Poopy

Poopy is the word, it's the time, it's the motion. Poopy's the way she is feeling.

No, that's a bit misleading, now that I look at my oh-so-clever quote manipulation there. I mean, I wouldn't want you to think I was speaking literally, using "motion" in this context. It's just that with Mabel at the moment, everything is poopy. Poopy this, poopy that, I'm poopy, you're poopy, Dash in particular is very often poopy, we're all poopy. Except now and then one of us might be mutton-head. (That's a WildKratts reference. I'm told you had to be there, and I keep missing it. But she claims she means it as a compliment.)

She is three and a half, after all, so there had to be something. I think we're getting off pretty lightly if this is the sum total of her half-year behaviour-regression thingy. She's into calling people poopy and sometimes pinching them too, but mostly only if they're her brother. Poor Dash is trying hard not to take it personally, but if I hear "Waaaahhhh! Mabel pinched me and called me poopy," one more time in the next five minutes - well, it'll be just like all the previous five minuteses.

Poopy was not a word ever bandied around in this house before Mabel heard it last summer and had a brief fling with it, but now it has returned with a vengeance. While helping at nursery school recently I heard a teacher scold one of Mabel's classmates for saying it. His father, who happened to be there too, was shocked and wondered where he could have heard such a thing. I had to fess up that it was probably from my delightful daughter, and have a wee chat with Mabel about words we are not to use at school, to protect the delicate ears of those more innocent.

Personally, I don't really take much issue with poopy. As bad words go, it's pretty hilarious really, and I'd quite like to use it all the time too. Considering she has a six-year-old brother whose classmates, I know from my field-trip experience last week - know some much more serious bad words, I'm quite happy with it. But from the perspective of the other parent, I understand that I would have liked my only/eldest child to go as long as possible before hearing any of the less savoury elements of vocabulary, or even getting an inkling that words could be used like that, and I too would have been displeased if some moppet in Dash's class when he was three was wandering around firing off such epithets at random peers.

So I think she knows that she shouldn't say it at school, but at home it's a bit of a free-for-all, because I really don't have the energy to get all riled up every time the p-word is dropped; and since she's doing it for effect anyway, the best tack is clearly firm parental apathy. I suggested to Dash, who finds it hard to ignore, that he pretend she said something nice and respond with a cheery "Thank you!"

He's not sure this tactic is working yet, but at least it's more fun for all of us than hearing him whine about it.

One of the few times when she's not calling something poopy