# Six year old always says "Her" instead of "She" **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 20, 2008, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/six-year-old-always-says-her-instead-of-she/468736 "2008-10-20T14:06:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Chessic\_Sense](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7c8e57/32.png) [@Chessic\_Sense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chessic_Sense)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2008, 2:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/six-year-old-always-says-her-instead-of-she/468736/21 "2008-10-21T02:36:58Z")
Preschool teacher here. It’s common. Maybe not so much by six, but 4s definitely and 5s still common. As isamu said, it’s “regularizing” a messy part of the language. She doesn’t understand the rules quite yet, so she’s just trying to adapt what she knows. If no one corrects it, she’ll still figure it out in time. If someone does, it’ll go faster. Have faith. It’s not a cognitive deficit, it’s actually her brain working the way it should. General rules first, exceptions later. There’s a phenomenon in ASL called “frequency boosting” in children of late-learner parents. If the parents learn sign late, they aren’t very good at it and will use various “methods” of signing to say variations of the same thing. For some reason, the deaf kids of these parents sign nearly perfectly, even if the input is exclusively from the parents. Why? Cuz they take whatever the parent does most often (say, 60% of the time) and try to use it 100%. Usually, that 60% is the right way. Interestingly, if it’s wrong, the kid still “boosts” it and is consistently wrong with it. Same thing w/ your neighbor. She most often hears an H-word “her, he, his” for pronouns and therefore picks one that sounds like it fits, like it’s right. Eventually, she’ll notice the error and change it. ---
**Author:** ![eleanorigby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ee7513/32.png) [@eleanorigby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eleanorigby)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2008, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/six-year-old-always-says-her-instead-of-she/468736/22 "2008-10-21T02:40:35Z")
The child is obviously addicted to the score of that wonderful Broadway musical, “The Pajama Game!” and the hit, “Her is”. It sounded good in my head… No idea why she’s doing this–is she in school (so many 6 years have yet to start Kindergarten these days). I wonder why she doesn’t do it with “him”. ---
**Author:** ![Dead\_Cat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9fc29f/32.png) [@Dead\_Cat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dead_Cat)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2008, 11:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/six-year-old-always-says-her-instead-of-she/468736/23 "2008-10-21T11:36:19Z")
> [@Max\_Torque](#): > > I hate to blame parents, but, I blame the parents. > > I’ve seen (heard, really) similar patterns in the speech of my little nieces and nephews, whose parents speak to them in pseudo-“baby talk” well beyond a reasonable age for that sort of thing. As a result, the kids have a lot of pronoun confusion. The most common I’ve heard from the kids is “my” instead of “I”, as in, “My want it.” The grandparents are just as bad; I’ve heard stuff like, “Her doesn’t like that,” and such. As a result, my wife and I have made a concerted effort to avoid the baby talk when speaking to our little one, who is now 18 months old. Full sentences are a little way off yet, but so far, so good. That’s interesting. When I studied English Language, I remember looking at a case where the parents had spoken to their baby in normal speech right from birth, never using baby talk. The child had problems using correct pronouns for some time after it learned to talk. Now these are only two anecdotes, but perhaps using “baby talk” is helpful up to a certain age, but not beyond it. More research needed! ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2008, 11:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/six-year-old-always-says-her-instead-of-she/468736/24 "2008-10-21T11:44:12Z")
> [@Dead\_Cat](#): > > That’s interesting. When I studied English Language, I remember looking at a case where the parents had spoken to their baby in normal speech right from birth, never using baby talk. The child had problems using correct pronouns for some time after it learned to talk. Now these are only two anecdotes, but perhaps using “baby talk” is helpful up to a certain age, but not beyond it. More research needed! That was the general consensus, at least when I was studying speech language pathology about 12 years ago. (I never got very far, so I’m not an expert or anything.) They call baby talk “Motherese”, and it’s identifiable by a higher pitch, a simplified grammar structure, and exaggerated vowels and prolonged eye contact. It’s useful for gaining and keeping an infant’s attention, and seems to help with very early language development, but by the time the kid is producing words, it’s no longer helpful. ---
**Author:** ![Yeticus\_Rex](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/a698b9/32.png) [@Yeticus\_Rex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yeticus_Rex)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2008, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/six-year-old-always-says-her-instead-of-she/468736/25 "2008-10-21T18:18:16Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > Across the street from my house lives a six year old girl who seems in all other ways perfectly normal. (She asks strange questions like “Can I play in your car” but I figure six-year-olds ask strange questions. Also, she seems to be in a perpetual state of believing her birthday is “tomorrow” but again, you know, kids. (I suppose?)) > > But, strangely, she doesn’t seem to know how to say the word “she.” Instead of “she,” she says “her.” She doesn’t just do this often or usually, but rather, as far as I can tell, she does this every time a sentence calls for the use of the word “she.” > > She seems to have the he/him distinction down fine. It’s just she/her that she gets wrong. > > “Can her play outside?” > “Her’s got three bicycles.” > “I don’t think her wants to go.” > > Like that. > > Basically, my question is, anyone know what the heck might be going on here? Is this possibly dialectical? Is there any kind of cognitive deficit that leads to things like this? Or what? > > -FrL- [Semantic Pragmatic Disorder.](http://www.google.com/hws/search?q=semantic+pragmatic&btnG=Google+Search&hl=en&client=dell-usuk&channel=us-smb) My youngest son who just turned 7 also has the same difficulty with pronouns when he asks for something, such as: “You want the juice.” “It wants to go to bed.” (This one always gives us the 'Silence of the Lambs" chills) As parents, we always announce the correct phrase that he should use and ask him to repeat it: “I want the juice.” “I want to go to bed.” It’s not the parents fault that the child still has this speech disorder. It is also an indicator that the person is on the Autistic Spectrum. It is a cognitive issue that possibly can be corrected through repetition over a prolonged time. ---
**Author:** ![VanillaGorilla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/f9ae1b/32.png) [@VanillaGorilla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VanillaGorilla)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2008, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/six-year-old-always-says-her-instead-of-she/468736/26 "2008-10-21T19:30:28Z")
> [@Yeticus\_Rex](#): > > “It wants to go to bed.” (This one always gives us the 'Silence of the Lambs" chills) :D:D:D ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2008, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/six-year-old-always-says-her-instead-of-she/468736/27 "2008-10-21T19:37:08Z")
> [@Yeticus\_Rex](#): > > My youngest son who just turned 7 also has the same difficulty with pronouns when he asks for something, such as: > > “I want to go to bed.” You have a 7 year old who asks to go to bed?! Now _that’s_ scary! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Jolly\_Roger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/91b2a8/32.png) [@Jolly\_Roger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jolly_Roger)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2008, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/six-year-old-always-says-her-instead-of-she/468736/28 "2008-10-21T19:47:55Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > Across the street from my house lives a six year old girl who seems in all other ways perfectly normal. (She asks strange questions like “Can I play in your car” but I figure six-year-olds ask strange questions. Also, she seems to be in a perpetual state of believing her birthday is “tomorrow” but again, you know, kids. (I suppose?)) > > But, strangely, she doesn’t seem to know how to say the word “she.” Instead of “she,” she says “her.” She doesn’t just do this often or usually, but rather, as far as I can tell, she does this every time a sentence calls for the use of the word “she.” > > She seems to have the he/him distinction down fine. It’s just she/her that she gets wrong. > > “Can her play outside?” > “Her’s got three bicycles.” > “I don’t think her wants to go.” > > Like that. > > Basically, my question is, anyone know what the heck might be going on here? Is this possibly dialectical? Is there any kind of cognitive deficit that leads to things like this? Or what? > > -FrL- I have a relative that has a son that did that when he was kid. I found it annoying and got tired of correcting him. (I was in my teens when he was around 8 or 9 and he still spoke like that. I’ll say flat out that his mother, a distant cousin is slime. She’s an ignorant, dishonest, use-the-“we’re family”-card-for-leverage/sympathy bitch. But being in my idealistic teens at the time I told her she should correct him because hey do you want your kid to sound like an idiot? I actually didn’t expect her to agree, and I was right. (one day I’ll have to start a thread about my terrible family members. I have one or 2 that make me want to punch them) I know now that he is a grownup and I guess he’s ok. I don’t keep in touch with them. What I find ironic is that this kids sister…who didn’t speak like a caveman and is only a year or so older…is a college grad, married to a successful ex-army captain and doesn’t have much to do with her bother or mother either. ---
**Author:** ![Jolly\_Roger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/91b2a8/32.png) [@Jolly\_Roger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jolly_Roger)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2008, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/six-year-old-always-says-her-instead-of-she/468736/29 "2008-10-21T19:54:20Z")
> [@Etumretniw](#): > > :D:D:D [It puts the lotion on its skin or then it gets the hose again!](http://www.allyourbase-arebelongto.us/node/144) ---
**Author:** ![Yeticus\_Rex](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/a698b9/32.png) [@Yeticus\_Rex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yeticus_Rex)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2008, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/six-year-old-always-says-her-instead-of-she/468736/30 "2008-10-21T21:48:39Z")
!!! Didn’t see _that_ coming… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/six-year-old-always-says-her-instead-of-she/468736.md?page=1)