Amanda's Shoebox

My girls and I communicate through email about once a day. My older two are probably better at spelling and grammar than I, however my youngest is still young yet. Do you all correct your children when you see spelling mistakes, etc.? For example, here's an email I sent her recently when I saw her use the wrong homophones in her email:

"Did you know that there are two spellings for here/hear just like there are 3 spellings for their/there/they're?

H-e-r-e is used like:

Here you go. Here they are.

H-e-a-r has to do what listening. An easy way to remember is that H-E-A-R has the word EAR in it. So if you mean something that has to do with listening, use hear, otherwise, use here :D

Love you!
Mom"

She responded with "sorry", which made me feel bad. I responded to her with, "There's no reason to be sorry! I see adults make the same mistake all the time. Just letting you know :D"... but now I'm questioning if I should have even mentioned it.

Do you all help your children with things like this or do you just let them figure it out for themselves?

~ Amanda

Joyce Fetteroll

On Jun 14, 2010, at 2:38 PM, Amanda's Shoebox wrote:

> "Did you know that there are two spellings for here/hear just like
> there are 3 spellings for their/there/they're?

Trivia is cool. Trivia in response to a mistake is correction. Would
you want your husband responding to your emails with grammar
correction? It would feel like -- regardless of whether it's true or
not -- he's scrutinizing the presentation and not caring about the
content.

Trust that she will see lots of correct spelling. Trust that when it's
important to her she will pay attention to spelling. Right now, if you
correct her, she's more likely to write less to you for fear of being
corrected.

Joyce

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Sandra Dodd

-=-Do you all correct your children when you see spelling mistakes,
etc.? For example, here's an email I sent her recently when I saw her
use the wrong homophones in her email:-=-

I don't usually correct them.
When they're working on something for publication, or a letter or
resume, they'll usually run it by me to proofread, and then I help
them. Or they'll ask me how to spell something.

Kirby is the worst speller of the three, and he's the one who
communicates in written English the most. My husband didn't spell
well when I met him. It's gotten gradually better, and he hardly
makes mistakes anymore. So I figure school or no school, Kirby will
be spelling better every year and get good by the time he's in his
40's. :-)

Sandra

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Pam Sorooshian

On 6/14/2010 11:38 AM, Amanda's Shoebox wrote:
> My girls and I communicate through email about once a day. My older
> two are probably better at spelling and grammar than I, however my
> youngest is still young yet. Do you all correct your children when you
> see spelling mistakes, etc.? For example, here's an email I sent her
> recently when I saw her use the wrong homophones in her email:

Since she responded with "sorry" then that's your cue not to do it
again. If she'd responded with, "Oh - that's cool, thanks for telling
me," then that would be your cue to give her more information like that.

-pam