I know that if your child mis-pronounces a word you should still say it properly, but what if they have their own word for something?

[Tigerschick]

DD is 25mo. Her speech isn't wonderful but she is getting better everyday. She isn't putting words together yet but has quite a wide vocabulary.

If she mis-pronounces a word then I tend to repeat it correctly - not religiously or in a strict way. For example, one of our dogs is called Widget and she says 'tidgy' so I say, 'yes, Widget' or something similar.

My question is; what about things that she has her own words for?
She uses muslin squares as comforters and calls them 'ish'. We have no idea where she got this from and she knows what we mean when we say 'muslin' but she always says 'ish'. DH has started calling them 'ish' too and I'm not sure if this is the right way forward or if we should stick to calling them muslins.

This is just an example, there are a few other things that she has her own words for but, of course, I can't think of any right now!

I know that, in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't really matter but we want to do everything we can to help her language to develop so would welcome any advice or suggestions.
TIA

I like patkiller! DS2 (2) says "bugger" for bicycles and motorbikes...

we have boobies for blueberries. Te cause of much amusement when DS is in shopping trolley shouting "More Boobies" at the top of his voice while we pop around Sainsbury's, makes me feel very alpha mum that my child requests a superfood so loudly.

DD is 19m and has a big vocab, mostly only understood by us

If it is a word that she needs to know correctly like Milk I correct her, if however it is random like Frog I have left it. She always called a frog - widdup - as in the sound I make for it. Yesterday she suddenly said Frog really clearly all on her own. They get the right word eventually.

Don't over correct - they'll get there in the end. And the baby-isms are so wonderful that you want to keep them as long as you can. Mine are 12 and 7, and we still go on micnics instead of picnics and dunk bibis in our tea!

agee with seeker. It will come eventually. DS1 used to called bread "mar" - have no idea why but he stopped at some point as he doesn't anymore although I can't remember when he stopped.

We all call the remote control "the fat controller" though and the microwave is the "beep beep"

My tip would be just make sure that anyone who looks after your child knows what her word for her special muslim is too ...

My cousin looked after another of our cousins. Toddler was distressed and wanted her "noo noo" (i bet you can see where i'm going here eh? )
Cue babysitter "ermmmm, is a Toy?"
crying 2 year old says "no!"
"ermmmmm, a teddy?"
"no!"
"a dolly?"
"no!"
"a drink?"
"NO!"
"a cuddle?"
"NOOOOOOOOO!"
"oh sweetie, what is it?"
"its a noo noo ...wahhhhhh"

It's like these poor children who are taught bizarre ways of asking to go to the loo. I remember being unaccountably thick looking after my neice once when she started going on about wanting to "go somwhere" "Yes, darling, where would you like to go? The garden?""No, somewhere" "Of course - the playroom?" "NO-`SOMEWHERE!!!!!!!!" "Yes, darling......'

Aw, these are all so cute! DD is 20 months now and I love her little names for things. One of her friends is called Gabriel and she calls him 'Boodoo'. Swimming is 'wimmin', snowman is 'no-man', milk is 'mawk', garden is 'gard', jacket is 'jack', Charlie our cat is 'Cha-cha', and this week perfume has become 'mell-nice' (because it makes mummy smell nice...). She tends to miss off the beginning or ends of words. I frequently have to translate for DH - he just tends to nod sagely and say 'yes' when she is chuntering on...

I love the little toddler words for everything. Mine are three now, and they are all gettign replaced, and it's rather sad.

socks used to be icks
pockets was pockelettes
breakfast cereal was waffer
rheannon (dd) is Ranna

I think as long as there is consistancy they are still learning and they do drop them soon enough.

We have mixed consonant probs!. Sindowill (windowsill), pantlemeice (mantlepiece), fufferlfy (butterfly) nd my favourite 'jackanoonia' for union jack.

I use them myself now!

Feel quite sad when they grow out of some of them.
a few of my favorites are:
Faffwee-water
Boose-spoon
bready diddy man-gingerbread man

and yet she can say 'interesting' and 'fanstastic' with perfect clarity!

my dd frequently says words wrong delibrateley i think! when she was two she sould say grandad no problem at all but he is now reffered to as janjar! she has a rabbitt teddy she calls lellaby (lullaby)bunny but is perfectly capable of asking you to sing a lullaby!

and she does make up her own words i think she gets them of tv my dog is a wubbzy! she knows what a dog is every one eleses dog is a dog but her dog is a wubbzy!

Another one here with a nearly three year old who is beginning to miss the baby words. We still have 'amial' for animal and he will still say 'dak dak' for rice cake but will now also say rice cake and has always understood that rice cake=dak dak.

Hilarious early words:
wo-wo (kitchen roll)
win-win (washing machine)
gung-gung (this was how he said his own name and also a Thomas engine of the same name, so he knew what it meant ..)
babymoon - balloon
wan - van

We've always used the words with him, but also their proper names.

But his crowning moment was about this time last year, when he said "Deb-wa on telly" (Deb-wa=my friend Deborah). Who was he pointing at? Only Angelina Jolie.

We had mook too!

dubbish frisps bummy

"Ya ya" meant high chair - but also cheese, no idea why.
Now she is 2 and a half (and normally very eloquent) she comes up with a few odd ones, like at the moment "asha" is a favourite word....and "babbas" always makes her laugh. She also kept saying "law lords" at one point - eh???

Wellypops - lollipops
Dalek bread - garlic bread
cwaygroup - playgroup
cwenguin - penguin

arse cream - ice cream

Tribpot - love the Angelina Jolie story - nice for your friend! Similarly ds at around 2 used to insist that Des O'connor on Countdown was daddy ...not too flattering for dh!!

I love all these cute words and ds is growing out of them now too. We still have 'aboo' for balloons though.

Blueberries used to be bluebabies to him. So cute.

We had 'washer-chines', 'compoluters' and random other funnies, but the one that stuck was my ds calling his big sister 'Ruh' as he couldn't say Rhiane! Poor kid is in secondary school now, we don't call her that in front of her friends!

MY son from an early age has called ghosts woodoos pronounced like voodoo, I have no idea where that came from he's now 7 and continues to use woodoo.

we had mook too!

ds2 is 3.5 and calls the PC the poncuter, which I love.

aged 2 he always called his big brother Mika "Didda" and we sometimes call him that too, just to annoy him! He is now trying to teach our youngest one (1.5) to say his name as "Didda" too so he liked it really!

oh and Bugger for Sportacus!

My ds used to point at random men in our village and on TV and call out 'daddy' gleefully eg the man who drives the fruit and veg delivery van, the milkman, the postman, Sid from CBeebies - none of whom look anything like each other or my dh. The au pair started to get a very strange opinion of me and my lovelife (chance would be a fine thing) until we relaised that 'daddy' meant 'man'. Have now corrected him on that, although loving the other baby words like 'locloc' for chocolate and 'docdoc' for helicopter - I have no problem with the idea of these being part of our family vocabulary for years to come!

My ds2 has just turned 3 and went through all the usual ones loclat for choclate and so on.

The couple that remain are slightly bizare. He calls doughnuts 'grown ups' for some reason His grandma always brings them Breakaway biscuits which he calls 'microwaves'.

He knows the right words for them, he just won't use them

My older ds used to love Pingu and had little cuddlies of Pingu and Pinga when he was about 2. He used to tell us that Pinga was a stupid name for a penguin and called her Panga instead.