Do your children have a different accent from you?

[UnquietDad]

I get the feeling this has been discussed before - apologies if it is old ground for anyone.

Have you moved to an area which is not your "home", or settled with a partner who is from a different part of the country, and found that you've, almost to your astonishment, raised children who speak totally differently from you? (i.e. from your personally, or from both of you?)

I suppose it's inevitable that children will pick things up from school. In our house I still find it odd and slightly jarring that my children have the "short Northern A" - DD will say "classe" and "grasse", and talking about going "oop" to school. And all three of them (DW, DD, DS) will take the piss out me for my Southern RP. (That is a "slightly irritated" face, not really "angry". Another new MN icon needed.)

I do know some fellow "southerners" at the school and some of their kids speak more like their parents than like their peers. I often mean to ask them how they do it!

I just find it terribly sad that a parent can find their own child's accent a source of irritation.

Honestly, then don't live there.

Expatinscotland Please dont think we're 100% serious (though I have called the adoption department in social services in case things don't improve).

Like I said I love, love, LOVE Sheffield, but if you must know I'm here for the Bradwell's ice cream and nothing else.

If you haven't tried it, you should.

Ugh! You made me use one of those smiley faces!

oh calm down expat

I hate the local accent, so shoot me

I hate snobbishness.

So shoot me.

expat - I don't, at the moment, have a choice.

I post on "serious" matters all the time.

Come on, this is a place where people will take two pages to moan that DH has not stacked the dishwasher. Cut me some slack.

I am a snob!

Shouldn't you be doing what I tell you!

oh it's not snobbish at all

it is an OPINION

I don't want my children to say "dowah" for door thank you

I'm not irritated by my children's accent, but I"m aware that they are often not understood by their peers (or adults for that matter). I had assumed that nursery/school would help to integrate them a bit more into the community, but it hasn't. There is occasionally mickey taking. I just want him to fit in - he has enough problems to deal with - so he already stands out.

Most people just don't understand and say things like "Where has he learned to speak like that?"

I hope they're not the rebellious type then, because I'd say things like that just to piss my parents off.

FWIW, I'm happy they can speak at all.

But I'm one of those SN parents, too.

No Easy Writer you are the Emperess of our Universe

Easy, expat! Surely it's not unreasonable to be amused or disconcerted when your children speak differently from you?

Dd1 went to nursery in Birmingham for a year when she was 3, and acquired more than a hint of Brum. Amusingly she used to correct my accent: "You shouldn't say 'baath', Mummy, you should say 'bath'." Mercifully the Brum disappeared quite quickly after we moved away, and the children now largely sound like us, with the occasional excursus into London inner-city talk. They both say 'eether', I notice, though dh and I both say 'either'. Not sure where that came from.

I'm only making a late bid to get a thread featured on the Home Page!

(Not really.)

Sorry. I was joking, I'm way too flipant.
Please smile.

In seriousness expat I do think I have a right to be irritated by it.

For example
I'm black (but with a very mixed race background), DP is white and red haired. Our twin daughters both look v. caucasian.

I am upset daily that I endure are you the babysitter, childminder, etc comments. I'm not, I'm their mummy, I want them to be like me (and it's not just so I don't have to endure spotty 16 year old oiks in supermarkets saying 'so where are your genes').

Don't get me wrong, ultimately it doesn't matter and I know that, but there is NOTHING wrong with wanting our children to be like us. I suspect it's human nature.

we have had accent threads before

some people hate certain accents, so what?

I am more concerned that it is pissing down outside and I am wearing sandals

Have you got your 'pooter out in the rain, you big naughty?

I'm Hispanic and American. My daughters don't look like me, they look like their dad, who's white.

But that's part of life. I married him and knew he was white and Scottish and that, if we had children, they might look Scottish and all white, and that if we brought them up here, they'd definitely speak like Scots.

People look askance at me when they call me Mummy sometimes.

Big deal! That's their problem, not ours.

Bigger fish to fry, tbh.

I kind of think you missed my point, or maybe I just didn't make it at all well.

I am at work

lighten up expat bloody hell fire god almighty woman

x

I have a right to express passion over this issue, though, OO, just as others do in other threads.

Sure you do.
You don't however get to make it sound as if we hate our own children. No one but you is being judgement (inappropriately, I might add) on this thread.

And when you post things like this:

Do you any idea how insulting and condescending that comes across?

And then people from 'certain' regions wonder why they're so disliked elsewhere.

It makes me wonder if you're really on about something else altogether.

All, bar one, of my children were born and raised in Scotland, though dh and I are both from Kent. None of our children has a Scottish accent.

I meant judgemental (obviously)

What a hoohaa.

I was a Brummie child. My mum was a posh Brummie and constantly corrected my accent to the point where I became seriously self conscious.

So have to agree with Expat here.

How's that happened Sue, please tell me!

UnquietDad what have you done!!!!