My child barks instead of speaking

[Proudmummy62]

My 10 year old daughter, soon to be going into secondary school, often relies with dog barking and cat meowing. She often walks up to people and woof's at them to get attention, and when introduced to people she also woof's or meows.
When she has not been given attention for a while or does not know how to reply to someone she also responds with an animal noise with actions.
If next to myself, or my husband, she does cat mannerisms such as rubbing, scratching (herself against us) and licking.

I myself am an older mother, and she is an only child.

Please help, I can't stand it any longer and worried about what will happen when she gets to secondary school.

You know yourself this is about attention. DD does it because you let her get away with it. So whilst it's not harmful, you're not doing her any favours by responding to a woof / meeow / whatever.

Peer pressure to communicate normally will prevail in secondary school. Kids know their social boundaries and only pull a fast one where they can.

Two routes: ignore as above or tackle. But you must be consistent, if she starts rubbing you, ask her to stop or move away every time even if yo have to do it 20 times in one sitting. You mustn't respond to anything that isn't language.

Or tackle, sit down discuss it explain the realities of behaving like this in front of peers and then pull her up on it every time she does it.

My DS exhibited a similar unwillingness to speak.
It was a battle over several years.
Eventually he was diagnosed with some mild learning difficulties including ADHD and social communication issues.
I only wish that I had sought help much earlier than I did.

Have you asked her why she is doing that?

We've previously tried to stop this as attention seeking and it started to work, but has recently become even worse and she has now begun to use barking as a form of actual conversation.
For example my father-in-law had said hello to her, and she replied "woof woof" it has now become something that our family now know to just ignore it

How is she getting on in school? Have there been any concerns expressed by her teachers?

Does she do it at school OP? What about with other children or is it just adults?

How long has it been going on? Does she communicate properly in school? Does she so it with strangers? Has she always had difficulty socially?

Sorry for bombarding with questions but it is hard to tell from your post if this is recent behaviour that dd is doing to wind you up or if there is a more serious ongoing problem. In which case I would wonder why you have sought professional advice

Please talk to her and ask her why she feels like she needs to do this. You say she has started doing it more and has swapped real language to animal noises? Is it just with family, or with everyone she meets? I think she needs to realise it's not the normal way of communicating.

I don't want to sound horrible but if she starts doing this to older kids when she goes up to secondary school, she is probably going to get teased a lot and then the problems will end up bigger.

I hope this doesn't sound rude and I'm sure she's a lovely girl, but maybe she really needs to speak so someone about it?

I would ask her teacher how she communicates in school. To be honest, I think if she had been doing it there her teacher would have raised it with you. I would also go and see your GP as it is escalating.

I know someone who mooed and baaed and meaowed in their physio appointment. they are now getting assessed for asd. there are a lot of other issues though.

has dd had an increase in stress. (sats?)

have you told her not to do it.

eg please use the word hello with grandad when you meet him.