My [43F] husband [45M] has started saying “slat” and it’s becoming taxing on our family.

My husband and I have been married for 20 years, we have two children together, a 17 year old daughter and a 15 year old son. He’s always been a goofy guy, often picking up on new slang and using it to embarass our kids. It’s usually just light hearted fun. But recently it’s gotten out of hand.

This first started a month ago when our daughter came to me and said my husband called her a sl*t. I was of course taken aback by this and went to talk to him immediately. He told me it was a misunderstanding and that he said “slat” meaning like friend or associate. We all got that cleared up and I thought it’d be the end of that.

But it wasn’t.

He continues to say it all the time, even a month later, he is annoying all of us to the point where it’s a problem. He says it CONSTANTLY. “Can you pass me the salt, slat? I heard ya, slat. Slat slat slat.” Sometimes when he comes home he’ll say “What’s popping, slats?” But he’ll pronounce it like “schlat” and spit everywhere as he does it. All the time. When I tried to bring it up to him he said, “I’m sorry, slat.” That made me angry and we got into an argument, in which he used the word TEN TIMES. We’ve never, as long as the kids have been alive, argued like this. It’s stressing them out, it’s stressing me out.

I don’t know what to do. Any conversation I try to have with him about it ends in an argument. It’s hurting our family. We can’t take it anymore. What do I do now?