Daughter refusing to speak normally

Quite.

It’s actually normal for adults to want attention. We just tend to have more nuanced ways of getting it.

Such sharp division on how to approach.
I'm team I'd very clearly tell her she needs to communicate clearly for people to understand her and want to interact with her. So a two pronged approach of telling her to speak properly, but at the same time nurturing her as much possible,

and I'm horrified by this
OP I would completely ignore. She’s attention seeking and will stop when it doesn’t work.
If she hasn’t stopped by year 4, u guarantee her teacher bollocking her in from if her classmates or her friends embarrassing her will stop her from doing it!

She's 8 and she's deemed to be attention seeking. When did it become such a heinous crime for a child to seek attention that a bollocking by a person in power and public humiliation is thought to be appropriate?
It's not abnormal to want attention, it's not unusual for a child to lack emotional maturity and to not know how to handle powerful feelings in an appropriate way.

I can’t fathom why she mentioned them in the first place. 🤣

Because the OP keeps changing her story ….

She's 8 that's still very young to me , iv'e had three 8 year old's .
Perhaps going up a year is scary for her and she just wants to cling on to being a little girl for a bit longer , she probably has some awareness that more will be asked of her at school come September, especially if she has some trepidation about the teacher.
If she were mine i would not be commenting on the voice at all but i would be giving her plenty of comfort at home and positive comments about how year 4 maybe , plant a few seeds about how the new teacher may behave but how even though he is different he is nice and ie if he has a louder voice this doesn't mean he is angry at her -you get the picture .
I bet you will find once she gets back to school peer pressure will make her 'conform' to some degree and she will be back to normal fairly soon.
I remember when my middle one started to blink a lot probably around the same age, god knows why thankfully it didn't last long !
Even though lots of things our kids do will cause us to worry at the time i found most things are just a phase that passes.

I wouldn't take the teachers' word for it...none of them thought DD was autistic but she is. 8 was when it started to show more obviously.

Psychiatrists on the other hand...more likely to know if they've been trained in NDs.

Good luck with sorting out what is going on. Even if she were autistic,say, no point going for an assessment until there is enough evidence... clearly not at the moment! DD might have been diagnosed at 8 but maybe not enough clear evidence...

Teachers can't tell you whether a child had autism or not.

The fact your daughter had seen 3 psychiatrists says there is more going on here than a bit of baby talk which has apparently had only happened 'lately'.

OP I would completely ignore. She’s attention seeking and will stop when it doesn’t work.
If she hasn’t stopped by year 4, u guarantee her teacher bollocking her in from if her classmates or her friends embarrassing her will stop her from doing it!

Only thing i will add to the '3 psychologists and the teachers all say she isn't autistic' thing is i had a paediatrician, and loads of teachers say my son wasn't autistic before he was 8.

By 11 he was diagnosed with severe dyspraxia (causes a 20% emotional/social delay) and both Autism & ADHD.

I am still not going to armchair diagnose the child the thread is about, its just to say that professionals are not always correct.

Yes, you're right. I forget sometimes that people have funds at the ready.

Thanks

Well this is an only child whose parents must have a large amount of t of disposable income.

OP, you must have other concerns if you've discussed autism with school and have been to three psychologists.

For what it's worth DS was seen by eight psychologists (only one was private) before I suggested autism and they agreed. Teachers always said they weren't qualified to comment.

Personally I wouldn't say a firm no thank you to the baby voice, but give loads of hugs and attention and more bed time stories than usual. I'd very clearly tell her she needs to communicate clearly for people to understand her and want to interact with her. So a two pronged approach of telling her to speak properly, but at the same time nurturing her as much possible, if if that seems like you are "babying" her. I doubt she will use the voice when she goes into school in Y4- and so might use it even more at home. If she does use it at school then I'd ask for the school to refer her to be seen by the educational psychologist.

Does she use the baby talk in her writing at school at all?

I once read that rather than correcting a child or pointing out what’s ‘wrong’ that you could repeat the words back to them in a sentence. Eg. “Oh no your hands are sticky” “you don’t like Mummy today”. That way you’re not ignoring her or telling her off but you are reinforcing the use of ‘proper’ language whilst seeing to her needs and acknowledging what she’s said. You’re also not giving rise to the fact she’s using baby talk.

How on earth can somebody see 3 psychiatrists? It must cost thousands?

It’s really obvious that there’s massive bits missing or that’s not true. So all the speculation in the world won’t help.

Op said she had her tubes tied because they did want another daughter (which I think is odd phrasing but ok) then says they would love another baby but can’t due to BOTH parents having long covid. Either Op has being misleading or their long covid is so bad op took the drastic decision to have her tubes tied. Which is a huge decision and huge thing to go through, if you are already so poorly you can not ever contemplate having another child.

If both parents are so poorly, their daughter has definitely been impacted.

Then the 3 visits to psychiatrists and the conversations with school. Clearly all is not well and this isn’t the only issue. Children who have no issues don’t have their parents and teachers discussing the possibility of autism or multiple visits to 3 different psychiatrists.

Either the Op is chatting shit completely

Or the child hasn’t had the appointments and meetings with school and just made it up to try and prove her daughter is not autistic. And also made up part of why they aren’t having kids.

Or in complete denial and thinks they can tackle this like the parent of a child with no issues could, which will negatively impact the child.

Or the Op has some sort of medical anxiety and is taking her daughter to appointments she doesn’t need and having conversations with teachers that she doesn’t to have. Which will negatively impact the child.

The problem is, without all the information no one can say with any certainty that the Dd could be autistic or not, wether it’s just a phase or not, what the reason could be, wether it’s normal and will resolve itself.

I suspect there’s far more issues at play with the Op.

You've just reminded me that one of my DC started to do this during the first lockdown. Not all the time, but enough that we noticed. I just treated it like it was normal, felt that it was probably triggered by the changes to her world. She was in yr4.

DH kept saying things like, 'I just can't take you seriously when you talk like that' and 'you just sound really stupid'. I went with it/ felt that she obviously needed to do it for some reason. It didn't actually matter. (Maybe lockdown helped as no interaction with anyone else, and she didn't do it all the time.)

She still does the odd bit at 12, and tbh I do it sometimes too. It's become a way of bonding. DH eventually just ignored it. Not making a big deal made it ok and I saw it as some kind of self-soothing.

So I suppose the advice I'd give is, don't make a big deal out of it. That might be too late in your case, though. Perhaps I'm a soft touch, but she needed to do it, we didn't make a big deal of it. So much so that it didn't immediately spring to mind when I read your OP

Try to read a whole thread, by that I mean just click ‘see all’ on an OP’s posts.

This. 👆
If you're not a specialist you can't know if there's no ND going on. For some reason DD is reversing which is a big red flag & should be listened to, not ignored.

This is a child who has allegedly seen three psychiatrists and whose teachers have been discussing the possibility of autism. Bit more than a walnut, maybe?

my dd age 8 was desperate for me to have a baby.
just a phase op

You don't wish you could have more children though, you said in your opening post you'd had your "tubes tied" a few years ago as you didn't want another daughter. I don't like to be so pedantic but that's quite a specific thing to say.

Perhaps she is trying to be the new baby you long for?

Why has she been assessed by so many psychiatrists at her age?
How long has this been going on for?

I'd plan a day out getting new things for school.

But baby girls' don't go to school do they? Oh dear maybe one of her cousins would like to go instead?

How come it takes a panel of experts to declare her not neurodivergent but all it takes is you, an online mnetter, to declare her neurodivergent? Just out of interest.

i have it in writing from three psychiatrists and most of her teachers at school have told me she isn’t autistic.

This is very strange. I assume you've seen these psychiatrists privately. There's no way the NHS would have referred a child to 3 psychiatrist; not in the short period of time this has been happening.

I think your daughter has got into this habit and she can see you are paying attention to it, so she keeps on doing it. I would do the same as her dad and just ignore the baby talk. When she's back at school, busy with her friends and studies, she'll grow out of it. Yes, she'll get laughed at or ignored by other children, but there's nothing you can do about that. She'll have to learn the hard way