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"?

@Stripeymug I get posher as I get nervous too 🙈 Dh said if I get really flustered I end up sounding like Hugh Grant and stumbling my words. 😂

Teaching someone to pronounce words "properly" will have very little effect on helping them to spell. Consider

bough
cough
dough
knight
doubt
scene
scissors
height

...and countless other English words that reflect historical/mixed heritage pronunciation rather than current RP.

@scampimom My dad says project differently to me and I always find it really jarring! 😂

Lots to take away from this so a big thank you very much for those who replied.

I'll try and be less/ sound less of a twat in future as well.

Oh dear haven't RTFT but gosh no leave the girl be! Language acquisition is so important and kids at that age (well all ages !!) Need to feel good about themselves. By saying no we don't say this
she will feel like she is doing wrong.

You're seeming rather judgemental and stuck up if I'm honest and i would hope you don't bring your daughter up with this attitude. My husband and I are both upper middle class and live in a very naice area. High earners etc. But we both have very broad accents. Hasn't done us any harm so i suggest you calm that idea down. The class division attitude in my opinion is much more damaging to your DD than her pronounciation

No need to apologise glitter.

To me, it's not about the society's views or the accent etc. It's just makes sense to teach kids to speak well from an early age. As soon as they are able. I also don't believe in the whole baby talk thing. We always spoke in full sentences, and I think this is the biggest thing that helped with the kids and speech.

Have to say, I do find (most) people who claim they are middle class (and insist they are because they live in a nice area, they have a new car, and are high earners,) are the ones who are least likely to be middle class. They want to be, but they aren't.

I know a number of genuine middle class people, and they never ever ever mention they are middle class. They are often very ordinary, they dress down, and they have an old banger of a car. And not all of them talk with a 'posh' accent either.

glitteryjellybean I was once in a panic at work and getting posher by the second, my lovely Scottish colleague made me laugh by saying "Calm the fuck down Queenie, no one died"

@Stripeymug Haha! That's awesome. I used to know a Scottish girl who had a Home Counties accent. Born and bred in Scotland but just sounded English. People would never believe her!

Sounds reasonable to me. We never went with the whole 'taaaa' thing either. Way I see it, if he is too young to say 'Thankyou' then he is excused from saying it. He now says thank you and please at age 3 with no prompting and says it fine.

He also went through the 'yep' stage. and we corrected to 'yes' each time. Just a simple 'it's yes sweetheart, not yep' and now he says yes with no issues. He is a confident little boy and I don't think correcting him has done any harm to his confidence at all

Research suggests that none of your corrections will make any difference. She'll speak the way her friends at school speak, and there's nothing you can do about it I'm afraid.

I love regional accents and dialects and although you mean well I think classist prejudice is perpetuated by well-meaning people like yourself.

I model correct words. Like PPs have mentioned, DS2 has been putting a glottal stop in "wa'er". I frequently find specifically is spelt as "pacifically" because of the pronunciation, so it can have an effect. I also find mumbled speech hard to pick out so have to ask my DCs to slow down and speak clearly so I can hear them.

They are growing up with an odd fusion accent as DH and I have very different accents that are anomalous to our area. This means that DS1 will go "Oop to the barth" DH confuses me as he can't distinguish the difference between death and debt which can be surprisingly difficult to pick up in context.

The only issue I have with accents is when they are too broad to be understood beyond their locality. I used to struggle with people born and raised within 5 miles from me as it was much thicker there!

Yes, I do.
I don't think it's unreasonable to expect 't' to be pronounced etc.
I don't say 'we say x darling, I just say, it's water, not war er. If they do it again, they get the look.
My mother did it with me, it didn't give me any complexes, I am now accent natural.
Anyone who thinks people don't make judgements on particular accents is wrong, IMO.

Anyone who thinks people don't make judgements on particular accents is wrong, IMO.

People don't necessarily think that. A lot of posters here seem to be saying, rather, that making judgements on accents is wrong/unpleasant; and that people like the OP, deliberately or not, just help to perpetuate these attitudes.

The posh v common thing is a different issue entirely that i'm also rolling my eyes over. Yes Great As a former SLT I agree entirely. I think once you go through that training you recognise the OP for the goady shite it is.

This thread has really surprised me!
To me, accents are totally superficial and have no bearing on a person's behaviour, nature, happiness and fulfillment. I prefer to spend my energy teaching my kids (sorry, children) how to behave, have good values, be good natured and happy and have a love of learning. Oh, and that anyone who judges them based on their accent is rather superficial and not worthy of their friendship or employment.

Kids will try out different ways of speaking. Let them. It's part of finding their way in the world and discovering who they are.

The OP is wrong... Most people DON'T assume someone is less of a person than them, or 'common' if they have a regional accent. I have known some very smart and intelligent and highly educated people with Brummie and Scouse and Cockney accents, and some very badly educated people who barely scraped through their GCSE's who sound like Kate Winslet.

Also, unlike the OP, most people wouldn't call themselves middle class, whilst calling their husband 'common,' in addition to worrying about their children ending up like him! That's just awful IMO. I wonder if he knows how she feels/what she thinks?

I have often been mocked and been called 'posh' because of my accent (I'm really not, I just lived in a 'well spoken' region for a while as a child).
Please do not tell your DD she is 'wrong' or mock your husband's accent, ever. It is very insulting to imitate someone's accent in a derogatory way, and telling your DD 'we don't say that' will make her think she has done something wrong, when really you should be encouraging her speech.

DH and I do as others have suggested and just say the word as it should be said when DS doesn't say a word correctly, regardless of whether he's dropping 't's or just incorrectly pronouncing the word. He's just learning and our job is to encourage and nurture him, not make him feel like he's doing it all wrong.
Fwiw DH has a regional accent, almost everyone here does (Scotland), but I would never consider that 'common' because it is different from the way I speak. I'd much prefer DS to pronounce words correctly with a Scottish accent than be mocked for having a 'posh voice' like I was at high school. That way he will fit in and his prospects will be as good as he makes them.

I have a regional London/Essex accent. From a WC background but Oxbridge-educated and now MC. I was briefly teased mildly at University for my accent by a very few unimaginative, close-minded people. I think that people who are unable to listen to what people have to say, rather than how they say it, are to be ignored really.

My 3 year old corrected my speech the other day! I'd said "shall we see if we can spot the diggers out of the window?" in my Yorkshire accent, she laughed and said "silly mummy, it's winDOW not winder!"

If she's 2 it won't make a jot of difference directly correcting her.

I also am very well spoken and 100% believe that it is a very large reason that I have gotten very far in life (so far, I'm only 19).
HOWEVER, at barely two I think you are more likely to discourage your little one from attempting to speak (particularly words she is less sure about) than you are to correct her.
I'm a childminder and usually don't attempt to correct any speech until about 3-4 years old. Repeating the correct word back would be more age appropriate that outright saying she is incorrect.

I have a 2 and 3 year old. I correct them to speak properly; we say thank you not ta, bottom not bum etc etc.

People should speak well, so I think you're quite reasonable.

Can't you just say the accent he has rather than describing it as "common"?

That sentence says so much.