To correct my toddler's speech (nicely)

[glitterjellybean]

NC for this. I have a dd coming up for 2 years old. She's bright and happy and her vocabulary is coming on in leaps in bounds.

Her df and I see eye to eye on pretty much everything except one thing. Speech.

Bit of background, and as much as I hate labels, dh is very working class (as in he's a total grafter with a common accent) and I'm from an upper middle class family where I was corrected to say the full words and names not abbreviate. If my mum heard me say the word "telly" she'd come back from the dead to tell me off 🙊.

It started off when she was small with my utter refusal to the whole "say taaaaaa!" thing. She now says please and thank you anyway, so it seemed unnecessary for her to learn two ways of saying it.

Now this last week "yes" has turned into "yep" and I keep (gently) saying "no xxx we say yes".

Dh thinks I'm being stuffy but I've never been turned down for a job in my life because I speak (in his words) "posh" and I'd like to give our dc as much of a chance as possible in life.

Dh is constantly getting annoyed because people judge him on his accent and the way he speaks, and we even had an incident in a posh cafe the other week where a patron made a comment loudly about "letting anybody in now". So surely if he's had issues like this he wouldn't want his kids to go through the same.

Lol this is a bit more detailed than I was expecting but as long as I'm doing it kindly and constructively (and not in a way that's demeaning) it's not a bad thing to speak "correctly"?

I was always taught to take people as I find them, however many people in society don't. In fact some people read something on the internet and make judgement based on that, would you believe?

Ugggh? Really?

How very common.

Your user name has changed.

Anybody who uses the word "posh" really isn't..... just like anybody who uses the word "common" really is.

Your examples are daft. And she's two. Just model back to her what you want her to say.

Btw I'm Home Counties 'posh' from a very affluent area, husband is working class scouse. We live in Liverpool. Every child is brought up to say 'ta' but that doesn't mean they don't learn 'thank you' later on.

Lol yes because I'm posting under my regular username on other threads 😜 #multitasking. As mentioned prior, regular poster and embarrassing outing circumstances. Plus I knew I'd get some flaming for this as well.

Lol ok then. I'm just glad I managed to get some constructive feedback before this descended into its usual snottiness.

Johnny I was ripped apart at university for "being posh" (I'm not). One key discussion hinged on the lyrics "the wombles of Wimbledon Common are we". I said that when I was little I found it confusing, because they aren't common at all (meaning rare and unusual). My flat mate thought I meant "they aren't common if they live in wimbledon". I'm still being teased for that by DP 10 years on.

Would a posh person type lol?

Hmm that's a bit common.

Does she watch Bing? My DD picked up 'yeppp' from that bloody rabbit!

This didn't descend into its usual snottiness.

Your entire post could have been done without the classism shoved into it.

Instead you created a trolly goady post name changing for it because you're quite the coward.

Same in our family - DH has broad yorkshire accent and I'm from middle class family. I always corrected mine. Remember we were going to call the younger one Joseph so Joe for short - I told DH I couldn't call him that because of the way his family speaks - it just sounded more like Jaw iyswim. Years down the line and the eldest ds speaks more like I do and the youngest has got a much stronger accent (eldest says no with an 'o' and youngest no with an 'aw'), but I did always correct them because I found it a lazier way of pronouncing words otherwise

Isn't "ta" more about teaching them manners than getting them to say thank you? As thank you is obviously a lot more difficult to say whereas with ta the principle of saying thank you is there.
Anyway, you sound a bit up your own arse, sorry op!

My toddler has just come out with 'yep'. I imagine she's got it from her older sisters (DP's children) but it's possible we say it too. I try to only correct by saying the word back to her but what I find hard is that one of her sisters often speaks in a bit of baby talk to her, missing 'the' a lot and saying 'dat'. We have tried explaining that she just needs to speak as she normally would but it hasn't really gone in. I'm hoping it won't have any effect on DD. Her speech isn't quite as good as her peers, but still pretty typical for a toddler.

Those bloody Wombles. Gobshites, the lot of them!

Why are you using Lol?

Especially as you're so posh.

Try not correcting but just saying the correct word after she says her version. This worked really well for us. I read that it interrupts their wee thought process and they can lose confidence trying to speak if they are corrected all the time.

Dandelion That's hilarious! I thought the same as you when I was little - ie it was "The Wombles of Wimbledon, common are we", rather than meaning "We are the Wombles from Wimbledon Common"!

I also admit to thinking the Womble song meant they were calling themselves common

Poor kid. Do you put plums in her mouth too op?

I can't stand accent/language snobbery especially aimed at one so young. What happens when age three at nursery she starts correcting her peers with "we don't say x we say y?" Do you think that will endear her to people?

I think it's about approach.

My DM was once described in The Times as sounding like Lady Bracknell and it was important to her that we spoke without a regional accent, so she pulled us up on things like glottal stops - and we heard a lot of "there is a 'T' in the middle of waTer". DSis and I as a result of that, and despite having grown up in SE London have very neutral accents.

DH is also from the same area and does have a regional accent.

I find myself correcting DD1 now too, in the same way DM did - but I see it as giving her an advantage in life. Like it or not, people do make snap judgements about people by the way they sound and the grammar they use, so if I can remove that hurdle by putting in a little effort while they're young then why wouldn't I?

He best thing you can do is not correct her but repeat back to her in the correct words/sounds.

E.g. You ask a question and she says yep. You say "yes mummy, thankyou" or "you would like a glass of water please, of course blah blah blah" whatever you are talking about.

It works I do this with my children.

*The not He

You sound like my parents. My Dad went to private school and my Mum went to Grammar school and "we say XYZ" was the soundtrack of my life. I went to a bog standard secondary school and I was teased constantly at school for being 'posh' and chastised at home for not speaking properly.

Absolutely you correct a toddlers speach.

I did it all the time, I had too. We live in one country, DH is from this country but has an American accent when he speaks English. I absolutely did not want her saying 'Americanisms' (and I correct my DH too, when he speaks English!)

So she doesn't! Now she is 8 she has a perfect English accent and also perfect country we are in accent. But, it did take a bit of correcting along the way. Worth it now.

I would like to mention that a Bucks/Berks/whatever accent is no more posh than a Kentish or Somerset accent - it's all a snow job to make the rest of us feel inferior for no good reason!

DP is from Bucks and has that regional accent (except when trying to talk to builders or mechanics.. which is a whole other story). We live abroad, so my kids have an amalgam of an international accent - and they're all just fine. None is posher than another.

I went with 'ta' I have to say, even though it's not part of my everyday speech, because it was easy for me to use both for thankyou and please. It hasn't held my children back, they both have good manners and quite the turn of phrase (DS2 - 3 told DP the other day that something was 'of no matter' and then invited us to see his 'Greatest Invention' which had us giggling in the kitchen after!).

Sod anyone who judges people for their accent. Accents have no bearing on the content of someone's head in my experience.