Freud

As a college student I had to learn a lot of psychology of human development, which is a fancy term for psychologists and their varying categories of development. We'd memorize one after another, Pavlov, Piaget, Bolby...the list goes on and on, each with their own developmental theories. As students we'd come up with mnemonics to keep them all straight. With Freud, four years later, I can run the stages through my head like a song, "Oral, Anal, Latency, Genital." Freud was a piece of work.

Luke, who turns three tomorrow (!) is in the "Anal" stage. Our situation yesterday is perfect evidence of this. While doing "school" which to Luke is five minutes with the Magna Doodble, I was having him reading the letter sounds in the word "at," and then appropriately "sat, hat, mat." Knowing his threshold would soon be up, I quickly asked him to spell the words for me.

"Luke," I asked, "spell M-M-M-Mat."
Luke replied, "M-A-T."
"Great, spell H-H-Hat."
Luke replied, "H-A-T."
"Good job, Luke. Now spell S-S-Sat."
"No!" Luke answered forcefully.
"No? Why don't you want to spell 'sat' for me?"
"I want to spell something different," Luke answered.
"Well, we're working on the 'At family,' Luke, what else would you like to spell?"
"I'm all done with the 'At family,'" Luke answered, "I want to spell a different word."
"Okay, buddy. What do you want to spell," I responded, trying not to get flustered.
"Let's spell...let's spell," Luke began, starting to grin. "Let's spell...I want to spell....Poop."

Then I laughed...and spelled it for him. Oh boy.