I am a pedant.
I use (do and did) use the word stupid, around my kids (who are now grown)
I wouldn’t say *they *were stupid for example (in an insulting way) but rather, I’d say the thing they did was a stupid thing to do.
When they were young, they’d say I was mean. I’d say it was only mean if it wasn’t true. To make a long story short, I explained to them that if they didn’t want me to say they did stupid stuff, either they could keep doing stupid stuff and I could stop saying it, or they could stop doing it! For example, my daughter would always run down our street, watching her feet hit the ground, rather than looking where she was running. She would trip and fall, often scraping her knee. I would explain what she’d done wrong, explain a better way and tell her to do that. That happened many many times. Then I stopped giving her sympathy for falling and hurting herself. I’d mildly chastise her and say the way she would run, was stupid. Frustratingly slowly, she learned that her way of running ended up with pain and admonishment. Listening to dad, and running a smarter way, resulted in less pain, and more time doing fun stuff with dad and getting congratulations for doing a good job.
My philosophy is to be fair and honest with my kids. Not to speak down to them but to treat them with respect and honesty. Too many parents are too soft and molly coddling with their kids. With that approach, kids get praised for everything they do, but eventually praise means nothing. If my kids performed well, they’d get told they did well. If they didn’t do well, they would get praised for trying etc, but also told they didn’t do as well as they could. This way failure hurts so to speak, and praise feels great. Kids quickly KNOW when they have done poorly or well. If they get praised for failing, they learn that praise is worthless and so is winning or doing well.
That said, I would say what needed to be said in a nice way, and not belittle them or kick them while they were down. Based on my kids now (son 26 daughter 23), who they have become, and my incredible wonderful relationship with both of them, I proudly say that my approach has been vindicated and has been a huge success. While neither of them has reached their potential (yet) how many of us ever reach ours? They are great people, hopefully at least partly due to me and the way I raised them, and they still have some room to grow and improve and become even greater successes.