The problem with writing posts when you’re angry is the risk you’ll sound like a ranting lunatic.
Disclosure: Please do not continue reading if you have an aversion to ranting lunatics.
For those who’ll allow me a few moments to let off steam, here’s my story.
Since Ryder first started talking, he – like practically every child – somehow came up with quirky approximations that loosely resembled the word he was trying to say. For example, “Eleven” was “E-leggy” and the “remote” was the “o-mote”.
It’s cute! Trying to decode Ryder, and now Reid, is one of my favourite pass times. I take pleasure in knowing that I am one of the few people who understands their secret toddler language, and realize that all too soon, they’ll be speaking like little English professors. Well, maybe not quite as eloquently, but certainly you see my point.
In fact, Ryder has pretty much grasped the correct pronunciation for almost every word now, save a few he still has trouble with. But you know what? Don’t care. Every time he pronounces a word incorrectly, I do my best to repeat the word back to him slowly – with emphasis on the correct way to say it. So, if he says: “Mommy, can I have some See-yal?” I’ll respond with, “Yes, you can have some CE-RE-AL.”
And I leave it at that. No linguistic exercises, no penalties for poor language, no bug fuss.
Sounds reasonable?
I admit I’m being a little nostalgic, because both boys have lost so many of the funny words they once said, and I know that they’re minutes away from growing up too fast. So, if Reid wants to say “Frawberries” for a few more weeks, or a few more months, it’s all good.
Begin rant.
After picking up Ryder from school yesterday afternoon, I decided that we needed to pop into the grocery store for some more snacking goods. Ryder, who’s always pleased to have a little alone time with Mommy, was bouncing up and down, talking a mile a minute. I filled up my little hand buggy with fruit and cookies, and made my way over to the check out, where Ryder proceeded to ask me if we could go see the MINI Coopers at their home.
“Not today,” I said. “I have to work a little tonight.”
“Okay, Mommy, if we can’t go today, maybe we’ll go to Mordor.”
“Uh huh,” I replied, heaving a large bunch of bananas on the belt.
Alright, so you’ve probably guessed that “to Mordor” means “tomorrow”, and we are not actually visiting the evil Sauron at his fiery lair in Middle Earth.
Ryder pressed on…
“Will Reid come with us to Mordor?”
“Hmm…” I replied as I scanned the fat content of a carton of yogurt.
“We can go to Mordor, right Mommy?”
“I want to go to Mordor! Can we go visit to Mordor?”
“Mommy! I want to go see the MINIs! And we’re going to Mordor! Say it!”
Must admit: had my mommy filter on. As in, if I don’t hear Ouch! Help! or Oops! – I will pretty much ignore everything my child says. Plus, I’ve done my best on multiple occasions to respond with “TO-MOR-ROW”, and hey, he’ll get it eventually.
Didn’t realize, however, that there was an 6-year-old-ish boy and his mother standing behind us in line. Since Ryder was speaking quickly and with much animation, the boy was becoming increasingly interested in our conversation.
“Mom!” he said. “Can we go to Mordor too?” he asked with wide eyes.
“They’re not really going to Mordor,” she scoffed. “The little boy is trying to say tomorrow but his Mom isn’t bothered to correct him”. She lowered her voice, barely audible. “When she really should be telling him that he’s not pronouncing something the right way.”
YES, those are fighting words.
I *could* have told her to mind her own business, and that she has no idea if my son has a speech impediment, or if he has been practicing the correct pronunciation of that word for weeks, or if I simply don’t bother to constantly correct something I know will come around anyways. He’s not going to say “To-Mordor” when he’s 18, asshat!
Instead, I sweetly smiled at her as I collected my credit card from the cashier.
“I’ll think about it…,” I replied. “….. to Mordor.”
What are some of the quirky words that your child once said?
That was the cutest story until an outsider had to spoil it. I remember my daughter Christina (who is now 17) with a huge speech impediment. I love you was “lah loo” and when I talked to her on the phone the first thing she’d say is “Hi Mom, I’m Tine!” In fact, I have a calendar made with a picture of her and it says “Hi Mom, I’m Tine!” on it.
Today she speaks quite well and she has no horrible childhood memories because of her impediments. We teach what we can and there are some of those things that we just let go……..because we know that eventually it’ll work itself out. Great answer to that b****
“Lah loo” is the most adorable expression ever!
I choose to let go of the little quirks in language because I really do find it adorable. Truly, doesn’t bother me! Too bad some people have to spoil the fun – I’m guessing her son pronounced every word perfectly from birth? GAH!
My kid calls scones “stones”. Now we all call them stones.
So cute! We do that a lot too – Ryder called yogurt O-CHÉ for the longest time… so now we just call it o-ché.
ahhh! My blood pressure would have been through the roof! Though being non-confrontational I likely would have done the same thing. I can’t imagine every saying that in the grocery line. She has kids obviously…. Oh, I get it. She’s one of those perfect parents who don’t let their kids be kids.
Have a great day Lena, today and to-mordor.
My tongue tied almost 3 year old has a lot of those “only mommy knows my words” too.
Se-mote instead of remote is his current biggest one. You know, “Where’s the Se-Mote, I want to watch Toopy!” I hear this all day long………
I was almost at my boiling point Jen, I can assure you!
She can come have English lessons with my son any day, if it bothers her so much. Until then, let a kid be a kid! Well said.
And what is it with “remote”? I’ve got an o-mote and de-mote to add to your se-mote, LOL!
lol oh lordy, yeah, good job Mama! oh if only the kids weren’t around lol my 6 year old still says ‘hang-ga-burger’ for hamburger and I secretly hope he never stops!
Are you kidding? I INSIST you call them hang-ga-bugers! Too sweet!
Wow. Lina. Grace under fire! LOVE your response. What is wrong with that woman? I bet she is one of those moms that obsess over everything that she seems as “wrong” or “slow” with her kid. Poor Kid.
As an aside, Max is approaching three I must add, a pretty clear speaker. He has some tense issues – as in “My hungry,” for I’m hungry. I don’t care. I think it’s so cute and it will work itself out. I do miss some of the “baby words” he used a few months ago:
“Da-pud-da” meant “strawberry.” (really?!)
“Orang-ging” meant “orange.” (close!)
“Geygie” meant “blanket.” Which he actually still calls his beloved knit blanket I made for him.
By the way, I love the musical “Annie” and my favourite song is “to Mordor!”
Poor kid indeed! Wonder what happens when he gets a math problem wrong!
LOVE da-pud-da – it’s SO secret language! I treasure toddler talk and like you, are perfectly okay to let it work itself out!
Correct them?! No way…we join in. Tomato is now motato in our house. They’ll eventually figure it out, but until then, I’m taking in all the cuteness I can.
Motatoes…. YUM! I’d love to bottle up the cuteness – since yesterday, I’ve made the decision to stop correcting him, period.
Wow, I can’t believe the audacity of that woman!
My daughter used to say “mare-e-oat” for “remote”. Only yesterday did I discover that she says remote now. Sigh.
Ah, sigh. Isn’t it depressing to know they’re growing up? And so quickly? I hope my “o-mote” days aren’t over any time soon :)
ANY spider is a trant-la and if you get hurt you go to the hostable. Hang ga bers are my sons favourite food and he needs a mapkin to wipe his face…..
Please I want to go to Mordor too! :D
Hostable! Adorable! Love live the toddler talk! And yes, you can come to Mordor!
Great post. I enjoyed reading it. It was so cute until that woman opened her mouth.
Haha I know right? Stupid twit! None of her business!
Wow! Whispering condemnation. I’d hate to be married to her.
I miss those days, and some of the phrases have stayed in our family vocabulary. One of my sons was quite proud of his good remembery. Mine is abysmal; I wish I’d written down all those cute sayings.
“Whispering condemnation. I’d hate to be married to her.” Oooohh…. good point.
Good remembery! LOVE IT!
Awesome post! Thanks for sharing!
Nice response to that RUDE woman! = P My son pronounced his k’s like t’s – so it was kinda hilarious when he would publicly want to go pet some lady’s nice “kitties” hahaha!!
OMG dying of laughter! I’ve spent the last 2 minute thinking of things that start with K that can replaced with a T… but nothing is better than titties!
= ) His older cousins had a great old time getting him to say things like “I LOVE KITTIES”!!! hahaha
Dear lord I wish there weren’t so many parents out there who think they are doing it better than the rest of us. Seeing as I shy away from any confrontation, I probably would have done exactly as you did – smiled and went on my way…while silently fuming at the audacity of the woman. Personally I LOVE the mispronounced words. I wish that I would have recorded every single one of them. It won’t be too long before I forget that they even existed and that makes me sad. I LOVE that my three year old pronounces yellow, ‘lellow’; doesn’t always say the letter ‘f’, and typically replaces it with the letter ‘w’ (a fire fighter becomes wire wighter). It is just so darn cute, and I know won’t last long. Great post!
Kim, I was fuming alright. It took every fibre of my being not to tell her off! I LOVE the mispronounced words too. And wire wighter is beyond precious!
LOL…this was so funny. Needless to say my kids have made a few slip ups and both have been in speech therapy so we got some interesting ones. In the library one time my son told his puppy to *sit*. Needless to say with his slurred speech it came out as something not so pleasant. Thankfully the elderly lady nearby just had a little chuckle about it and moved on.
Now my daughter who uses sign language in addition to her speech due to her hearing loss, quite typically uses the wrong sign for Thank-you. If this sign is changed from moving your hand in front of your chin to under your chin you are instead say F*ck you. Our deaf friends gets a good little chuckle out of it. She will outgrow it as she gets older.
Let kids be kids!
Hahaha love the “sit” reference! Too funny! And I’ll remember the sign language faux pas… thank you for the warning!
Love this post and LOVE your response! So great and honestly I love little speech things with kids too. My 8 year old daughter {and excellent speaker, reader, and speller} still says *SANGWICH* and while she knows it’s not *right* she still says it. I couldn’t be bothered….
Sigh – what a crazy old bat! ;)
I LOVE sangwich! I had a crush on a boy in elementary school who called them sangwiches… memories!
I love your response! :D
My LEah used to pronounce Fork- well just like the F word… I remember eating at a restaurant when it was slow, and she kept SCREAMING it…. I had to take all of the forks away so she couldn’t see them- geez!
Hahaha I can just picture you taking all the forks away! TOO funny!
“E-leggy”…classic! The best is when he creatively pronounced my name. The funny thing is,,,I get the feeling he knew the right way to say it but was secretly not doing that for his own amusement. ;)
Sorry to hear what that ‘lady’ said. You handled it well. As they say, to Mordor is another day…. |-)
Hmmm…you’ll have to remind me how he pronounced your name! Now I’m curious!
I’ll ask Ryder next time I visit and see if he remembers…
A couple other good ones from him are ‘rehvaccuon’ and ‘boon’.
Although ‘boon’ would probably belong in the same categories as
‘moochy moochy’ or ‘nu nu’. :)
OOOH – totally forgot about rehvaccuon! Though he still says BOON!
Seriously? Another mother is going to criticize you for not correcting toddler speech? Holy crap. Toddlers are going to grow up hearing all the words and they will figure it out eventually. That lady needs to lighten up.
We don’t even correct the mispronunciations. Because they are just SO CUTE. And we love them so much that we adopt them ourselves. I will probably forever call an airplane a “hairplane”.
LOVE that you call airplanes “hairplanes”. It’s the same reason we eat frawberries, hammyburgers and Logurt.
I’m home in Newfoundland right now and my little nephew whose 4.5 years old has some pronounciation things going on. I asked him the other day what he’s thinking of being for Halloween. He said “a tunk”….. A tunk? A trunk? A hunk? What?? I had no idea and unfortunately I repeated “tunk?” Which embarrassed him. So I stopped until I came across it again in front of his Mom.
Lil dude is going to be a SKUNK for Halloween lol
LOL! My son said skunk more like “tunt” … also very embarassing & hilarious! ; )
HAHAHA love it! ALL toddlers have pronunciation issues – can’t believe what a tool that lady was.
I LOVE your response. The days when my children cutely mispronounced words is far behind, but I too followed the same philosophy; repeat the word correctly BUT don’t correct them. Time enough for behaving like an adult, they – and we – should enjoy those toddler years.
AMEN! That’s exactly why I don’t put too much emphasis on it. They’ll get there eventually!
Oh, for heaven’s sake, let them be little! :) And, seriously… does she think she deserves a Mother of the Year award for setting that sort of example for her 6yo? Ridiculous. (Also? My 3yo calls thunderstorms “wonder-storms”– I have no intention of correcting her.)
First, love everything about your response! And second, wonderstorms totally rock!
I can’t stop thinking about “Fooky Fider” since our chat – I love the funny words kids come up with :)
Me too – still laughing over the Fooky Fider too :)
Haha I like your disclosure.
Reminds me of plenty of times that people felt they had a right to offer opinions in regards to parenting Sara. Sara is 24 and recently moved out on her own for the first time. She is a mature, level headed young woman who had a speech impediment as a toddler, ear & nose problems. Today she is articulate and her manners would probably astound some of these people today. I found it hard sometimes to say nothing. The woman is clearly ignorant and raising a son to look down on other people without gaining the facts first…in other words, judging people that don’t fit their idea of how another person should behave.
AMEN! I love everything about your comment, Teresa!
Thanks Lena, Proud Mummy just like you and everyone here! Just wish she would answer the phone more often! I miss her voice.
My 3 year old niece keeps saying “free” instead of three and it drives me crazy!
LOL it’s okay – you’ll miss it one day, I promise.
Just remember “cocodrile” and everything will be all right!
You know I will, Susannah! LOL!
That’s great. I can’t believe how rude some people can be.