6 year old started baby talk. What to do?

[Anonymous]

Does he do it all the time or just when he's in certain moods? My 7 yr old will do babytalk a couple times a week. I've never thought of it as a problem so haven't tried to correct it. He'd never do it at school or in front of his friends. I know it's when he's feeling like he needs attention/ cuddling/ doesn't want to be a "big boy." I think it's just a transition as they realize they're growing up and sometimes want to be back in that safe "baby" world. Unless it's really messing up his speech or is all the time, I wouldn't worry about it or have any reaction at all. A phase. And if not, you can work with his teacher in the fall.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I say "cut that shit out. I'm not going to acknowledge anything you say when you talk that way."

That's exactly what my parents said to me when I did the baby talk thing at that age. They would also cover their ears and yell, "What? I can't understand you! Stop talking like a r*****." It nipped it in the bud very quickly to say the least. However, I would never use this approach with my own kids and would not recommend using it with yours.

By the way, I did the baby talk thing, because quite a few of my classmates who had younger siblings did it and I was trying to sound "cute," as I thought they did. I'm an only child, on the other hand.

[Anonymous]

Is he mimicing a friend. Our son did that because he had a friend that had some verbal issues. It got so bad that I think he almost forgot how to talk correctly. We started to refuse to listen to him unless he spoke correctly. We explained it was OK to talk differently every once in awhile for fun, but not all the time. And that the other kid spoke that way because he was still learning.

It was a constant battle for a long time, and then it went away.

[Anonymous]

Op again. There were a lot of kids in his k class with speaking issues and my 3 year old can't say the r or l sound correctly so likely mimicking. He gets very upset when I say "please talk correctly so I can understand you" and says he wasn't speaking like a baby. So then I started ignoring and it keeps happening. Driving me crazy.