Reposting because my posting got removed on the other subreddit…
My husband’s sister has 3 kids. 6, 4 and 1 year.
I don’t know know how to explain it but she coddles them a lot. Like she still spoon feeds the two younger kids and sometimes spoon feeds the older one if he doesn’t want to eat.
It’s really weird for me especially because my parenting style has alwasy been encouraging independence. My own child is 2 and she eats by herself because I’ve never spoon fed before. I just added that as an example of how her parenting is.
She also baby talks. Really bad. For example, “(6 year old name), I gonna go store. Momma gonna go store and get you more, ok?”
“This yucky. This big people food. You not like it.”
It makes me inwardly cringe because she also does this annoying baby voice to all the kids, including the 6 year old. My mother in law does it too when she speaks to the kids but I asked her to talk to my child normally.
Her oldest has a speech impediment. He doesn’t stutter or anything. He speaks clearly… in a baby voice. His grammar is worse than my two year olds and he repeats words a lot. He speaks exactly how his mom talks to him.
We were together the other night and the 6 year old was trying to explain something to my husband and my husband just stared at him, looked at my sister and said that he couldn’t understand anything the 6 year old was saying.
His sister just laughed it off and explained what he was trying to say but my husband was concerned and brought up the fact that he’s going to 1st grade and he talks like this.
His sister just said he’ll grow out of it and that speech therapy won’t do anything. I couldn’t help myself and spoke up, saying that maybe if she encouraged proper language and spoke to him in a normal voice it would help.
She and mother in law did not like that, they got angry and told me that I’m just way too harsh of a parent and that I’m a horrible person.
I left in tears and my husband says that while he agrees with me, maybe it wasn’t my place to bring up. AITA??
Comments
YTA
You overstepped majorly.
Edit: i think I’m changing my vote to ESH because not only is your sister in-law wrong, but unsolicited parenting advice is also a bit of a overstep. I do think something like that is better handled by someone that’s not an in-law. It was something that needed to be said, but maybe something your husband should’ve said instead. Some people just take things in-laws say harsher. I’ve seen it personally, sometimes if something comes from my husband, he will get a more critical response from my family even if I said the exact same thing. There was a time that I typed a message on his phone to send to a family group chat, and some people were mad at him, until I said that I typed it😂 so it’s better to have your husband speak on this kind of stuff imo and he will probably (maybe) be better recieved.
ESH. That doesn’t sound like a speech impediment, you’re right, it sounds like poor grammar taught by the mother.
However, your delivery was harsh. Maybe if she saw a professional, they could deliver your message and she would actually listen.
NTA They always shoot the messenger, but someone needed to step in and do something so this kid doesn’t get obliterated into being the weird, lonely kid for all of school.
YTA, your SIL is an idiot but hubby is right, it wasn’t your place and none of your business.
NTA
She’s not doing her kid any good by constantly baby talking him. My dad’s side of the family is pretty big, so I had lots of younger cousins growing up. Something I noticed my dad doing when I was younger was telling non-toddlers (kids that were 5+ years old) that he doesn’t understand baby talk when they do that baby voice your sister is using. They would then talk much more normally. I have done the same as I’ve gotten older.
Kids can and do respond well to feedback
If she thinks you were harsh, wait until the first grade teachers get a hold of her. NTA, someone has to say it.
NTA but yeah, this isn’t your battle to fight. The kid will get bullied and his mom will ignore it and the teacher’s advice. It’s not your problem.
Info: From your post it does not appear that you try to hide you distain for how SIL parents her children very well. How sure are you that there is not some sort of learning disability that your SIL may feel that you don’t have the right to know or would judge her for? Do 100% know that this hasn’t been discussed with doctor appointment that I can only assume you would not have been apart from? Besides your having your own kids what qualifications do you have to diagnose children’s behavior and speech?
You are absolutely not the asshole.
I actually had similar issues with my son’s grandma on his dad’s side. She refuses to talk to any of the grandkids in a normal voice. It’s always this high-pitched baby babble, and I swear it makes my eye twitch.
I’m sorry but “Dis yucky, big people food”?? That poor kid is going to be 25 asking his boss for “num nums.”
You didn’t say anything out of line. You basically suggested she try talking to her kid like a human being, not a teacup Yorkie. If that makes you a horrible person, then I guess we’re both monsters.
ESH?
Your husband kinda seemed to be trying to subtly hint at the damage his sister was doing, probably knowing the reaction to being blunt like you were would be exactly what happened.
You may have unknowingly set back any progress at getting her to realise the harm she’s doing because now she’s on the defensive.
I get your heart was in the right place though.
I grew up with two girls next door who had the exact same situation as your nibletts at home.
They didn’t grow out of baby talk until their dad got custody of them and sent them to speech therapy. At 13. It was… Not pretty.
Reading teacher and dyslexia practioner here.
He is going to have all kinds of trouble in school. Unfamiliar words for reading, writing and speaking because of that; let’s not even talk about social skills. I could go into detail but he is going to struggle; for how long depends in the child.
Hopefully he will pick up the language quickly once he is in school and is aware of how to communicate with his peers. Did he already attend kindergarten? If so, how did that go?
I’m not giving a judgement. I understand it can be hard to stand by when someone’s behavior is massively hindering a child. That said, talk to your husband about how he could best approach it using facts, not opinions on how his language will affect him academically and socially.
Ok so he’ll be going into 1st grade I’m assuming…wait til the teacher says something to them THEN they’ll be all oh crap!! When someone ELSE says something about it then they’ll listen bc they’ll be embarrassed for sure
They’re not doing any good by talking like that to their kids
Stay out of it. This is not your battle to fight.
She has 3 and you have one. My mom used to feed us from one plate because it was easier for her and meant one plate to clean. I remember thinking we were baby birds and I LOVED it.
As far as the baby voice. Nothing will get that kid caught up like first grade. Framing it as her fault was harsh, judgmental and probably incorrect. If the child does have development issues, you have done nothing to help that and done a lot to damage your relationship
I’m glad you are parenting in the way that suits you. If you don’t want harsh criticism, don’t give it
I love how everyone in the comments goes straight to the kid getting bullied at school. lol Have you been inside a public school lately? Have you seen this kid will probably still look and sound like a genius compared to half of the kids. Anyway it is definitely a subject that maybe should have been brought up privately (or not in front of the whole family). And although I am 💯 with OP on the baby talk but, could have been more sensitive.
Meh, let her figure it out on her own. I don’t like the way my BIL raises his kids, but I won’t say anything to him about it. Let the kid get harassed at school for talking like that and then maybe the mom will figure out that she’s causing him harm with her ridiculous baby talk.
Them telling you that you are too harsh a parent and a horrible person was completely uncalled for though.
NTA but you never spoon fed your child? Yikes.
Stay outta her business unless she asked you for your opinion or if she lives under your roof .
NTA. You just told them the truth they did not like it.
I baby talk my DOG and she’s 8, she’snot developing humanspeech anytime soon. My 1 yo and 3yo nephews? Simplified but not babied sentences.
It’s not your kid and she doesn’t know how to raise a child. How many kids do you have?
Nta- I talk to children like little adults. I speak on their general comprehension level but I only baby voice animals and my husband 😂
NTA and for all those saying she is, I don’t get it. Are we really of the mindset that people can just do whatever the hell they want with their kids with absolutely no push back, comments or input from anyone else ever? Parents completely own their children full stop? That’s insane. What happened to it takes a village?
She’s literally family. If family can’t stand up for these kids who are not getting properly socialized then who can?!? Even if this kid does have a medical reason his speech is delayed, baby talking to him isn’t going to help.
The mom and grandma are hindering the growth and development of these kids and the rest of the family are just supposed to pretend this is totally normal?
I really don’t understand the attitude that no one else is allowed to ever comment on parenting choices specifically when those choices are potentially causing long term harm to children.
Of course it’s a balance and parents do have the right (within boundaries) to raise their kids how they see fit. But there are limits to this. Parents also have the responsibility to raise kids in a way that is healthy and appropriate. And family and friends and community should help step in and be advocates for kids when parents are straying from that standard.
NTA that poor lid is going to be bullied, hard.
you are right but it wasn’t your place. she didn’t ask you for advice and parents take that stuff very personally so it is always best to tread lightly
it wasn’t your place to bring it up, but it was his? He’s the one that brought up that he is concerned that the kid is going into 1st grade and he talks like a 18 month old.
This was a lose/ lose situation any way you look at it.
NTA for the comment, but….
>I left in tears
OMG what is wrong with you. Why are you crying over this? Are you really that much of a drama queen? Absolutely ridiculous.
It sounds like your husband was approaching the subject and you interjected over him, you steamrolled him and attacked her. You weren’t incorrect, you were an asshole blaming her to her face in front of an audience out of the blue (from her perspective). She was already starting to be defensive and then you came in punching.
Do you want the child to do well in school and life or do you just want to be right? You need to apologize for your lack of tact if you ever want your husband or yourself to broach the subject again with SIL.
NTA
I talk to animals in baby voice
I speak to children in a normal voice
NTA poor kids, their mother is setting them back YEARS.
ESH. Is your SIL right? No. She’s preparing her kids for years of hardship that could impact the rest of their lives.
But it was wrong of you to jump on the bandwagon when your husband started in with his sister. Everyone is allowed to parent the way they want, even if what they are doing is terrible. She’s not putting her children in physical danger. She’s just an immature moron who shouldn’t have kids in the first place. But what do you get out of fighting with her?
NTA. But there’s no reason to insert yourself in someone else’s stuff.
Worry about yourself. You are being judgemental. That’s the issue.
They will learn on their own that it’s an issue without you speaking up.
Mind ya business
NTA bc I get your feeling, but your husband is right: “ it wasn’t my place to bring up.”
Well that escalated quickly, jeez. Nobody likes parenting tips from anyone, they’re rarely well received. As a retired teacher I can testify that the boy is indeed copying his mom’s speech patterns and it’s not good. Did he go to kindergarten? If he’s entering 1st grade with no prior school experience then he’s headed for a fall. I pity his future teachers because that woman is a piece of work. Infantilizing a 6 year old is borderline abuse.
Uh, nooo, that’s not how that works. You are totally correct. She, and MIL, are the reason that child has a speech problem. Point blank. Period.
She just refuses to swallow the truth and see it for what it is.
Totally NTA, but SIL and MIL sure are
The teachers will tear her a new asshole in the nicest way possible. When I was a young mom finishing high school, with two parents working all the time, yeah, I let my son watch the minions movie as often as he wanted as a baby to toddler. Sesame Street wasn’t streamable yet and I didn’t have cable, threw a disc in when I had to do school work.
He went into preschool talking like a freaking minion. I shit you not. His teacher was so straight up and blunt, reprimanded me and gave me a bunch of resources and YouTube videos to use instead of repeatedly watching gibberish. He started talking well as soon as he started socializing more with other kids and watching normal videos that taught phonics in fun ways 🙏🏻 pre ms Rachel YouTube was tough to navigate for me until that teacher sent me the playlist. I no longer have it but all that to say YES!!!!
How you speak to children 1000% influences their speech!!!
ETA: NTA! Someone had to say it!!!
NTA, its best to speak up and worry about politeness later.
when I was in college (Early Childhood Education course) my Speech teacher told the story of a woman in her 20’s who lisped & was undergoing speech therapy to overcome her lisp. It was a holdover from childhood when everyone thought it was ‘adorable’ & she had an extremely difficult time to ‘unlearn’ it.
It sounds to be like your SIL is doing this to your son, shame for him
Either you are a person who states facts drily or you one who runs away in tears over being called horrible. Speaking your mind and simultaneously being a drama queen is just so annoying.
NTA. I feel like this should be considered child abuse.
She is literally crippling her children. They will go to school and be bullied and laughed at. They will be behind every other kid and sooner or later a teacher is going to call CPS if they asked to be spoon fed during lunch and aren’t able to comunicate.
NTA. These people are failing those kids.
in all the books I read, they specifically said NOT to talk to your kids with baby talk, as they will not learn how to speak properly
You’re a horrible person for speaking to your child like a…::gasp!::…PERSON?!
You’re “just way too harsh of a parent” for speaking to your child like an actual person?!
SIL will be baffled when she gets called to the school because no one can understand the 6 year old when he speaks and when he gets bullied (because kids are MEAN to kids who are different in any way).
But yeah, you’re the awful one. 🙄🙄
NTA
You’re the AHole. You don’t get to decide how other people parent their kids.Should they baby talk a six year old, maybe not. It’s not your decision to make. And speaking like that in front of kids id pretty disgusting character.
NTA, calmly expressing a concern or even critique with a family member is not attacking or shaming or out of bounds in the slightest – it’s the adult thing to do. Never saying a word because disagreement and disruption is the worst thing ever is childish.
I have a cousin who has severe autism. His parents refused to acknowledge anything was going on until he was school age – where he could not keep up intellectually and his behavior was both emotionally unstable and physically violent. The school just shuffled him along, his parents just shuffled him along. He is now an adult who cannot speak, is still emotionally and physically unstable, and will never be able to live on his own. On the flip side (and yes, I know autism is a spectrum) I know several other autistic folks who were diagnosed early and given the appropriate support who are now thriving.
The faith that the school or some mysterious specialist (this person is coming from where, exactly??) is going to be this child’s advocate and address his issues seems incredibly naive. Schools fail kids all the time – through negligence, a lack of resources, or both. My uncle graduated highschool when he could barely read a kindergarten book (dyslexia) because the school just shuffled him along to be someone else’s problem.
OP, you did nothing wrong. From here on, channel your concerns through your husband since he’s a blood relative and clearly this family doesn’t handle critique well. No kid deserves to struggle unnecessarily – socially or intellectually – just because nobody wanted to ruffle feathers.
You and your husband can also help and talk normal around the kids. They’ll think their parents are crazy.
Nta her son needs speech therapy.
She needs regular therapy to address the fact she cannot accept her oldest is growing and it will only get harder the longer it goes on
Our school district has screenings for entry into
Kindergarten. How did he possibly pass to get into school? The expectation is basic communication skills, which do accelerate throughout the year. However, this is not meeting many milestones for age 6.
NTA!
Growing up, I had a bad speech impediment. My mom was horrible when it came to not helping.
She is setting her kids up for some major bullying. My mom loved that i had a “baby voice” and gave me so much positive attention when I would say things like “Waven” (persons name was Raven) “wook” insisted of look and all the baby mispronounced words. This didn’t stop till I was NINE!
I was bullied and stood out. My speech impediment wasn’t actually that bad, with some therapy I could have spoken normally quickly. I made it worse over the years to the point that it was extremely difficult to unlearn that speech pattern. I was so embarrassed when I realized that I just literally couldn’t pronounce things properly at age 9 that I could when I was even a year younger. It was horrible!
I couldn’t speak normally until I was about 12 years old. That’s how long it took to unlearn years of speaking like a baby. That’s what her kids are looking at now. Better to get started on teaching them properly now, if only she would listen.
NTA! When my daughter was 6, she spoke very well, complete sentences, big words, etc, because I never baby talked her. My mom’s step daughter is 2 years older, but was still struggling with her speech. When mom’s husband asked why would the little kid speak better than the older one, she told him because I don’t baby talked her like he does! Haha, he didn’t like that very well, but it was true
Yikes. That’s more than cringey… I wanna barf! NTA!
Man this post just woke me up bc I have a 3 year old and I def talk to him sometimes like that. Like I’ll say “momma gotta go to store” in my baby voice.. will be quitting that today bc I never really realized the effect it could have.
However he def feeds himself lol def NTA.
Thanks internet stranger
Ha! A former friend of mine did this with her kids. There were issues with language acquisition for 3 of the 4. The youngest was still saying “Me go with mommy,” when he was in Gr. 1 and she put him in a French Immersion school. It went horribly, as you might imagine, but she blamed his teachers. (She’s a teacher herself, and hated parents blaming her for whatever their kids did, but whatever.) Anyway, it took a long time for her to speak normally to her kids and that was only after a child psychologist told her to do that.
Absolutely not. I work with kids with their literacy and if he’s speaking like that, it can tank his literacy levels. Kids learn to speak (and later on read) based on how the people around them speaks. You stunt the hell out of a child doing that. The most i ever did with my kids was the high pitched voice but I spoke in full sentences
Wasn’t too long ago we had an entire group of kids going to pre-K, K, and 1st grade sounding like they were on an episode of Teletubbies.
First off, youre absolutely right that it does have an impact on their speech. Second, the only thing that makes you look bad here is the crying. You had no reason to cry, whether it’s feeling bad about what you said or if they hurt your feelings. Neither one are a big deal. They’re just opinions and you all should be able to be honest with each other. The asshole move is to say one thing in person and talk shit behind their backs
What is the school saying? This child is school aged, surely his teachers have noted this abnormal behavior? My sister got referred to a speech therapist by her primary care provider before she even started school, a mandated reporter should definitely be reporting this to the appropriate agency.
NTA. This poor child. Experts literally encourage you to talk to children properly instead of that baby talk crap.
Your post was removed from the other sub for posting too often… so I checked out your previous posts.
Just last month, your household consisted of you, your husband, your daughter, and your younger brother, and you said “My daughter and brother are still in elementary school” Whereas today “My own child is 2”
Additionally, today’s post makes it sound like your MIL is involved in your life, not just on the phone/internet, but physically, and interacts with your children and your husband regularly (based on what you were saying about how you’ve asked her not to talk to your children, and she stopped doing so). However on an update to the first post from last month, you say “The reason behind his behavior, he admitted, was because his mother has been trying to contact him lately.” then further elaborate in a comment that:
>I should have specified that we were already very low contact because of how toxic she is. He had her blocked but she got another number and contacted him again.
>He did admit he should have blocked her right away but he’s figuring that out with his therapist.
NTA, god I hate this family for you.
NTA
This kid is going into the first grade, kids are mean and will bully him and tease him about the way he speaks because his mother can’t acknowledge he isn’t a baby!
You said it direct and politely, I understand why she may not like you saying that but she should take constructive criticism to help her kid.
I baby-talk my 8 year-old son daily….then again, he’s also a cat.
NTA, better your sister hears it from you now (and hopefully listens), because as other commenters have pointed out she’s setting her poor kid up to be eaten alive. Not to mention TONS of fun parent-teacher conferences.
NTA. My oldest cousin speaks like this because his parents, our grandmother, and an aunt would only speak to him in a baby talk for like 5 years. He’s nearly 40 and he still has a slight baby talk accent.