MOOK - kid “baby talking”

[ohgillian]

My 10 year old has been baby talking around us for months and I’m about to lose it. I’ve spoken to her about it repeatedly but this hasn’t curbed it. I didn’t think this was something that I would need to discipline, but maybe it is? And if so how?

I think she thinks it makes her seem little and cute and adorable but SHE’S TEN. (She is the youngest if it’s relevant.)

[VillainV]

Is she picking it up from somewhere? My kid has done this a little after spending time with certain friends who do it. Usually I give it one “Have you noticed you’re using a baby voice? I’m not sure why but I like your other voice better and would appreciate if you use it” and then I ignore it and it usually stops.

[tiki]

My kindergartener never used baby talk until this year. I think a friend at school does it, or in her social circles it's considered cute. We have to pretend not to understand her unless she repeats herself in a normal voice.

[wanderingback]

Have you ignored?

[AdaraMarie]

I just say I can't hear you when you talk like that and then ignore. Or ignore from the start

[Susie]

My 2nd grader has been doing it, both at school and at home throughout this year.  It drives me insane.  She's an oldest, so we wondered if she was doing it to get attention that she perceives her younger brother is getting instead of her... but he's now 4, and speaks better than she is choosing to.  So that isn't it.  That also wouldn't explain doing it at school, which her teacher has reported.

We just tell her we can't understand, and we need her to speak like the big kid that she is, so that we can.  Her teacher gives her the same message.  Lather, rinse, repeat, and hope it eventually fades.

[pinkplasticdoll]

We ignore it and by it I mean the child when they are talking . We told them a few times to knock it off and gave them reasons why do now we just ignore it until they can talk to us in a normal voice

[sparty04]

My 2nd grader does this and I tell him I don't understand baby talk. He hasn't stopped but I don't answer him until he talks in a normal voice. It's super annoying.

[niq]

O (6) has been doing this and I just power through, it seems like age appropriate pretend play to me.

Sometimes V (9.5) is too much of a goofball to the point of being non-conversational. In his case this means he speaks in nonsense syllables or just random collections of words (current favorite is something like "sus foot dad yeet your mom meme bruh"). If it's making it hard to get out the door/have a dinner conversation/whatever, I usually say something like "I don't know what that means here. I will have a conversation with you when you can speak in complete sentences". Otherwise I just let him be his goofball self.

Kids are weird!

[sillygoosegirl]

My 8-year-old has been doing this a lot, for like the last 1 or 2. It drives me up the wall. She does it so much I'm afraid she is going to forget how to talk normally. She does it because she thinks babies are the best and she thinks that is how they actually talk. I keep reiterating to her not to talk to actual babies that way, because we need to model correct speech for them, but she just keeps doing it. It's getting to the point she doesn't even seem to notice she is doing it anymore. If you were a fly on the wall, you'd probably think she severely needed speech therapy, but she didn't used to talk like this. We had a few good years where Rs were clearly and correctly articulated.

[lauren170]

My 9 year old does it all the time and it’s sooo annoying. She thinks it will get her out of trouble. One time I talked like that to her for like an hour until it annoyed her so much she was begging me to stop. She still does it though - I figure once she gets teased for it in school she’ll stop.

[pittpurple]

My daughter went through a phase of this last year when she was 9 and I did the same as a few people here - just didn't respond at all and pretended not to hear her until she spoke properly. No idea what she does around her friends but she stopped doing that for me and that was all I needed. Her little brother has a lisp so we didn't need him picking up anything else from her!

[hermione]

I tell her once to stop talking like a baby. Then I ignore her. Should it go on to the point of annoyance, I say, "If you are going to talk like a baby, I am going to treat you like a baby. Bed time will be 7:30 tonight." Only had to say that once.

[christy082]

My 8 year old does this, especially after being around her younger cousins, but at other times too. She also likes to mouth words, use her own "sign language " to try to communicate, and both are SUPER annoying.

[minniemouse]

My 9/almost 10 yo dd does this sometimes too. It’s annoying so I ask her to repeat herself in her proper voice one time then ignore after that. She is in speech therapy for a tongue thrust and some articulation issues already, so we really don’t want to encourage or give attention to speaking like that.

[osulori]

We've gone through spurts with this with my almost 10 year old in the past as well. To curb it I drew on my SLP experiences a bit and reminded him that there are a lot of kids who can't say sounds correctly or can't use words to communicate and they don't think it's funny or cute, it really bothers/frustrates them. Once he was old enough to get what I was trying to communicate to him, it gave him some perspective and he stopped.

[smock]

My 3rd grader has done this off and on for YEARS. Like, since she became an older sister and the baby "got all the attention."

She thinks babies are cute so everyone will like her if she acts like a baby. That's obviously not true, as all of us in the thread know, lol. But I try to remind myself that it's her way of saying she wants to feel cared for and taken care of. The baby talk decreases when she's getting one on one time with us and when she's feeling good about school/friends/life.

[meanie]

My 7yo does it sometimes and I just tell him to use his big boy voice. Does she stop if you ask her to? It could be something she is doing out of habit now...maybe they are doing it at school?

I would just ignore her unless she was using her normal voice

[isabel]

DS1 (8) started doing this. I think he picked it up from a friend who is whiny. I just tell him “I can’t understand you when you talk like that.” He immediately reverts to his normal voice. The frequency has dropped off a lot. I don’t tolerate it and won’t respond after that initial statement.

I also noticed a friend’s son (10) doing this too, so seems pretty normal to me.

[ohgillian]

I read all of the replies at the time and forgot to come back and say thank you! I appreciated the commiseration. Since this post I've been trying to tell DD every single time either "don't talk like a baby" or "I can't understand you when you talk like a baby." It seems to be helping. I think that my approach before (mix of ignoring and correcting) was not helping -- I realized i needed to go 100% in one direction or the other.