Would you correct your 16/17 for.....

[bookworm8500]

CONSTANTLY saying 'freakin'? Freakin' this, freakin' that. It's genuinely nearly every sentence and we have much younger children in the house too.

She's also recently started to stop saying the 'th' sound, so instead of saying 'think', she says 'fink' and instead of 'thought' she says 'fort'. I ignore this.

It just sounds awful and I hate it. I thought this stage of talking badly to sound cool was over by about 14 years old, but it's stayed since sixth form

YABU freakin' unreasonable to correct her
YANBU and I would freakin' correct her too

I would correct them on the fink, fort.
Not on the freakin.

What would you be ‘correcting’? You can dislike her use of the word but that doesn’t make it incorrect.

Genuinely you'd be happy for this to be said constantly round 8/9 year olds?

My boys used to speak in a kind of estuary/gangster/ roadman dialect. I found it really cringy as they are nice middle class boys with standard northern accents normally. But they needed to fit in at school ... or they would stand out, and that's rarely a good thing in an urban high school. And it used to carry over into home sometimes. I didn't like it. Thankfully they outgrew it as they became more secure in their own identities/ personalities.

I probably wouldn't tbh. They go through phases at that age and it could be worse tbf

It's just slang. It's annoying, but I don't see how it's offensive!

Genuinely don’t understand the problem with freakin’.

it’s a widely accepted socially acceptable version of fucking.

I used to work with a grown woman who said fink. I thought it made her sound thick as mince. The use of freakin’ wouldn’t bother me. She’s just expressing herself.

@GraveAndQuietThis is REALLY good to know, thank you. It's been this real sudden change since starting sixth form. It sounds really cringy as like your boys, just beneath it is a really well spoken girl!

Yes.

I'd correct.

If they can't code switch (I think that's the term) when talking with you then they won't be able to when talking with teachers, or employers, or clients, so need to speak 'well' all the time.

It's not swearing to me. If she was saying "fuck this" constantly - different matter.

I would correct 'fink', though. I don't like that.

Yanbu. One of my teens goes through phases of starting to incorrectly pronounce things eg “oVVer” rather than ‘other’. As well as things like holding a knife incorrectly at the dinner table despite being brought up to know how to do it and holding it correctly for well over a decade. I crack down on it every time. I try to let things slide as much as I can so I’m not constantly nagging, but people WILL make judgments on things like this (plus I hate to see it/hear it) so I make sure I correct it.

eta with vocab I will let it go, eg bro/bruh and all the similar “youth” words as they’re just joining in with their peers and I know they’ll grow out of it whereas incorrect pronunciations will become a habit that sticks.

no

My ds uses Freakin'. I prefer it to the alternative so I let it pass.

I couldn't live with fink or fort though.😱

Wouldn't even occur to me to be bothered by this tbh

No freakin way, its just a phase, annoying but inoffensive. Let them be.

OK, I'll turn my attention the the fink/Fort bit and try and ignore freakin'.
Parenting teens is a tough job!

I'd correct fink and fort, freakin' probably not but we're a house not bothered by swears, unless it's directed at someone.

I'd also correct toilet and pardon though.

I would, in a ‘that makes you sound like a child and is really very irritating way’ I correct over use of ‘like’ and so this isn’t much different.

They can talk how they want to their friends but ‘normal’ language is needed at other times.

I think once they get to 16/17 your ‘correcting’ will be fairly ineffective

I’d find it annoying but not offensive or inappropriate. I think you need to pick your battles.

It wouldn't bother me at all. They could be constantly saying much worse at that age.

I’d adopt that style of speech myself, they’d soon give it up.