I had been stretched across my bed, contemplating the virtues of going to sleep last night when I heard a horrible groan coming from the living room. I went in to find Big E asleep in the rocker, decidedly sweaty. His hair stuck up in strange patches and his face contorted as he murmured to himself, still fast asleep. I touched his forehead and for the first time in days, it was cool- cold to the touch really. The fever had finally broken. He slept the rest of the night quite soundly and the fever was still gone this morning.

Since it had only been a few hours, though, he still needed to stay home. While I spent a little time with him before work, he asked if he could work on his sight words with me and pulled out a list of words they have been learning in school. He’s in kindergarten, so naturally the words are pretty simple- yes, no, has, etc. We worked on sounding out each word, or just memorizing the ones that couldn’t be sounded out (i.e.- have), when we got to the word “he.” For some reason, every time he went to pronounce it, he would exchange the ‘e’ for ‘it.’ So instead of saying ‘he’ he would say ‘hit.’ I corrected him several times until he finally said it right.

And then we moved on to ‘she.’

You can see where this is going, right?!?

I took great care to explain what sound the ‘sh’ combination made. When he was ready to try it himself he started timidly… Sh… sh… sh…

“SH!@” he shouted in glorious victory!

I burst out laughing, but quieted myself quickly, not wanting to explain why his error was so comical, and focused on the task of correcting the mistake. But, he kept doing it, honestly making the same mistake again and again and it was all I could do to hold it together. Finally we cleared that up, which relieved me to no end, as I was already imagining the embarrassing and awkward moments that could happen in his kindergarten classroom if any of the other kids knew and understood the word he was using. By the time were were finished I felt confident that we had worked the mistake away, but this evening, as he worked on his sight words from across the room, I heard the profane word once again.

Hopefully he clears it up soon, but if you hear him cursing like sailor, just quietly remind him that the word is SHE. 🙂