Both of my kids have always had great verbal skills, Daniel especially. They have good vocabularies and speak quite clearly for their age. When they mis-pronounce things, I almost never bother to correct them. The mistakes are adorable, for one thing. And for another, they have outgrown nearly all of them on their own, no intervention needed.
Daniel, however, is going through an intentionally lazy phase. He shortens words just because he can. When writing his name on papers at school, he stops at Dan. Because he can. It mostly makes me laugh, since he is clearly just like his mom and dad – perfectly capable of doing the work, but aware of how little he can get away with.
There is one development, in the past couple of days, that I do think I will try to correct. Mostly because I’m finding it annoying as hell. As with most four-year-old boys, he often has his head in the clouds and isn’t paying attention to what someone tells him. “What did you say?” has, apparently, become entirely too burdensome to say in its entirety. Because at least two dozen times today, I heard him say:
“Wha-say?”
“Wha-say, Mom?”
“Wha-say, Becca?”
But, of course, just because he’s asked you to repeat yourself doesn’t mean he’s ACTUALLY LISTENING the second time. So I get “wha-say” about six times in thirty seconds.
Oh, the random irritations of parenting, and the sudden realization that you sound like a crochety old lady.
“I can’t understand you when you mumble! Please speak clearly!”
I’ll just go soak my dentures, now.
Don’t worry Liz, I’m soaking right now. LOL
Love the photo! I took a similar one of a 6 month old baby last week, will let you know when I post it.
Alex’s shortening phase was “WATCHYOU SAY?”
Laughing, laughing, laughing. I also don’t bother to correct most of what is going on with A&B, for the reasons you’ve stated. But Brady has decided that “baby talk” is cute and I have to draw the line there. Brian thinks I’m completely over-reacting but something about regressing ON PURPOSE makes me insane. And adding a cute smile does’t make it any more acceptable. I’ll go soak my dentures with you now as I say to my four year old “Speak like a big boy.”
My son has quite a few speaking habits I have been working on (for months) to no avail. 1. Calling me Mama (in a whiny voice). No, I am Mommy or Mom. 2. Adding a “y” to the end of things to be whiny and babyish. 3. Overusing “them” – “them are going”. Clearly Ned would rather be the baby which is fitting since Jo wants to be the 3 year old. Penny? Well, she took to my correcting about “them” to heart so much that she overuses “they” – “we are going to see they”. And both kids and the word “yeah” – don’t get me started. But my family was always correcting my grammar growing up and I think it is important to be well spoken so I am continuing the tradition.
Mommy, Esq. recently posted..Small Kids; Small Problems
We’ve got the baby talk regression thing going on here as well. As Maya tries to speak better, Wilt’s intentionally trying to speak worse. It drives me absolutely batty!!! We try and tell him that Maya is learning how to talk by listening to him and that it’s important to speak correctly, but it’s almost like he’s continuing to do it to make me crazy.