3.5 yr-old copying different speech at nursery?

[ChipsnCheese]

In the few days since the half term hols, 3.5 yr old has exaggerated poor diction and pronuciation. Imagine "water" with an exaggerated dropped "t". Although incredibly irritating, should we ignore and hope it'll pass, or try to nip it in the bud? Don't get me wrong, we all drop "t"s, but this is just daft.

I'd ignore it - she's probably just trying it out. If you prefer her to speak properly then just persistently misunderstand when she deliberately mispronounces it. My own DD is currently experimenting with dropping the ends of words - so "piece of cheese" has become "pee uh chee" - despite the fact that she's perfectly capable of pronouncing it properly.

I would tell him once that 'in this family, we say "water"'. He's 3.5 so old enough to know what he's doing. If he knows you don't like it and carries on, it falls into the realm of attention seeking and deserves to be ignored.

DS is exactly the same with 'yeah' but he's only 1yo so we keep telling him that it's 'yes' and he now self-corrects :o

They pick up all sorts from each other so I shouldn't worry too much. In a few months you'll start to notice how creative she gets with language as they start to understand verbs etc. but not necessarily apply them correctly, they suddenly get the 'rules' (e.g. they say goed instead of went), and in some senses it seems like they go backwards as they never used to do that (in actual fact it is development and language broadening). This is possibly the first 'experimentation'.

That said you can encourage her to use the t without hammering it home. 'waTer has a T sound in it, see if you can say it with the t in next time as it will help you learn to spell later' or something along those lines and leave it at that.

Of course some people would hammer it home and expect that works too, just not my personal preference.

I would correct and do correct dd, 6, using the "in our family" line. Sooner or later it'll come up for discussion why do say it like that in our family, but not at three.

thanks everyone. Have been trying your tips. A small update - interestingly, I'm now not sure that he knows he's doing it. When we comment and he tries to say things correctly, he sort of contorts his mouth to try to repronounce the start of the word, and more often than not, says the offending word again. OR says "t....t....t...woor_ah". He's now dropping Ps and Ks etc too! Try saying pickle or purple without the middle consonants. Would be great if he was auditioning for oliver twist. maybe it's a developmental stage.
SenoritaViva - we had the "getted" instead of "got" etc a few months back. Good to know that's to be expected!
hoping it passes.