Jordan and vocabulary

This evening, the girls brought me their "important papers."  Typically on a  Friday, this means the week's progress report, and I got those along with the sign-up sheets for Parent-Teacher Conferences.  


Jordan has been working very hard to raise her behavior each day from Unsatisfactory or Needs Improvement to Excellent.  She managed to get all "Excellents" the week before Break, and then she brought me today's note.  Jordan had Excellent on Monday - Tuesday - Wednesday and Thursday, but she had a "Satisfactory" today.  There was a note included with today:


"Jordan has had an excellent week with the exception of calling a classmate a "slut" today.  She was upset because the other girl said she looked like a boy.  We discussed better ways to handle conflict than calling names."


When I confronted Jordan, she claimed that she didn't know that she used a "bad word."  I asked her if she knew was "slut" meant, and she kept saying that she didn't know it was bad.  It took almost 10 minutes of me asking her the same question over and over, "If you didn't know it was a bad word, then why did you call her this name when you were angry with her?" but FINALLY, she admitted that she didn't know what it meant, but she knew it had to be really bad and she wanted to hurt the other girl's feelings.  


As the mom, I was mortified that my child used that word against another little girl.  That means that my daughter has heard that word before, AND she has heard that word enough to understand that it is not used in a good way.  (OK, I have to admit that she first heard that word from her bio-dad, but I was hoping it had been enough time since she heard it last.  Apparently it is used at her school too.)


Now, as a teacher, I have to say that I am pleased that my child used a word that she did not understand the definition in the correct context under which it is typically used today....that being, an adjective used in a slang manner without it being necessary to be literally correct.  Well, that will work for her in standardized testing later in life.