Princess Butterfly has entered this phase where she is constantly chattering, asking questions, offering her input, explaining something, or telling me her latest brilliant idea for making my tasks easier. Holy cow! I try very hard not to ignore her and about half the time when she asks questions I ask her to puzzle through the answer (mom, why do they like eating outside? PB, why would you like to eat outside?) especially since she only seems to listen to my answers less than half the time. I wonder if it's a plea for attention or validation. There are relatively few kids her age around here that we end up spending quite a bit of time with kids couple years younger than her. Not a bad thing, but it certainly doesn't encourage her language skills. I've been noticing her immature grammar and have been working with her on repeating a phrase back to me with correct form. It drives Man up the wall when I do that b/c he's so tired of grammar he could just pull his hair out.
How do I work with these things without seeming too negative or excessively critical? Man thinks she should clear all this up at school, but I feel like she needs to start at home. She gets into speech ruts so badly that even attempting to repeat a phrase in correct form is extremely difficult and stressful for her.
What this is, mom?
Do you mean, "what is this, mom"?
Yes, what this is.
Try saying it like this please: what is this, mom?
-grunt of protest- Mom, it don't sounds right like dat!!
And while watching Shrek 2: Does donkeys don't like rain?
She's 5 years old and we're still working on banana -- she says padana. For almost 6 months she couldn't say "nemo" until Tag got old enough to say it right at which point she made the switch. She has a very hard time making the "th" sound or even a hard "t" sound.
Am I just making more of an issue of this than I really should? I don't know what to expect out of her and in the mean time one simple exchange of information takes 10 minutes while we talk about the correct way to put it together and practice a few times, and then there are hundreds of other ideas she wants to chat about all day long.
(and watch, now that I've gone through this whole vent about her imperfect grammar, several of you will notice several glaring errors on my part. pot, kettle, and all that. ) ;)
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I don't think you have a problem. There are several psychological studies that show that mothers feel compelled to correct their kids' grammar. The fact that it's stressing her out, however, is a problem.
I often garble my grammar when speaking but it's because I'm thinking way ahead of what is finally coming out of my mouth. So, stopping and thinking about what I want to say (all the way to the end of the phrase) and then saying it has helped me correct that problem.
What's interesting about the examples you've shared though makes me wonder if there's a learning disability behind it. The grammar issues are separate from the articulation issues.
MS is still having articulation issues. We bought speechercise v. 1 & 2 from a homeschool company to try to work on those from home. We're just starting, so I'll let you know if they help. A number of people seem to swear by them (including speech pathologists I've talked to) and they're relatively inexpensive ($14 each).
Beyond that, we've cut out a lot of the junk he listens to (like tv) and have begun listening to a number of audio books. If you still have your library card from the city we mutually lived in together, you can go to the website and check out a number of free audiobooks for download. The audiobooks model proper grammar and that's stored somewhere in their little brains. This HAS made a huge difference with MS and Princess although MS still confuses she/her he/his. Princess feels really self-conscious about her mistakes so I'll say:
Princess: We have to put this in hers box.
me: "Oh, we should put this in her box?"
So, I'm reflecting back what she says in the proper grammar form but I'm not making her repeat it.
You are correct in that if something's become an ingrained bad habit it's harder to fix it.
Good luck! HTH!
That does help. I've quit making her repeat something back to me if it's a stressful situation, but I still try it every now and then with a calm voice when it appears she's in a better learning mode. I do the saying it back to her thing ("what this does?" "Oh, what does this do? It's a funny looking can opener.") I would be very curious to know how the speechercise works out. I'll have to check out the audio books as well. I think though that my Princess would do better with the real book in her hands as well as hearing it from the computer. I'll have to see what I can coordinate between the various libraries.
Oh! And breakthrough with banana! She says "bamana" now instead of padana. So we're getting closer, and now Man has jumped on my bandwagon of repeating what she said but saying it correctly.
And I know what you mean about your mouth catching up with your brain. I often combine two words with my mouth while my brain is busy trying to decide which one to use. It's gotten me into trouble on more than one occasion. ;)
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