My "BUTT" Problem

Some people have a problem with the word “butt”. For some reason it has never really been one of those “bad” words for us, but considering it is for some, I guess we probably should have been a bit more cautious about allowing our children to use it. In hindsight, we probably should have insisted on using the word “bottom” or “behind” or some other similar sounding “b” word. It’s never really been an issue before, but now I find myself faced with a “butt” problem.

While Tyler and I were putting together his school bus cake a couple weeks ago, I asked him how to spell BUS. He spelled B U T. I told him that spelled “but”, and he burst into laughter. Foolishly, I said, “Not that kind of ‘butt’” and went on to explain about BUT and BUTT. I should have just let things be.

Since that time, he has been spelling BUTT constantly. And suddenly he has been spelling it in reference to people. Most commonly, he enjoys spelling MOM BUTT. Last week we were outside playing. The kids were alternating between riding their bikes, playing on their scooters, and decorating the driveway with chalk. I wasn’t paying much attention to their artwork, so I didn’t notice Tyler had scrawled MOM BUTT in chalk on the driveway until after he was already inside. I made him come back outside and scrub BUTT off the driveway with a wet sponge.

I thought the sponge incident helped a little, and the BUTT spelling slowed down for a couple days. Then, as we were walking out of the grocery store midweek last week, we saw a cigarette receptacle that said BUTT DEPOT in very large letters. Of course, that didn’t go unnoticed. He giggled about that the rest of the day. That brought about another round of BUTT spelling. After spending some time alone in his room for his misuse of the word BUTT, I’m happy to report he has been doing better.

Well, was doing better.

The past week we have been working on reading more words and writing in lower case letters. (The other night Tyler read a book to me before bed! It was a short, simple book, but he read the whole thing with only minimal help from me!!) Before he went to bed last night, I made a list of several words on his white board beside his bed that I knew he could read. Then I made sentences using those words and had him read them to me. He did a really good job. Later ,when I went to check on him before going to bed, I saw he had practiced writing his own sentence. Perfectly spelled out in upper and lowercase letters read “Mom is a butt.”