3 year old dropping his T's

[Ruperta]

My 3.5 year old has started dropping his Ts. It only started last week when we were up north visiting the relatives. Everything has all of a sudden has a cockney twang for example water is waw-er, bottom is bot-um, We live in south east london and all of a sudden he sounds so 'sarf london'. We don't speak like this at home but he does go to preschool 2 days a week

I am hoping it is a phase but I don't know how to respond, PIlL said to just ignore and he will stop but it is very difficult to do. I have just been repeating the words after he says them, saying them properly.

Is this a normal speech development, what is the best way to handle it?

I don't know if this is the "right" thing to do, but I correct it because it drives me crazy.
I pretend not to know what she's saying until she says it properly.
I think I'm fighting a losing battle tbh coz she'll go to school in Sept & is a product of her environment & we live in a non posh area of nw London.
I keep joking about Swiss finishing school or elocution lessons but short of a lottery win I don't know what the answer is.

My 3.3 yr old DD has just started doing this too and it drives me to distraction. I started to correct her every time but that soon wore thin. Then I vaguely remembered my now 8.8 yr old DS doing exactly the same thing at that age and he doesn't drop his t's any more so I wouldn't worry, I do think it is just a phase.

If I am honest I think you are all being a bit up your own , it is only natural that a child is going to pick up the local dialect and slang. It's just a natural part of growing up.

Surely it is better for the child to be learning to speak and be able to communicate in a way that they feel comfortable rather than spending half of their time being corrected and maybe hindering their development as they are too scared to try and experiment with certain words, because they think that it will annoy Mummy and Daddy.

I think you just need to leave them to it and let them find their own voices. That or move to an area where you do like the accent and dialect. Which is just a stupid way to go about life.

As a Londoner born and bread I find it slightly offensive that you are insulting the way we speak.

It may well just be a phase that they are going through, or they may speak like that their entire lives. You just need to learn to accept that.

I don't live in or near London but my ds went through a stage like this so i just repeated what he said but with the Ts in. It passed. I don't like hearing it either.

Mine do a lot of this. We don't live in London but my family are all from East London so I do drop a lot of my own t's. Therefore I am in no position to correct the DC, and I don't. Actually now I think about it, I do if they drop the t in the middle of water, because I don't drop that one myself, but I drop loads of others so that's very hypocritical of me.

Basically kids will always end up speaking like those around them, so if you don't want them having a sarf London accent, you need to move!

I used to correct it when dd1 (now 8) was the same age. Only so she knew what the word was and would be able to recognise it when learning to read and write (I know that the spelling of loads of words doesn't make sense with how they sound but it just felt like a good idea for her to be aware of all the letters).

At 5 she got cheeky and used to say 'but my teacher says 'wor-er' for water'. I used to say she could say what she liked when she was 18 but while learning to speak and read she should pronounce it properly.

I think there's a big difference in an accent (which I have) and actually dropping letters. Dd1 has more than one accent. She can do proper south london as that is, after all, where she's from. This is classic playground speak with lots of 'safe' 'sick' etc etc. But she also has a slightly 'posh' voice which she flips into sometimes (of her own volition but generally when with slightly posher sounding people).

I don't have any problem with her having an accent. I have one myself and it's never held me back. However I do think you need to be able to slow down and pronounce words properly for when you need to speak to non locals and its good to get that ability in early.

So I would correct dropped letters and words rolled together but not in a way that makes her feel uncomfortable about her accent - or in fact that makes her snooty about other people's accents.

He has probably been doing it for a while, but because you were away from your home environment, in an area where a different accent was stronger, you probably just became more aware.
Many children will pick up the accents they hear around them, possibly at nursery.
Both my DCs went through a phase of 'f' instead of 'th', another common S London trait, but with gentle correction, both got over it.
I think it is important, as when they get older, children tend to spell words as they say them. A missed 't' or and extra 'f' can make quite a difference then.

"I think there's a big difference in an accent (which I have) and actually dropping letters"

Of course there isn't. Most accents involve dropping some letters. A London accent is just one example of that. You can't simultaneously speak in a cockney accent whilst also enunciating every single letter of every word, therefore the accent itself involves dropping letters.

There is hardly no difference between an accent and dropping letters in the South East at least.

I think I over-corrected mine, so for a while they tried to correct all the adults around them. (including me sometimes). It was embarrassing!

Yes. And double negatives are more common in some dialects but its really important to correct them if you want your kids to write well in their native language regardless if where they grow up. Saying f for th is gone when you're old enough to spell well but it's hard to explain that it's think not fink if that's all they've said for 5 years.

There is a lot more to a London accent than dropping letters. And telling a child they are missing letters won't make them lose their accent if they're surrounded by it all the time.

I agree with flowery, makes perfect sense.

I believe that all children will develop and learn at their own pace if left to some extent to their own way.

By trying to force children to do things in a certain way you either end up hindering their development or forcing them to rebel against you.

There is more to a London accent than dropping letters, but dropping them is an intrinsic part of it, the same as many accents. It would be naive to believe it's possible to bring up a child attending a state school in SE London and have them never dropping any letters, so correcting every single time forever is going to get very wearing!

I think you are massively over-thinking this. Kids in Northern Ireland say "Wader", sheffield kids say "watter" etc etc etc. Enlglish is not a phonetic language so I wouldn't worry about the connection with reading and spelling.

DD did this at 3. I corrected her. She's now 4 and pretty well spoken, but she now corrects me.