, & if it failed, you'd be no worse off than before.

Every time the bird said heck*ing h***, you & everyone in your household would say mucker well, or whatever you choose. This would only potentially work if the bird didn't then decide to get attention by swearing, so you'd have to make sure it didn't feel left out or this could royally backfire. The goal being to convince the bird they'd been taught the wrong phrase in home #1.

Disclaimer: I've never trained/ untrained a bird to do anything. But this piqued my interests in psych & language.

 

[AmberC]

Its not her fault. she just tries to mimic what she hears! she doesn't even know what she's saying or what the meaning is! she just says random stuff