Fallen out with MIL over manners

[WoeIsMee]

I'm really annoyed. I've NC for this.

My MIL had my children today and they've come back saying 'what' instead of 'pardon.' This is because mil told them that 'what' is correct which is clearly wrong - it's 'pardon.'

I'm really annoyed as correct manners are so important, also it's undermined me.

WIBU to ring her and tell her she's wrong and ask her to tell the children that she was wrong?

You could use the Pulp Fiction method to stop your MIL and the kids saying 'what'?

Say 'what' again. Say 'what' again, I dare you, I double dare you motherfucker, say what one more Goddamn time!

Or the Wayne's World method...

Asssphincter says what? What?

Hilarity for all

You're welcome.

None of the people who care actually matter. Just about to unload a 24 pack of bog roll here. And then I'll get dinner on but not until I've had a glass of wine because the sun's gone over the yard arm.

Properly posh people don't care and proper ordinary working class people don't care in my experience. It's the ones in the middle who are paranoid and the ones at each end generally just take the piss out of them.

You are all hilarious.
Would someone mind explaining the Nana thing to me? I am not English but my father in law has notions of himself as being english upper class and visibly winces when I use Nana when referring to my own mother around the children. I quite enjoy the effect but have never understood it. We have always called our lovely grandmothers Nana and I'd like to understand his horror (so that I can enjoy it even more). I have a feeling someone on this thread may be able to enlighten me.......

LucyB To my DC, my mum is Nana (northern England) and my MIL is gran (Scottish). Never encountered any rudeness about that anywhere.

Perhaps your DIL is just a knob?

How perceptive of you shakes booty yes, he is in fact a knob.

Nana and nanny are the paid help not beloved grand parents if that helps

Nana is, I believe, more working class. My kids use it - it's nice and cuddly

But Nanny (as I called my grandmothers) is more likely to be confused with a child carer in the circles I move now.

I can't imagine how anyone could think that 'what' on its own isn't rude! Of course it's rude, there's no nice way to say 'what', unless as others have said its packaged as it 'sorry what was that'. If I was interviewing someone for a job and asked them a question to which they replied 'what?' I would think they were a rude bugger lacking in people skills, no matter how posh they were!

whatthe

But it is not rude. You just think it is.

Of course 'what?' isn't rude. 'Pardon' on its own is dreadful, though. I would compromise with 'sorry?'

Well obviously in terms of inherent rudeness, nothing is rude, everything that's rude is only rude because we think it's rude.
But yes, I really think it's very rude, as I said there's no nice way to way 'what' as a stand alone sentance.

Poor old OP - she's justifiably annoyed if her MIL has form for being undermining. Nobody likes the ILs telling their DC that their parents are wrong about something. The grandparents have had their turn at bringing up children. It is undermining. And there's nothing worse than having a bunch of mn-etters telling you that you're the one in the wrong and that it doesn't matter anyway, when the whole point is that this is something that matters to the OP.

Have a Woe and be as middle-class as you like. (but don't bring it up with your MIL - plot a nice little revenge-plan instead) mwah hah hah!

whatthe

I'd be the same. I'd be thinking, 'I'm afraid you must be meaning - I'm sorry I didn't catch your question, could you repeat it please?'

If my teenage son was to ask 'What' it would come out as a semi-grunt with no final consonant and would definitely sound a bit rude. Or, at best, immature and lacking in social skills.

Monstrous the problem for me is that I don't think I'd be foreign enough to be given a free pass to make these apparent mistakes, I'm only from N Ireland. But believe me, reading a thread like this I feel like I'm from the far side of the world as it is all so foreign to me!

I had no idea that 'pardon' was 'wrong' either treacle (Scottish)

NeedsA are you married to LucyA's DIL?

No-one with real manners would snigger at anyone. Anyway - Nana, serviette, 'breakfast, dinner and tea' and pardon-snigger away -glad to give you some amusement :)

Small things amuse narrow minds.
If you wish to say "What?" "lavatory"," Lunch and dinner" entirely up to you-I'll understand what you are trying to say.

PS-MIL may not have known that the parents were teaching "pardon"-the children could have heard it anywhere. Perhaps she was wrong to correct but how do you know she set out to deliberately undermine.

Correct drudge

Ref the first post

derxa

People who say "what?" also say grandma and grandpa. Unless one of the children has been primed with comes up with some charming nickname like Bumps or Poggle.

Is grandpa posh? I didn't know that. My FIL who likes to be called Grandpa but he'd laugh if he knew it was posh. at Bumps and Poggle.

Let me spell it out for you. If you say "pardon", anyone from upper-middle class upwards will snigger. Not fair, but true.

Only if they were jaw droppingly stupid, in which case why would anybody else care?