Back to subject... Mumbling is a big issue in our house at the moment. Hammerite mumbles appallingly & half the time we can't understand what she is saying. Our singing teacher said that she's speaking much lower than where her real voice is - so I keep reminding her to lift her voice up a bit (which goes down like a lead balloon I can tell you!). Last night we were doing one of those game-book things like dungeons & dragons, where you go to differnt paragraphs depending on dice etc. We are trying to get her to read more, so I made her read it out to me & I was absolutely HORRIFIED. When she was younger she used to read very expressively, but now she is really monotone, mumbly, speaks too fast & runs the words into eachother. How the hell did that happen????? I can only assume it is down to me not reading to her anymore, coupled with trying to race through her reading thinking fastest is bestest. So now I can see I've got to spend a lot of time reading with her again to guide her back to reading slowly & expressively and actually absorbing the content. Bad mother points or what!! Anyway - that is probably where her bad singing diction is coming from & hopefully the reading together will improve her singing diction as well. The point of this being that lazy singing habits probably derive from lazy speaking habits, which in turn is probably related (in kids anyway & probably adults too) to sitting passively in front of TV instead of actually communicating. It is like a revelation to Hamm that she can sit with her eyes shut and visualise what I am reading to her & that she can return the favour. I'm beginning to think I should throw out the damn TV & listen to the radio instead. Ha - the lengths I'll go to to improve our singing......