to be annoyed DD is picking up MIL bad habits

[AWitchCalledMeg]

I shall probably will get shot down for this but it's been bothering me for ages. DD is 3. Every time she sees my MIL she ends up copying her horrible way of pronouncing words which has always grated on me. Better, little, letter later.. none of these words contain the letter T apparently. It really bothers me because like it or not people do judge on your accent and it has been proven it can affect your career, how people perceive you etc. I am not a snob, I don't put on a naice accent. But I do want my children to pronounce words properly to a certain extent, I also want them to sound like they are actually related to me and my family! I know that a nice accent important really compared to other personal qualities. My MIL is a 60 year old teenager and our issues with her are a big can of worms (smoking around DC, trying to get DD to call her boyfriend 'grandad', feeding the baby desert laced with a lot of alcohol.. too many irresponsible and inappropriate things to list) but for the most part I try to maintain a good relationship. However sometimes I just despair that she is such a negative influence on the children and I get tired of constantly finding excuses why she and her boyfriend can't have the DC overnight or take them out for the day (she can see them whenever she was, just not comfortable with those two particular requests). And as they get older I worry about them picking up her views, to be frank she is an ignorant, rude bigot with limited social skills, manners, culture and life experience. Surely it's not just me, there must be other people out here who would feel the same? First world problems I know, yes other people have worse issues with family, yes it's a little thing in comparison to most issues out there but this is what is on my mind today as my DD has been sounding exactly like a mini version of MIL since seeing her on Sunday and I'm sure MIL does it on purpose! Even DH said she seems to 'ham it up' more around the children

I (fairly gently) pick DD up almost every time on glottal stops - God only knows where she gets it from (except TV) as she would be more likely to pick up RP from school than that.

As for the rest of the views/behaviour - you would be surprised how well DC can distinguish those and choose to ignore them - I know mine have both kept silent in the face of people expressing unacceptable views and then commented to me later.

Portia - do you have exactly the same accent and views as your parents, then? I know plenty of people who don't - so it's more than possibly that the OP's DH neither thinks nor speaks like his mother.

OTOH, OP, you should take the fact that your DH has turned out OK (assuming he has) as proof that your DC's limited exposure to their GM is really not going to affect them that much in the long term,

I drop my 't's because I'm from Lancashire, and we do that there. I'm educated past graduate level and have quite a fancy job that involves dealing with MPs, posh people etc. In fact, it involves challenging the decisions they make, so I have to be taken seriously.

If anyone picked up on my accent (and that's what it is. People with my accent drop 't's) and told me I was uneducated then I'd tell them where they could stick their 't's. I guess that makes me an oaf.

To you she's a MIL. To your DD she is her much loved granny, a very important relationship and one she is lucky to have. Mildly correct any glottal stops and unacceptable views she might repeat, don't make a big deal out of it If asked why, we had a mantra - in Grannie's house you do things her way and in our house we do things our way. That covered everything from my own dear mum's Hyacinth Bucket tendencies to some of the un-pc things she heard my in laws say.

Incidentally, my in laws do not have English accents and she would often come home speaking in their native accents. It would last a few hours and then she would revert.

Once they get to school they will hear and copy all sorts of speech patterns. It is never too early to establish that other people's ways of speaking are perfectly acceptable, just not the way you speak in your family.

I would chill about the dessert too, but am wincing at the smoking.

I always correct mine when they drop the "t" when speaking. I actually cringe when I hear their friends speak as it sounds so awful. I also wonder how they learn to phonically spell as they naturally don't pronounce all the sounds. So water, would come out wa'er....any teachers who can 'elp me on that as I am genuinely interested.

I kind of get you - but I think you have to think big picture. Is she generally kind and want the best - just that her version of best might be a bit different to yours?
If that's the case (which it is in my case) then it becomes a lot easier if you let it slide and remind yourself that 90% of the time your DD is being influenced by you and your DP. Yes favourite granny will have an influence but that is all - your DD will start growing up and making her own choices eventually. Like your DP she may decide that she wants to follow a different path to granny... I also worry that making granny and/or her views a forbidden fruit will make them much more attractive as she grows older and starts forming her own views.
(With us its less the pronunciation and more the pushing down a girly princess route, that she musn't get dirty, play outside in the cold and put sensible clothes on, should only wear pink and life's ambition should be hair and makeup expert so she can bag herself a footballer and become a real WAG - arghhh....)

Id say from your description that we have the Same MIL, but mine doesn't just drop the T's she says thing like "she don't like that do 'er".

I have a long list of character traits I don't want passed on to my dc from PIL.

my ex mil does this deliberately to wind me up as soon as im around she reverts to "lend" instead of borrow and dumbs down her speech massively she knows the whole dropped "h" thing gets on my tits so she will deliberately work a sentence in like "arf un our" im so glad im divorcing her son

did the pims curdle the cream?

Yes it all sounds very annoying. With the issue of pronouncating words you could just correct her. Your DD spends most of her time with you so you can just correct it and she will learn the correct way to say it eventually. You have more influence than your MIL you are just being sensitive to it. She quite possibly does ham it up around you and your DC. How about correcting your DD in front of your MIL?

Bottom line, if you don't like the things that your MIL is teaching your DC then don't spend so much time with her and her boyfriend. If it is really that much of a problem then it's a pretty easy solution.

Becky - as part of an accent, it is just that - part of the accent, and not reflective of education or anything else. In otherwise neutral English (i.e. No strong accent of any kind) it is just bleeding lazy and does affect perceptions, IMHO.

OTOH my boss's complete lack of grammar estuary English "we was looking at this..." makes my teeth itch every time no matter how hard I try to unhoick my judges pants

DH and I were just discussing today how gutted we'll be when our baby inevitably picks up a bit of Bristol twang from her school friends. Neither of us are from here.
It's not the end of the world though and it'll probably help her fit in. We'll still correct her a lot no doubt.
If it's just your MIL I'd be surprised if she does end up always dropping her Ts, surely she'll have bigger influences.

The very first time my ds wrote a birthday card for a friend on his own, he wrote "Happy Birfday, Efan". I was so proud!

He's 15 now, and effortlessly trilingual- Posh, Estuary and Yorkshire.

It's common sense to dislike glottal stops: they display a lack of education

ODFOD

I speak with a regional accent in which glottal stops are a prominent feature. I also have two batchelors degrees and a masters.

My accent, incidentally, is lovely

She's not spending that much time with MIL to really just do this as a natural part of her speech, my guess is she heard it once or twice, tried it (as children do) and your face/emotion did the rest. Now she'll be wedded to it for a while!

My dd was exactly the same with 'water' which she pronounced 'wa-hu' because she knew it annoyed me. She kept it up from about 3-6 so you only have another three years to go.

My parents despaired of my Sarf London accent at 15. I now speak terribly naicely.

I dont say my t's either as part of my accent. When my ddad remarried my (awfully posh) stepmother, she was constantly correcting my way of pronunciation which only made me accentuate it even more to annoy her. As an adult I've had no trouble getting work and although I know how words are supposed to be pronounced, I would feel like I wasn't being true to myself to change my pronunciation.

Of all the problems you have your mil, I'd say this is the least of your worries.

Oh this reminds me of my DSsister.

Her darling dd (6) told her to 'shurrup'

DSsister replied 'oh xxxx there is a T in shut!'

Your MIL will have less and less influence over your DC as your DC get older. What are her good qualities?

DH is not from the uk and neither of us is local. I have a relatively neutral accent. DD has picked up a slight local accent but also speaks a lot like me. I used to correct her pronunciation and grammar when she was in preschool to prevent her from saying stuff such as 'I want to go toilet' and drop 'to the' as is common here. I also use 'loo'. It was quite funny DD and her friend were round my house spelling words with me and DD said 'U' (phonically) in my accent. Friend corrected her saying that DD was spelling the word incorrectly (as she hadn't heard u pronounced this way). Thats the one vowel I corrected because the posher people where we live say u in a similar way to me. I don't make a differentiation on northern/southern 'a' bath sounds to do this would be a step too far as she is a person entitled to choose the way she speaks to a certain so that she feels
She fits in. Interestingly the girls mother also says u's like me. The children all learn to read phonically - adapted for local dialects. Don't think there's one using a glottal stop though ;) DD also went through a stage of defiance and winding me up when she was little. Don't worry op your DD will be just fine.

All my children have tried dropping t's and I just correct them as they go. They soon stop. It comes and goes. When Ds1 asked why I corrected them I told them if they can't say a word correctly how does he think they will be able to quickly spell correctly at school. Seemed to do the trick. The youngest still does it occasionally now she's 11 and I still correct her as we talk.

Well, surely your husband survived her bad influence, or is he too an 'ignorant, rude bigot with limited social skills, manners, culture and life experience' and glottal stops?

Glottal stops turn up in loads of accents, in fact the only ones I can think of that reliably don't use them are RP and Near RP accents. I have found myself correcting kids here in Glasgow for "doesnae ma''er" and then am picked up by the self same children for slipping up on "quar'er to three".
Pity our future DC though, as my accent bounces nicely from Near RP over to Estuary, into East End and back again. DP is a half French Northerner without his local accent (though his DM and DBro both have very Northern accents). Oh, and we live in Glasgow... Poor poor things!