I know exactly what you are dealing with! My SD 7 does the same thing and she thinks its cute and funny and it too drives me crazy. Ignoring it does nothing because she just does it more. Her bio-mom evidentally lets her get away with it, among other things that she lets her get away with. I just wanted to let you know that I am dealing with the same thing here

Katie

I have been dealing with this for years....my SS NOW 17(!!!!!!!!!!!!!) still freaking baby talks!!! I am soooo freaking tired of day "Talk in your big boy's voice"!!!!! Bad enough this idiot use th ebaby voice, when we drive he'll point out the window and say "bird", "cow" etc!! I want to choke the kid. I have ignored this, said the big boy thing and I have told him he sound like the village idiot. I had thought by the time he is was 10 it would stop....he just turned 17 and it hasn't.

When I moved in with skids and FH, skids were SS8 and SD10. SD10 would talk like a baby when she would ask her dad for something. It would drive me nuts!!!

One day I was cleaning the bathroom and she came in and with a baby voice asked me if she could have something to eat. I had had enough of her talking like a baby. I stopped what I was doing and asked her why as a 10 year old she talked like a baby? What was the answer? BM liked for her to talk like a baby. Insane!

I told SD that 10 year old girls do NOT talk like babies. That was the last time I heard her talking like a baby.....

I have always talked in clear language that my kids could understand. My little daughters were always so intelligent because I treated them like people. When my 4 year old saw a child acting out, she looked at me and said, "Mommy, that isn't appropriate!"

Baby talk is the number 1 thing that can take me 0 to 60 immediately. I cringe. I would refuse to understand her and demand she talk "appropriately."

If my 9 year old is playing around talking baby talk, I show disapproval and frown, and say, "English please!" Constant doing that will help.

OMG so sorry you have to deal with that, it would get on my damn nerves!!!

SD11 is doing better, but she still tries to 'baby talk' to My SO (especially when she's on webcam) and she starts acting like a 3 year old as well. My SO tells her to stop being 'goofy'. I want to tell her to quit being such a lousy manipulator.

Once we were walking in the zoo and Precious Pony Princess started talking like a baby, asking questions that any 2 year old could figure out. I finally stopped walking, looked at her and asked, "Why do you talk and act like a baby? Why do you ask 'why?" all the time? Why do you act like you're stupid when you obviously are a very intelligent 11 year old?" Her answer? 'I don't know'(said in a very high-pitched baby-voice).

My SO and I have started ignoring her when she talks like a baby or acts like one. If she persists, my SO tells her if she's going to act like she's 3 or 5, etc., that she will be treated like one - that includes going to bed at the time that a toddler should and not being allowed to do the things an 11-year old can do that a toddler can't. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Missing me, I sent you a message thats describes in a little more deatail about the issue I have here with my SD7. Just to let you know...your not alone and I know how irritating it can be, especially with an older child that knows better. Also, it doesnt help when the bio-mom has no problems with it and almost eggs it on to make our situation more difficult. Thanks

Katie

Same boat missing. I am FOREVER correcting my SD10 speaking. she has NO speach problems, but ASL is her 1st language (BM is deaf, and didnt "think" to have people speak to her, and BM has had little to NO contact with kids since divorce) Simple words like ANIMAL and LIBRARY come out as AMINAL and LIBARY, and she will say "I getted to go to...." or "I hungry" or "eat? eat?" in a baby voice DRIVES ME INSANE. SHe will also get huffy when you correct her.

OMG i couldnt imagine haveing SS6 act with baby talk!! He has a speach problem and is hard to understand anyway... DH says at birth they told him son was tongue tied and it couldnt be corrected??? I almost think its an excuse and he allows SS to talk this way cause he gets attention because last time I checked.. even when I was born over 30yrs ago a mild case of tongue tied could be corrected with a little snip... whatever.. anyway I soooo feel for u gals with the intentional baby talk!

This drives me totally crazy with my FSD. She is nine and she expects all of the privlidges of an older child like a cell phone, a late bed time, and wearing make up yet she displays the manners of a much younger child, speaking in a baby voice, pouting, whining and demanding.

SSs6 think baby talk is cute too- that and baby animal noises. They don't do it all the time, but when they do we remind them that this is not BM's house and that six-year-old boys do not show how big they are if they are too busy trying to act cute. I don't know if it's a twin thing or what but somewhere along the line they got the idea that cuteness would make people turn blind eyes to behavioral issues......ugh!

OHHH the animal noises are like fingernails on a chalk board. SD6 (who doesn't baby talk) will bark and meow, and the SD10, earlier in the year, I was getting calls from school because she was crawling around on the floor barking in class (4th grade WTF) and her reasoning for it? "Because I wanted to" and "its FUN"

damn...i thought i was the only one...sd10 does it all the time but bm thinks its cute and its not...she know what she is saying and i correct her all the time but sd13 has to let me know that bm thinks its cute...its not especially at almost 11...i hate it to...drives me up the damn wall....

i get so annoyed too. my 6 year old stepson, does the baby talk and thinks its real cute. its annoying. hes here for the whole summer and im counting the days. when he talks to my 1 year old boy he does the baby voice which pisses me off. i dont even speak to him that way. i dont know how they treat him at home because he is constantly asking, am i cute? did i look cute daddy? ugh. no. your not cute and your fucking annoying. shut it already. thats what i dying to just say every single time he asks. if you have to constantly be asking if you look or sound cute. then sorry youre not. i dont know, i guess im the only one hes ever come in contact with that hasnt told him hes cute. cause he swears the whole world tells him. im not jealous of him, if the kid was cute i would say so, id probably even like him. but lets face it, hes not. and the baby voice isnt doing him justice.

IM sooooo happy to have read this post.
i have an 10 year old stepdaughter. This is a constant battle but i win for the most part. At her mothers she has already announced that she is a princess. I have made the last 4 years a point that what she does at her mother does NOT concern me. She can sleep in her bed, have her pick up after her left and right, give her baths, talk like an infant, eat with baby utensils and watch baby cartoons. At my house she is a 9 year old who will act mature for her age to say the least. The baby talk comes through now and then but it takes one firm look and its done. that took a while but dad has to be on board with it. i sat down with him at some point and started pointing these things out. I went though her homework and pointed out all the grammatical issues that nobody bothers to check, the superior attitude she has, the way she cant even turn on her own bath, the baby voice, the CONSTANT crying over every tiny thing. It was a tough talk but i think it hit home, when i threw her over my shoulder after a massive fit over a toy in the store. I took her to her room and explained that it will NOT be tolerated at our house ever. I got a few calls from mom complaining about the treatment. I don't yell, i dont hit but i come up with punishments that counteract what has been done. If she acts like a big baby crawling into daddy's lap when we go out somewhere, she comes home and does very adult things. window washing, dishes, cleaning the floor to remind her what a big girl she is.
Right now we are going though the baby animal phase. She runs around the house acting like a kitten, or puppy or some sort of baby animal all day wining and pawing me. very irritating. I adore her but this behavior is very counter productive and i think is dangerous to her development. Her mother is unfortunately VERY vain and god in her own eyes. she can do no wrong. I wish she would get the hint that she is making things worse by treating the girl like an infant.

The animal noise thing drive me insane! My SS16 (yes - 16!) does this. Whining puppy, meowing kitten, whimpering god knows what...it is endless. I swear that there is something seriously wrong with him but FH says that he was tested and all that came up was ADHD. Personally I thing he is borderline autistic. He looks physically 12 - 13 tops - has almost no friends other than a few 8 or 9 year olds in the neighborhood and one kids his own age who is as weird as he is. He refuses to bathe regularly and change his clothes, can't look anyone in the eye and is incredibly moody. And to top it all off, he is still afraid of the dark and wets his bed!

Yeah, FH - he is perfectly normal. Just your average 16 year old boy.......

"H says that is the last thing that makes her his baby, "

You have a husband problem. That is on my list of the stupidest things I've heard a parent say.

My husband and I have had custody of his kids - 13 year-old girl, 11 year-old boy - for a year now. Neither he, nor I, nor our 6 year-old child together, baby talk....but my SD and SS do, and it drives me freakin' crazy!! SD has gotten the hint and has finally stopped - except when BM calls, then she reverts (BM baby talks to her kids). SS baby talks ALL the time! I keep impressing upon him the importance of good speech, and how your speech and speech patterns can affect how people think about you...lesson completely lost. As long as BM encourages it, my stepkids feel it is perfectly ok.

It might be helpful to get to the reason she is acting like this.

This type of behavior might be caused by insecurities about their relationship with their parent and also fears about growing up and how that will change their relationship.

I wonder how many of the kids exhibiting this type of behavior have younger half-siblings?

I know it was difficult for my stepson when his two younger brothers were born dealing with jealousy and feelings that he was being left out (especially since he saw them with both a mom & dad living together) and that his younger brothers were getting more attention. My husband especially tried to spend more one-on-one time with him, but it was difficult for my stepson to make the transition from doing little kid things to big kid things and equating them as being equal or even better.

There was one time when my stepson was about 9 that my husband took him to a hockey game and after he got home, he had a meltdown about never getting to do things with his dad, all because he was jealous over his dad reading a bedtime story to his two year old half-brother and not him. Even though he was 9, he still wanted that type of interaction with his dad, far more than he wanted to do “big kid” things.

It’s taken him a while to finally move past that and value spending time with his dad doing more mature things, and not getting jealous of his younger brothers getting to be babied.

For girls, it might be more difficult to figure out how to have a more mature relationship with their dad. Pre-teen boys can bound with their dads over sports or cars or video games, but girls tend to be closest with their dads when they are little.

Wow! I'm relieved to see so many other people dealing with inappropriate Baby Talk in skids! My SD11 (almost 12) got away with this until literally a few months ago!

There were always similar behaviours with her: She and I would spend time alone and she'd be totally capable, heplful even, and spoke to me maturely, but as soon as she'd even hear her dad's car pull into the driveway, all of a sudden food couldn't make its way into her mouth and she would literally fall off her chair because she needed her daddy to feed her - at age 6! Also she couldn't figure out what feet her shoes went on and needed help doing up anything on her clothing. Again, only when her dad was around, or sometimes a new person she could latch onto. When it was just us, she was perfectly fine because I made it clear from the beginning that I wasn't going to buy into it.

This continued for years! When she was 8 she was still messing up her shoes/feet and we would get notes from the school that they found she would often pretend to not be able to do something just to get the attention of the teacher or someone else doing it for her. She even asked her dad to wipe her bum at 5 even though she was doing it alone at 3. The baby voice was always there but only around her dad. I would bring it up from time to time but DF would just brush it off and say that she was a little less mature because she has a late birthday, or some other lousy excuse, like I was picking on her, and it was the way a normal kid talked.

It seemed like she was constantly dumbing herself down to act like a baby for daddy, and he was too oblivious to notice that it was actually deliberate and manipulative. That is, until the drawings. She always loved to draw. Even as a toddler, she was always scrawling things on scraps of paper and giving them to people as presents. It was cute when she was 3. As she got older, I frequently saw her art skills improving and we chatted about it as she showed me her sketchbooks. They were very good actually. I just assumed DF knew about her art skills as well, but since I worked odd shifts for many years, I wasn't around too much when she was over so I didn't know what he saw of her drawings. After DF moved in with me, SD, then 8 or 9, started sending us mail, even though she lives in the same city and we see her EOW, and sometimes during the week for extra-curriculars. These "letters" that were apparently worth spending the 50+ cents per stamp basically consisted of crudely drawn pencil sketches of the three of us and our pet (my name and our pet's name spelled wrong, also deliberately) and babyish notes in babyish writing saying "I love you daddy" or something else cutesy. Also, I should mention that these "letters" were often on dirty or torn scraps of paper, reminiscent of what she used to do as a toddler. She has many beautiful stationary kits and sketchbooks.

Well a few months ago, we were over at MIL's house for dinner and SD came in to show us some sketches she had just made of cartoon characters. They were, of course, very well drawn and not at all like the chicken scratch stick-figures she had been mailing us. DF didn't believe she had drawn them, since all he had ever seen were those pieces of mail. He accused her of tracing them, and challenged her to draw something right then and there. Well, she did, and it was perfect! At that moment, seeing the confusion on his face, MIL asked him why he looked so surprised. Everyone knows she can draw. And that's when he realized what was happening. I had mentioned her art skills to him before, but he just assumed I was being overly nice because he thought she drew like a baby. He right then put two and two together and realized she had been playing baby with him, and was actually angry about it. He asked her why, then would she send us these dirty, torn scraps of paper with these terrible drawings if she could, in fact, draw very well. She had no answer. I also mentioned the baby talk then and he said he finally believed me about that as well, since it was becoming harder for her to keep up all her facades in front of all the people when they were all together in one room and he had even heard her voice change depending on to whom she was talking. My MIL tried to stick up for SD, saying that maybe the notes she sent us just weren't her best work, and that maybe she felt insecure about those drawings, and that's why they were at a lower level, but then I said "well then why bother putting a stamp on something and mailing it if it's not a piece you are particularly proud of?" No answer. SD had NOTHING to say, cause she was so busted, and possibly because she never realized that what she was doing was weird, so I finally got to say to her "Well, now that everyone, not just me, sees the way you have been trying to act like a baby for your dad, it's going to stop. No more baby voice, and no more manipulative babyish drawings in the mail!"

What annoys me is how come I was the only one who could see this abnormal behaviour? How did he not know that that was not his daughter's natural voice? Why did he not believe me when I brought it up? Even my sister spent like 3 days with us on a vacation and noticed this right away, in addition to SD latching onto her, basically a stranger, to the point that she made my sister do up her clothing and physically cuddled up to her having only known her a few hours at that point. So many red flags, but it literally took about 6 years from when I first started noticing these babyish behaviours for them to stop. Sometimes the baby voice still comes out when she asks her dad each time she wants to get something from the fridge (despite us telling her to help herself at any time about a million times) but now we call her on the voice and she stops. She does keep asking for permission to eat or drink though...it's like she wants the attention of just having the brief moment of "Sure, take whatever you want". That's sad. She gets pah-lenty of attention from her 4 parents and about a million grandparents (everyone is divorced and remarried on DF's side, and BM has birth parents and step parents, foster parents, adoptive parents, etc. plus her in-laws) and still she tries these little things to get just those two or three extra words...Hmmmm....

Daddy LOVES SD10 little baby talk. She can't properly articulate anything. She says so many words including my daughters name and her dad will say the words like she does instead of correcting her. The worst part is when he says my daughters name like SD10. He named her! I started saying to him, "that's not what you named your daughter". My SD10 BM also likes her baby talk so SD10 obliges to give everyone just what they want. She's will ask me a million stupid questions. I started just repaying everything she says to me correctly. Like she will say, "I eats blana for snackie" And I will say, "Are you asking me if you may have a banana for a snack" And if she won't ask correctly or she talks baby or asks stupid questions I just ignore her.
Aren't giant babies so fun!?