<p>I feel guilty for writing this, but I am growing impatient with my mom’s lack of literacy. Ever since she started to use Facebook, she has me to correct her spelling, punctuation, and grammar several times a day. She interrupts me (I know I am not doing anything important, but still…) during all times of the day. Sometimes she keeps me up at night because she wants me to proofread her writing on Facebook. I do not mind helping her, but it is as if I’m her editor, not because she wants to learn anything. Before using Facebook, she never asked for my help at all. I did not even know she had this problem before she started using it. </p>
<p>Spell check cannot help her because she sometimes does not use compound words and confuses the word she intends to spell with its homonym. She misspells words like very, together, basement, cousin, etc.
I do not understand why she has this problem and it is probably none of my business. English is her only language, she graduated high school, she did not come from an impoverished area, and my other relatives have normal literacy. If you heard her speak, you would never guess she had this problem.</p>
<p>My mom only asks me to help her because she thinks I am the best writer. I have a feeling that it is mostly because I am the most tolerable and available person in the house. I suggested that the dictionary can help her, but she is reluctant to use it. She makes excuses like saying that she doesn’t have her glasses, when I need to help her even she she wears her glasses. </p>
<p>I am sorry if I come off as rude or ungrateful. I know that she does plenty for me and the least I can do is proofread for her, but for some reason I get annoyed when she asks. I’m not saying I’m perfect myself, I had to use spell check in this post and I doubt my grammar and punctuation is brilliant. I don’t know exactly why I’m writing this, but the situation just bewilders me and I want to stop being annoyed.</p>
<p>Tell your mom to do what I do. When I am not sure about the spelling of a word, I type it into Google, and if it’s spelled wrong, Google will respond with, “do you mean” and the correct spelling. It’s fast and it’s an easy solution. Show your mom how to do this.</p>
<p>Well, although facebook has never been involved, I do know how it is to have a parent who struggles with spelling and asks for help a lot. I just figure, that while it can get really annoying, at least in my case, my mom has been there for my entire life and willing to help me with whatever I’ve needed help with. Of course, if you legitimately don’t have the time and really need to take care of something pressing, it’s totally okay to tell your mom that you can’t help her at the moment. However, disregarding such mitigating circumstances, taking the moment to help out the person who raised you is the least you can do, even if it is annoying at times.</p>
<p>I’ve had similar problems with both my parents. I agree with the poster above who suggested she type the word into Google. I do that any time I’m not sure how to spell something. She can also look word meanings up at [Dictionary</a> and Thesaurus - Merriam-Webster Online](<a href=“http://m-w.com%5DDictionary”>http://m-w.com) if she’s not sure she is using the right word. The other thing you can do is download Firefox to her computer. It spell checks and underlines words that are spelled wrong similar to Word.</p>
<p>I used to be a fairly good speller, but as my vision goes it is harder and harder. I do use reading glasses, but it’s hard to find the right prescription for typing at the computer, and I find myself making lots of errors. (Hope I got this right!)
Instead of feeling so critical try to be empathetic. There are simply things that are harder for people as we age. It’s harder for me to even recognize if a word is spelled correctly these days. It might look just as “right” as the correct spelling.
I guess if that is the worst thing your mom does, you are pretty fortunate. And yes, it’s always the people we are the closest to that drive us the most crazy. Just try to continue to be patient. You will be proud of yourself later in life if you do. And it’s good practice for when your own kids drive you crazy!</p>
<p>My husband is dyslexic (we surmise - he is in his 60s and dyslexia was not something that was as well known back then), cannot spell to save his life, even the simplest words. When I first met him I thought he was joking when he would read names on road signs completely wrong. I did not know much about dyslexia either. I am a very good speller and, though I find it hard to understand the why of why some people have difficulty spelling, I accept that it is just so. My husband is highly intelligent but struggled through school and college. He graduated with a bachelors in accounting but almost didn’t because he had such a job passing the English classes. He is brilliant with numbers and rose to a high position despite his bad written English skills. He does not like to read at all as it is such hard work for him. But put a pile of numbers in front of him or try and play him at cards and you soon know he is not stupid.</p>
<p>What you have to realize is that when you really have difficulty with words it is actually very hard to use aids such as dictionaries etc, which the rest of us use with ease - my husband asks me for help with fairly simple words. So stop being annoyed and just help her when she asks. She feels feel comfortable asking you which is a great compliment. If she can’t ask her own family members for help, who can she feel comfortable with?</p>
<p>I think it is quite reasonable to explore ways, such as that proposed by Northstarmom, for OP’s mother to handle this task on her own. </p>
<p>OP can aim to teach and encourage her mom. OP can gently insist if mom refuses to even try.</p>
<p>If, after OP’s mom makes a good faith effort to handle the task on her own, it becomes apparent that she just cannot succeed, then I would agree that OP should help her.</p>
<p>Wow, SCM, my husband’s exactly the same. Really smart guy, working on his PhD, tenure-track professor at a college, but I’m constantly being his human spellcheck. Because he’s my husband, I don’t mind.</p>
<p>I think I’d be incredibly frustrated with my mom if she kept asking me to proofread her social exchanges. It’d be like having my mom ask me to call her friends for her because she wasn’t comfortable talking on the phone, or something along those lines. It would be tiring.</p>
<p>TA, see if you can get her to copy/paste everything into Microsoft Word and have it spellcheck everything… MS Word actually catches incorrect homonyms these days and underline-squigglies it in blue. Cool invention! Phrase it that now she can do these things on her own, and that she doesn’t need to wait until you’re around to post things on Facebook. It’s what the dyslexic and dysgraphic people I know do in order to get around their foibles when dealing with the internet. Tell her to just keep a window open all the time, and teach her control-C and control-V if she doesn’t know about keyboard shortcuts already, and she can fix her own problems.</p>
<p>After you’ve walked her through copying and pasting everything, just treat the situation with patient kindness. If she hollers in for you to come and proofread her stuff, ask if she has the Microsoft Word window open. Encourage her that she can do this on her own. If she asks you to proofread it anyhow to make sure that MS Word did it right, say brightly that if it’s good enough for MS Word, then it’s good enough for Facebook. If any friends judge her social worth based upon her spelling prowess, then they’re probably pretty lousy friends anyhow.</p>
<p>I’ve noticed that older people will sometimes have quirks in their emails. One person I know never uses periods. Ever. I have no idea why. Perhaps some people are not comfortable with a keyboard. Does your mother know how to type?</p>
<p>I agree with aibarr above that it would be frustrating to constantly be asked to help with Facebook exchanges. It’s not like she’s writing a paper! On the other hand, it’s probably not that much quantity involved, so the best thing is to take a deep breath, visualize something pleasant, remind yourself it will only take a few minutes, and just help her graciously. Keeping you up at night, though, is really too much. Just say, “Mom, I need to go to bed.”</p>
<p>I sometimes wonder if bad spellers are born that way. My D, who is starting college, had combined English/Writing SAT scores of 1500+, (math is good, too), yet she’ll spell simple words wrong! She also confused her “b’s” and “d’s”, when writing, until middle school, and still has to think about it if you ask her to raise her “right” hand. (She’s a lefty). Not dyslexic–a fast reader. She’s a great athlete, artist, and excellent student in all ways but spelling–those phonics workbooks just didn’t sink into her brain. She’ll guess spellings that aren’t even close, that don’t make sense phonetically, and says she memorizes words by their “shapes” (!?) Both parents and other sibs are good spellers. I also have a bro. who is head of an engineering company, who took all the Honors English classes, speech and debate, etc. in high school. He can’t spell to save his life and his handwriting is horrible, too. It didn’t seem to hurt him. Spellcheck and dictionary.com are the cure. I think most of us know some otherwise very intelligent adults who happen to be poor spellers. </p>
<p>OP, be patient with your mom.
At least she cares about her spelling and how she appears to others–just show her how to find the answers herself. (My friend’s H is highly educated, but not a native speaker of English. His emails are full of embarrassingly bad grammar–yet he is too proud to ask his wife for help. With a little advice, he could avoid the major errors he makes over and over. When I read his messages, sometimes I just cringe and wonder, “Why doesn’t he ask his wife to proofread?”)</p>
<p>Perhaps you could buy her one of those inexpensive electronic spelling guides- they are the size of a calculator. She could keep it next to the computer, and not have to leave her Facebook site to word-check.</p>
<p>Even so many here are poor spellers. I realize this is an informal forum, and sometimes we shorten words. Occasionally I hit the wrong key, but let it pass in the interest of time. However, some here have trouble with “then” and “than” and “to” and “too” on a consistent basis. Many other problems too, but those are a couple of quick examples. Yes, it can make a posting hard to understand and may require more than one reading. Yes, it looks silly, and yes, when it happens again and again one wonders if English was their first language, but it happens. This forum is mostly aimed at parents who have a youngster in college; but the parents aren’t necessarily college grads, or even high school grads. I’m not a college grad. Sometimes spelling problems are based on poor pronunciations. What’s 1 more than 4 in the South? Fav. What’s an original thought in New York? An idear.</p>
<pre><code>As far as trouble with right hand(post 10) I have a possible explanation for that. As a lefty growing up, when adults were helping me learn which hand was which, they often said “which hand do you write with? That’s your right hand”. Obviously that question correctly answered it for most, but not for me. Every time I heard that, it incorrectly reinforced that my left hand was my right.
</code></pre>
<p>I’ve had 2 very intelligent husbands and neither of them could spell. One, a much lauded editor, used to call me and ask how to spell the simplest words. Maybe by now he knows how to use spellcheck. The other, who was a sickly child who missed a lot of school when young, often mispronounced long words. He used them correctly in speech but never quite got the pronunciation because they weren’t words used in his home, only words he had read in books.</p>
<p>I taught her aibarr’s suggestion for MS Word. I will probably have to show her how to do it a few more times, but she is getting better at using the computer. She can type, but she still asks me how to use certain functions on the keyboard like how to enter and space words. I suggested Google too, but she asked me if I was trying to get out of helping her. I felt sort of bad, but I just told her that I wanted to teach her how to do it in case I’m not available.
I should be more understanding. I mean, I am not good at math even though I know enough to get by. Perhaps when I get older, I will have trouble balancing a checkbook and need my kids to help me. They might feel the same way I do now. </p>
<p>I am pretty much one of the only people she is comfortable asking. She gets along with me better than my sister and I’m home more often. It is probably embarrassing for her that English is my dad’s third language and he can spell well. Then again my dad has a job where he has to write reports, so therefore he will remember many words to spell. My mom is a hairdresser and there is not much writing in her job. I am surprised that there are many posters who said that they have parents who cannot spell too. I did not think this was common. </p>
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<p>Interesting. This happens to me all the time lol.</p>
<p>We use a Mozilla Firefox interface instead of internet explorer and it underlines all misspelled words and with a click of the mouse will show you correct spelling. I love it.</p>
<p>I agree that spelling must be innate (hmm, a spelling gene?). I’ve always been able to spell, even though English is not my first language. As a matter of fact, as a kid, I won my class spelling bee a year after I learned to speak English. (However, anything involving numbers is another story.)</p>
<p>Sometimes misspelling can be more like a slip of the tongue than a spelling mistake. I once wrote “buried” when I meant to write “married”. That’s some spelling mistake!</p>
<p>Also, just want to clear up a pet peeve. Everybody, it’s “Hear, hear”. Not “Here, here”. If you don’t believe me, google it.</p>
<p>We were watching the Scripps spelling bee last night and noticed that two of the three finalists were of Indian descent. My daughter said she thinks that children that are first generation Americans may spell better then their American counterparts because they have to study the language harder to learn it.</p>
<p>I really believe that there’s a spelling gene, too. I’ve always been a good speller and both of my kids seem to have inherited the same talent. My sisters and their kids are the same way.</p>
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<p>Thanks for mentioning that, mousegray, that was bugging me, too!</p>
<p>As long as we’re mentioning spelling pet peeves on CC: it’s ‘shoo-in’, not ‘shoe-in’, as in “She’s a shoo-in for Harvard; after all, she’s a double legacy and a recruited athlete”.</p>