Reese Witherspoon has praised the efforts of her four-year-old son after he attempted to spell his long and uncommon name.

His name is Tennessee and we don't blame him for struggling with this one. With its double consonants and the placement of the four letter 'e's—we bet many occasionally spell this Southern state wrong too.

Nevertheless, Tennessee gave it a red hot go and certainly amused his proud mom, who shared a cute picture of her son with paper in hand on Instagram.

"When your name is TENNESSEE, it's a bit tricky to learn how to spell it… #PreSchoolProblems," the Big Little Lies star captioned the image.

on Mar 21, 2017 at 10:14am PDT

Tennessee is the son of Witherspoon and her husband Jim Toth. The actress also has two older children: son Deacon Reese, 13, and daughter Ava Elizabeth, 17, from her previous marriage to Ryan Phillippe.

LISTEN: On our Australian sister site Mamamia's podcast network, founder Mia Freedman chats to the author of Big Little Lies ahead of its TV treatment.

This post originally appeared on Mamamia, Spring.St's Australian sister site. You can read it here.