If you speak a language with genders at home, does your LO mix up the pronouns? If they do, when do they grow out of it?
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My son speaks French and German and still mixes pronouns and articles and he's 4. He is French through my husband and goes to German speaking daycare. I think his German is actually stronger than his French right now just because he is exposed to it every day, even more so than French. I don't speak German, but I gently correct him when I hear the errors in French.
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My husband's family speaks French with our LO and she goes to daycare in French, and I can speak kind of what I remember learning in school, and now re-learning it along with her. I'm old and still feel like there's no rhyme or reason to the la/le gender issue in French, so I don't hold her to too high of a standard.
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Interesting! DS is 2.5 and will use the feminine for boys very often, and the masculine for girls. I've never even heard of anyone having this problem before, but I grew up exposed to one language. He's got a lot more going on, it seems like everyone in day care has a different first language. So my attempts to correct him aren't making much of a dent!
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@Mama Bird: I don't know about in children specifically, but I used to teach in a school with a super high percentage of ELLs, and even when those older kiddos were learning english, they would confuse pronouns. So it must be really common. Stuff like, "Sally picked up his shoes".
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As a teacher, I would say it's pretty common for toddlers to mix up gender pronouns as their language is still developing. I too, have seen ESL students mix them up even at age 5. I would recommend rather than saying something like "that's a girl, not a boy," instead using the correct pronoun in a sentence to model. Something like, "yes I see her. She is playing with that book."
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@Mama Bird: That is normal, I don't think it's particularly associated with being exposed to different languages. My son is 4.5 and is just now getting it straight and every once in a while will make a mistake.
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Glad it's normal! I think the exposure to different languages is not helping in his case... it wouldn't be so bad if it was just the kids, but his first teacher has the same thing going on (she speaks Russian with the kids but it's not her first language). Yeah, my son has a crappy mom... maybe he'll talk like a girl for years because my job is more important than raising him, and this is what he hears from the adults in his life. Thank goodness English has no genders, at least.
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