...to want DS's nursery to not use words like "ta" and "doggie"?

[Naetha]

I understand the benefit of getting babies/young toddlers into the habit of saying "ta" instead of thankyou as it's easier to say, but when they're 2+ and saying thankyou perfectly well, isn't this a bit infantile?

And why doggie?? Surely dog is easier and straight to the point.

Am I just a snob?

Am officially a thicko commoner then

Ta - yep

Hiya - regularly

University educated - fuck, maybe I've blown the theory again

Also agree that at pre-school level it is just quite nice that DC have the awareness to acknowledge a gesture with appropriate gratitude - whether that be ta or thank you

And LOL at "would you be happy to spend the day with your DC childcarers". They're paid to look after, nurture and entertain them not meet MY social requirements!

"i think you have to be intelligent to teach life skills and social interaction."

Plenty of intelligent people use 'ta' (in the midlands, anyway), because it is colloquial, and 'doggie' - partly because it is 'mother-ese' and partly becauseof the correct explanation that Pixie gives. Understanding child development is something that many people understand by pobservation and experience and apply - like using words that en in 'y' rather than a consonant. Often people with experience know a lot more than intelligent people from university.

So yes, you are being very snobby indeed.

The majority of professional (qualified) nurses are not well paid though

Are they not very well educated?

hand on heart, who here has left their kids in the charge of people they wouldn't like to spend a whole day with themselves?

I can't agree with that at all, I chose a Norland nanny who had been privately educated because I did not want my children picking up the local accent and they do have neutral/news reader accents even now they are at local schools.
My concern would be that it would be an uphill battle to get rid of it as they grew older, better to start as we mean to go on and people are judged by their ability to speak properly.

"or extremely committed and intelligent people willing to overlook the fact they get paid vastly less than reflects the pivotal importance of their job, because they are so committed to it." Well, there are many, many people who get paid less than their education, intelligence and commitment would get them in the open market - academics, for a start.

"kids won't learn to speak if we all speak to them in some kind of weirdo baby language. well they will, they will learn to talk baby language." Not true, and clearly your education hasn't brought you into much contact with research into child language acquisition. where is moondog when you need her?

you didnt' blow it last time OR this time. All I have said is that people who work in childcare are not very well educated. Not that, as I explained above 'everyone who says ta is completely stupid' - it is so odd that you keep misunderstanding me - are you doing it on purpose? maybe I am just being really inarticulate, for which, apologies.

i know they are not paid to meet our social requirements, i am just wondering if anyone else shares the guilt I sometimes felt at leaving my kids with people i would not necessarily want to be left with myself! obviously not!

And fwiw, I don't like "ta" or "doggie" but recognise it as my own prejudice, not a fundamental flaw on the part of those who do use these words. How many adults do you know who say "doggie" as part of normal, adult conversation?

In my home language the word ta means love, and is particular of love of small children. So it is a good thing to say.

Also I am the grandaughter of a very rich succesful businessman, who lost everything in a civil war. His close family all dead, and he lost the will to live and lost all his belonging and died of homeless.

We are all one bad day away from the gutters. And nothing wrong with being a common person. Be happy you are alive.

x

By the way when I said that ta is common- that is not my personal view (am common as muck myself).

the subject of ta is a perennial topic for MN threads and the general concensus is that it is something that only the lower orders say.

I don't give a flying fuck, personally.

Its wot happens when you let commoners look after your little prince

No such thing as a neutral accent, Milly. you've got your children speaking RP, from the sounds of it. How old are they? Be interesting to see if they start to monitor the local accent (and how bad can it be?) as they get older.

absolutely. i am not a child language expert by any means. I am not going to remove my kid from a nursery if they say 'ta' there, but I do think it is a bit silly.
I am making the leap on this thread just to the wider issue of low pay in childcare. i am not saying EVERYONE low paid is uneducated, or everyone in childcare is thick.

am I the only one who thinks that childcare as a profession is not given the respect and pay that such an important job deserves? In Finland nursery staff have to be educated to degree level - reflecting the importance of the job and giving it some respect from the rest of society. It is not the job that all the dim girls do as they cannot do anything else, like it is here. Please tell me I have not been spectacularly unlucky and picked the only 6 nurseries in the whole world to have the majority of staff on low pay, with not much education and not a huge amount of intelligence??? Am I? If so, please let me know where all these nurseries full of masterminds with degrees are.

Send him to boarding school immediately

PCS - maybe people wouldn't 'misunderstand' you if you weren't so deeply insulting and didn't take such a snobbish attitude. I too am well-educated, yet I find my son's nursery workers extremely pleasant, well-mannered, articulate women who I would happily spend time with. The fact that they didn't get great GCSE results or whatever is irrelevant. Maybe you should broaden your horizons

I do get irrationally wound up by this sort of nonsense, so maybe I am misunderstanding you

But there is without doubt a lot of snobbery on this thread about something, IMHO, that really does not matter

Ta, thanks, thankyou

Hi, Hello, Greetings

As long as someone is being civil (friendly is a bonus) don't see a problem with greetings and acknowledgements of any kind

And i don't really care what standard of education my child's carers at nursery have attained. I just want them to care for them and play with them and help them to play with others nicely

All my son's nursery workers are kind and pleasant, seem to enjoy their work and the children. It has never crossed my mind what level of "intelligence" they are or what level of higher education they have reached. They probably haven't got degrees, but i don't really care.

He'll be scared for life

x-post crazycrazy. Damn typing skills.

yes maybe i should! is it really deeply insulting to state the facts of a situation?
Facts: people who work in childcare are not well paid and not well educated. .

To be perfectly honest, no, I wouldn't want to spend the day with some of the staff at DS's nursery. There's one woman in particular who is very enthusiastic and giggly and just over-the-top in general. She would irritate the hell out of me. However, she's brilliant with the children and they all love her.

They all used to say "ta" at nursery and so did we at home sometimes. DS said "ta" until he could say "thank you" and then he said "thank you".

Sometimes he says "doggie", sometimes "dog".

I can't get worked up about it. It's more important to talk to your kids than get worked up about which words you are using.

Absolutely childcare is not respected as it should be, but it's not always essential that everything be a graduate profession for people working in it to be extremely good. My mum was a nursery nurse for 50 years, and was utterly brilliant at it, though she had failed her 11+ as a child. Small children need kindness, patience, thoughtfulness, understanding, etc - I'm pretty highly educated (Masters, PhD, etc) but could not begin to be as good a NN as my mother was. It's not as simple as changing the qualifications - pay would definitely help, but just how much more are you willing to pay for nursery fees?

o ok, so others feel that the level of education or intelligence of the childcarers is not important so long as they are kind. fair enough. and that is clearly the majority view as otherwise childcarers would have a much higher position in society.

i just think, it is one of the most important jobs a person can do - spending time with a child during their formative pre-school years - and so i'd like to see people who had studied and have in depth knowlegde of child development, psychology, structured play etc, to do that job. I just think it is such a shame that it is a job we don't value more highly.

I think it is a bit of a classist snobbery thing to dislike things like 'ta'. But that makes me a raging snob as I really don't like it AT ALL- I'd prefer to hear my dcs saying 'tak yoo' until they can pronounce it properly. I feel the same way about loo and 'toilet'!!! I don't think it's got to do with being thick, I think it has to do with how people are brought up themselves and what they think is acceptable and/ or normal. I bite my tongue when my nanny says 'somethink' though and just correct the children when she's not around . It's more important that childcarers love and nurture and protect our children as well as teaching good manners imo whatever our pet peeves are about this type of thing. Off to feed my kitty-catties now.

PCS - one does not need to be highly educated to speak well, have manners, relate well to people and have fun with/care for children. I don't see how you have to relate intelligence to the ability to speak English properly, and this is why you are coming across as a snob

Also, well-educated doesn't necessarily mean climbing the academic ladder so to speak. One can be very 'well' educated but choose not to take the formal academic route post 16 for whatever reason

I absolutely take my hat off to the lovely patient, kind, women who look after someone elses little darlin brat all day, the fact that they say 'ta' instead of 'thankyou' i couldnt give a fuck, they deserve a medal