Mine, not mine's

I suspect it's probably just a common speech mistake. My daughter does it too.

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I laughed when I read this because this is one of my pet peeves!! This "common speech mistake" was one that I have NEVER heard in my life until urban street language became a popular way of showing the world how ignorant you are. You can thank rap and hip hop for that, since they have become mainstream millions of children are under the impression that "mine's" and "gots" and the ever popular habit of leaving the word "of" out of sentences like "you want me to take the clothes out the washer?" are acceptable when they are nothing but incorrect grammar which gives educated people the automatic impression that you are an ignorant person. The most basic skill you should have is mastery of proper English after the mandatory 12 years you spend learning it in American schools.
The most baffling thing is parents who do not correct their children each and every time they use improper grammar like my sister-in-law who apparently doesn't care that her 6 yr old son uses the word "gots", which is not a word, constantly and has no idea it's not right. I personally have been correcting my teenage daughter's use of street grammar and the obnoxious habit of referring to EVERYONE no matter who they are as "YO". She now knows that I will absolutely not respond to her at all if she doesn't communicate with me in proper English, which she knows perfectly but she chooses to present herself in this ignorant fashion anyway. I will keep saying "What??" until she presents what she is saying correctly. Any time she refers to me as "YO" I will respond by yelling "YO!YO!YO!YO!" at the top of my lungs regardless of where we may be and she gets completely embarrassed. Well, then she knows how I feel when she speaks the way she does.
P.S. It's completely cured her of the habit, at least around me anyway....

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Children outgrow these habits long before correction works. I understand the impulse, but by correcting, all you're really doing is reinforcing it. Just keep on speaking the way you want them to speak, and they'll switch back to the standard/prestigious form soon enough.

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I recently kept my 6year old neice and the poor child has the worst grammar EVER. Her mom uses baby talk and as a result her children say "hers sleepy" or "hers hungry" I HATE IT WHEN PEOPLE SAY HERS! AAAACKCKKKK! I don't exactly have the best grammar on the planet but I try. And I tried my best to teach the poor girl to stop saying hers and using the word That in place of the word What. She would say things like "What color is what shirt" and "her gots one like me" and I would constantly tell her, the correct word is THAT not what, and gots is not a word!!!! I would make her repeat the question correctly and she would do it but that lazy talk just seems to easy for her. When she would talk baby talk to my kids I would just tell her, politely, we don't use baby talk here. You can say potty but not pot pot, you can say bottle, not ba ba and its a pacifier, not a nu nu and water, not wa wa. I hate baby talk!!!

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My daughter is biracial (I'm white, Dad is black) so I'm sure I will fight the ebonics battle as she gets older. But she spends most of her time with me so I don't expect it to be too much of a battle until she's probably pre-teen or teen. Some of it is cultural, though, not necessarily defiance. My daughter's father talks very differently to friends and family than he does when he's at work. It's a choice and it's something he's more comfortable with depending on who he's communicating with. I imagine my daughter will be the same way.

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What an appropriate picture... haha... My aunt allows her kids to speak baby talk too. Tldest is 9 and my grandmother will still feed her with a spoon. I can't stand them acting like babies and talking like them either. They are plenty old enough to speak full normal sentences than say things like 'me wanna drinkie!' Barf.

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I teach in a community which has a preponderance of Latino's. I see this speech more in Latino people, even adults, even latin TEACHERS, than I do in any other.

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Oooh, never heard that one but I have two pet-peeves:

"My bad". Please, please people. Stop saying this.

and

"For reals?" aaarrgggghhh!! I work with a highly educated man that says this and it's all I can do not to scream!!

whew...ok, i feel better now. : )

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Youse ( youzzzz) Arrrgggg I hate that so much it is "You" as in " you guys needs to stop using the word youse" not "Youse need to stop using the word youse"

and all of the above bug me.

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It's natural for preschoolers around Sara's age through around 4 to overgeneralize grammar. At first, they parrot what they hear - "Molly's, his, mine." But they start to notice patterns/rules in grammar and start logically applying the rules in every case - "Molly's, him's, mine's." As Uly said, it will naturally correct itself as they learn to identify the exceptions / finer points to the grammar rules. With Jared, he may have started doing just for fun after hearing Sara do it. Some of our kids' language inventions were so cute, we still use them just for fun.

Of course there are completely illogical usage errors that do merit correction if they persist. Like kids I grew up with saying, e.g., "I'm gonna tell on my mommy." I think they were 10 years old before they stopped saying it that way. If they weren't such snotty brats, I would have felt sorry for them.

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Wait until you get to the "libaries," the "brangs."

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I'm with the brilliant John Holt on this one. I rarely correct my little ones and they outgrow most of their errors. It's kind of fun to say farewell to their toddler and preschoolisms. A graduation, of sorts. I don't reinforce their errors (well, except for some of them that are so darn cute!), but just model the correct usage. I try to make a point of repeating back to them, only correctly. "Hims being mean to me" gets turned around, "Oh, he's being mean to you?" with no emphasis on the correction.

Each of my olders has had one or two errors that persist and so I have had to correct them, but they pick up the corrections quite easily.

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