This is Like, TOTALLY Weird

It’s every parent’s worst nightmare. In an attempt to deal with the grinding pressures of modern life, you’ve let your kid have a bit of screen time — just a few episodes of Paw Patrol, or maybe a bit of Moana while you get dinner ready. Or perhaps you’re on a long road trip, and you let them use the iPad to watch YouTube Kids, deploying the content filters to make sure Mr 3 and Ms 4 won’t accidentally see drug cartel execution footage or fall down an alt-right rabbit hole.

You pull over to fill up the tank and your partner decides to get snacks. “Do you want anything?” she asks, opening the car door. Then it happens. Looking up, cross-eyed, they tell her: “Yes, Mom, I want candy from the gas station. And can you put my trash in the garbage?”

Have their brains melted? Are cerebral fluids about to run out of their nose and on to their Frozen bib? Has your toddler been replaced with a grown yet tiny man escaping post-Trump America? Are you going crazy? Are you … a bad parent?

Kiwi kids’ accents are changing. Maybe you’ve noticed it yourself. Maybe someone else has asked you whether you adopted a child from the Valley, due to their oddly Californian dialect. Or maybe there’s something else going on. Something more subtle, widespread — and irreversible.

Rachel Hill lives in Wellington with her husband Tyson and their two children, Otis, 15, and Isa, who is eight, with dark curly hair, a cheeky smile and a hybrid American-British accent — surprising, given the fact she has spent her whole young life in Upper Hutt. Her older brother was the first to notice, asking his parents, “Why does Isa speak in an American accent?”