Double Yellow Headed Amazon Swearing

[royedwards]

I have a lovely two year old Double Yellow Headed Amazon - Very chatty and loves being around people

Over the last few days he has starting saying **** you

I am guessing that he has learnt this from some of my Army friends as I have ensured that we do not swear around him

I have tried not to react to him, but is there anything I can do to stop the swearing?

Roy

 

[wenz2712]

Welcome to the forum.

The best thing you can do, is just ignore and hopefully he will stop.. Concentrate on teaching him to say new words and maybe he will decide he likes these words and forget about the bad ones!

 

[ann]

just completely ignore it, don't even look her way. tell everyone in the household and guests to do the same. teach her a new word or only reward her for saying other words. Say it very enthusiastically to help her pick it up. Is their a trigger to the word? if so, use the trigger and say the new word. maybe you can teach her to modify the phrase to make it easier for her to switch over. you could teach her "bless you" "you who" "looky you" anything that sounds like it, but isn't bad and maybe she will pick it up. also let your friends know not to say stuff like that around her, prevention is the best cure . good luck!

 

[friedsoup]

I've heard a lot of these stories, and yes you can just ignore the words or you can subtitute word that sounds like what your bird is saying as my mother would say when I swore " I'm sorry your cheese and crackers got all muddy'"

 

[paulhanlon]

I've heard a lot of these stories, and yes you can just ignore the words or you can subtitute word that sounds like what your bird is saying as my mother would say when I swore " I'm sorry your cheese and crackers got all muddy'"

Lol and im just in fudge bits

 

[Chaz12]

BC our Blue Crown Conure swears too. The less they hear the word, the less they will repeat it.

 

[henpecked]

yeah they pick up cuss words very quickly. Usually because they're said with such gusto.Birds pick up on words that get a reaction.Good luck getting them to stop.They;ll go months without saying it until the worst possible moment, then yell it out.when you figure out how to make them stop,let me know.

 

[melissasparrots]

Ignore, ignore, ignore would be my advice. Oscar came to me speaking spanish which I kind of enjoyed even though I have no clue what he was saying. Since he doesn't hear spanish around here at all, after all these years I almost never hear anything from him. He also likes to say a** hole. I didn't know he liked to say this until I rented the movie Meet the Faulkers. Then for the next several days and periodically after that he called me an a** hole every time I walked in the room. Must say it was mildly comical since he hates me. However, I almost never cuss and never those particular words so eventually he stopped saying it all together.

 

[lene1949]

I keep saying to my baby eclectus: I'm coming, I'm coming, when he's wanting to be fed... Guess I'll have to change that...

 

[lizardsmells]

I have a, uh, colorful vocabulary. I knew when Kazi came to live here I'd have to watch my mouth and I thought I was until he called me a MFer. Then in the car the other day he told me to 'shut the ____ up'.

I haven't been doing as well as I'd hoped, apparently. I try not to react, but I do think it's funny (this is why I don't have kids, they'd have the foulest little mouths and I'd laugh so hard every time), however it's only really funny when it's just us. In public, not so much. So lately my tactic has been to completely ignore it when he says it, wait a few seconds, and ask him what sound a kitty cat makes. When he meows he gets lots of praise. I'm hoping heaping praise on him for stuff like that and ignoring the cursing will mean he'll eventually phase it out. But probably not unless I also phase it out and I've tried, but man, it's hard.

 

[Kiwibird]

Once a parrot has learned a word, phrase or noise, it is extremely difficult to make them "forget". About all you can do is to ignore them completely whenever they say it, and really praise them when they say something more appropriate. If your bird is getting praise/a treat whenever she says "hello", whistles, or another appropriate word/noise, yet recieves no attention for another noise (in this case, f-you), they will eventually abandon the "useless" word for one they get something out of. Remember, the parrot has no understanding of the concept "good word vs. bad word", and likely picked it up because it was said with more emphasis than other "noises" she hears humans making all the time. It can take a long time to correct a behvior, so don't give up on it if in a few weeks she's still saying it.

 

[friedsoup]

Yep you can work for months to get a bird to say "Hello!" and get not a sound but reach to pick up a bird and she lunges at you to bite and you pull back and say "Don't bite damnit! " and the bird goes home and the owners meet you for dinner a few days later and excitedly say "Oh you'll never guess what Lucy said. "Don't bite damnit step-up and be a good girl " we don't know where she hear it. and you have to confess "It was me! "