From the mouths of babes...

Last night as I helped my eight-year-old with his school work, we agonised over a particularly bothersome word -- dumb, as in the opposite of "smart". Having tried to stop him, for months, from succumbing to peer pressure and using it to describe people, especially other kids after a quarrel over a bike, a game or a turn at a video-game, I was rather surprised to see the word used in an English textbook for third graders used to describe an elephant in a story on animals. I plan to rent the DVD of Horton Hears a Hoo and stock up on Dr Seuss's delightful tales to counter such prejudices, but do moms in a similar predicament have some valuable advice?