Mother making her child's mother tongue a language she herself hardly knows

[AdoraLovesCake]

I have never done an AIBU before.

This morning I went to a cafe in the UK (where I live) with my 5 year old daughter.
A woman in front of me in the long queue turns around and asks my daughter how old she is. DD replies that she is five then goes to look at the cakes.
I then crouch down to the boy holding the woman's hand (he looked age 2 or 3) and I say "Hello little one, how old are you?"
He stares blankly at me and his mother says, "Oh no. He doesn't speak English." And I think "Ok, he doesn't speak at all."
But then his mother says, "He doesn't speak ENGLISH. He speaks Spanish. Even though my partner and I don't speak Spanish very well, and we intend to live in England forever. Our friend said Spanish was easy so we taught our son that. Then when he's older, he can learn English. He'll have a bigger brain by then.
She then was about to order and I saw her type into google translate for her son, "Do you want a cookie?"

Poor boy. Why would you teach your child as their first language a language that you don't know? He's going to turn into a five year old, not understanding anything anyone is saying, having to learn English, a very hard language. Babies will pick up their first language much easier won't they.

YABU: This is normal and a good approach to parenting
YANBU: Agree with OP, this is weird

xxxx Cora

I'm just here for the deletion message.

The only believable part is this is your first AIBU 😂

This makes sense in parts of America though. In Wales lots of non Welsh speakers send their children through Welsh medium childcare and education.

Well done on already having been up, out a dn back for a cake before 10am on. Sunday, what time do you have breakfast?

I know someone that did this and it basically resulted in her son being quite quiet and not speaking properly for a while because in order to learn this language he was only allowed to speak that language and nothing else. And I guess the poor kid just struggled with the vocab etc given neither parents spoke the language.

Don't be silly, Wish is way too upmarket for this nonsense. I think it was Temu.

And in the next chapter of Things That Never Happened, Cora speaks to a French baby, who's parents are teaching it to speak only Mandarin.

Wonder what the prompt for AI was

‘write me a ridiculous post for mumsnet about meeting a woman who can’t speak Spanish, but will only speak to her child and husband in Spanish and only use google translate and still haven’t learned basic sentences despite living through google translate for years. Also include that the mother is a complete over sharer and gave me, unprompted, her entire life plan’

That’s not odd. Best time to learn another language. As long as English is being spoken at home I think it’s a great idea.

And then everyone clapped.

You always know when it is a troll. They tend to only leave one message.

Shameful .
Try harder OP.
Fairly amusing though.
Next time don't add extraneous detail like "where I live" and "long queue" and "live in England FOREVER"
2/10 from me.

I didn't actually hear the little boy speak.

Sorry, I'm in the No way this happened camp. In order to communicate with your child in an{space} other language, you have to first know that language.

Of course not.

Children who don’t exist often struggle to talk.

I don't think sending your toddler to a non-English speaking creche is strange at all though. In Ireland there are lots of ''Naíonra'' where kids learn Irish. I have good spanish and attempted to teach my DC spanish, not ALL THE TIME though, I obviously naturally spoke English but they never picked up a single word.

Yes.
😂

Silly, OP. Having the child speak bad Google Translate Spanish in a sort of computer-generated robotic voice (sort of Stephen Hawking’s voice generator sound) would have been a much better ending.

The kid will learn English once at school. I have tenants who are Polish. When they arrived the children were about 9 and 6 and could only say a few words, yes, no thank you goodbye etc. 6 months later they were asking me if I was having a good day and chatting together in English. Young children pick up languages very quickly when immersed in them.

I do know someone who speaks to their children only in French even though it's not her native tongue, she has the most appalling accent and has about as good a command of French as Eddie Izzard.

So it's unlikely but possible

And then I woke up and it was all a dream . The end.

Obviously not given none of this actually happened

It's not April 1st @Cherrysoup , but every day is a trollday.

This didn’t happen so much, it unhappened things that had 🙄