Kids mispronounce words. My theory is (and I have lots of theories, but that’s another topic for another day) that you don’t correct them when they mispronounce the word, rather you make sure to use the correct word in a sentence back to them and they will eventually learn how to correctly pronounce the word.
My theory worked beautifully with both my girls. Ally no longer says “sunder” for “thunder” and Tori no longer calls “breakfast” “breaktast”. There is, however, one glaring exception. Neither of them can say the word “magazine”. They both pronounce it “mazagine” with the irony being that I work for a magazine. So it’s not like I don’t use the word around them because they hear it correctly from me all the time and yet they continue to say “mazagine”. It drives me nuts. When they were little, it was cute but now it is just annoying and I don’t know how to correct it. I know, I know, it’s not that big of a deal and one day I’ll be wishing for the days when my biggest annoyances were mispronounced words, but for today, it is bothering me.
Switching topics, to update you on last weeks blog entry, Molly survived her weekend with us (and so did I!). Ally had tears in her eyes as we returned Molly to the classroom but overall it turned out fine.