Laughing at children who get things wrong is one of our most unattractive habits, and one of the most damaging things we do to our sons and daughters.
As British writer Jane Gardam once memorably remarked, ‘Every child is a poet until she’s eight years old.’ Little children use language poetically, imaginatively and creatively. The trouble is that every time they do, adults laugh. The laughter might seem to the adult to be warm and affectionate, but it often has a patronising, even contemptuous, edge.
Nobody likes being laughed at, and that includes children. The child who is laughed at when he says something fresh and different will soon learn to play it safe, and use the same conventional, boring language as the rest of us.
The danger in this is that he will lose his own voice. He will become more and more reluctant to express his deepest feelings, his personal opinions, his thoughts and judgements. He may even become reluctant to use language at all.