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March 13, 2007
Everyone's A Critic
And I really don't drink that much.
Excuse me, while I indulge in a mommy brag: my three-year-old has started to spell.
He’s known his alphabet since he was two, and has had his letter sounds down for awhile now. But I just got him a phonics video, that demonstrates how letters build words, and he’s taken to it with great enthusiasm. He also likes to plug letters into his Leapfrog Word Whammer toy, and then proudly show off what he’s spelled.
Oddly enough, Sam’s favorite word to spell isn’t S-A-M, or C-A-T, or even M-O-M.
It’s S-O-T.
I frowned the first time I saw this. And then I put down my glass of wine.
“Did you teach him that word?” I asked George.
George, who had also discreetly pushed his own glass of wine out of sight, shook his head. “No. I don’t know where he got it from.”
“What does it say?” Sam asked me.
“It says sot,” I said.
“Sot!” Sam repeated happily. “Sot, sot, sot!”
"Well. Yes. But why don't you say something nice like, Mommy is pretty, instead?" I suggested.
"Sot!"
“Did he learn that from the phonics video?” I whispered to George.
“No way. Do you really think that they’d be teaching kids to spell sot?”
“So where did he pick it up?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I think he just discovered it on his own,” George said. "But there are worse three-letter words he could be spelling."
What’s next? Am I going to start finding expletives spelled out on the fridge with letter magnets?
Posted by Whitney at 6:00 AM | Comments (9)
Comments
lol. Lauren went through a rhyming stage at that age. she loved to find words and then sing nonsense rhymes. So we got a lot of:
Kiss, miss, hiss, piss
and, worse
Duck, tuck, luck, suck, f-- well, you get it.
The trick was to never react. Harder than you'd think when you're driving along the road and your 3 y.o. Princess starts singing the duck, tuck song.
Posted by: Alesia Holliday at March 13, 2007 9:40 AM
Wait until he moves on to magnetic poetry. Then you REALLLY have problems.
Posted by: The LC Eileen ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.literarychicks.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at March 13, 2007 10:56 AM
It's even better when your child rhymes in public...
My 5 year old and I were recently in line at Disneyland and she saw the sign for Star Tours based on the film Star Wars). So she says to me, rather loudly, "Mommy, tours and wars rhyme. You know what else rhymes? WHORES!"
What do you say to that? I just quickly and quietly agreed so she wouldn't repeat herself.
Posted by: Heidi at March 13, 2007 1:08 PM
Could he have seen it on the Wizard of Id cartoon in the newspaper? I love the character Sot, so... I dunno... maybe?
And the tuck, suck, etc. thing. OMG I can relate. When my youngest was about a year or so, he started saying the word firetruck. But he couldn't get his mouth to get out of the F position in time for the T sound, and so he would say FireF***. In the grocery store. Loudly. A lot.
Posted by: Cate at March 13, 2007 1:31 PM
Wait until he asks, "Mom, you want to hear about the game we play in the locker room after practice?" You'll think SOT was nothing.
Posted by: Maureen at March 13, 2007 1:47 PM
From one sot to another, I can tell you - don't put down the wine. It helps a lot.
Posted by: Lani at March 13, 2007 2:12 PM
From the sounds of it, you're an awesome mom for teaching your child to read. Regardless of the silly and sometimes embarassing words he's saying right now, it shows he's learning. Hurray you.
At least your child isn't using his middle finger instead of his index finger to point at things - especially in the grocery store. I had to explain doing that was like swearing in sign language. (Thank goodness she was old enough to understand that explanation and stopped.)
Posted by: B.E. Sanderson at March 13, 2007 10:40 PM
At my parents retirement party in September, we celebrated at a packed restaurant, sitting outside, where my 2 year old nephew went on a tangent yelling "BIRD WALKING" only instead of pronouncing the W in Walking, he used an F. Yep, he was screaming "BIRD FALKING". Needless to say, we got quite a few dirty looks. We kept trying to explain but everyone kept glaring at us.
Posted by: Cameo at March 15, 2007 11:17 PM
*From the sounds of it, you're an awesome mom for teaching your child to read. Regardless of the silly and sometimes embarassing words he's saying right now, it shows he's learning. Hurray you.*
I have to say, I never in a million years thought he'd be reading before he potty trained. Of course, that probably has something to do with the fact that he seems determined to go to college still in diapers.
As I always like to say, Sam inherited my joie de vive, and George's stubborn personality.
Posted by: Whitney at March 19, 2007 9:19 AM
