Almost 6 year old has a very babyish sounding voice, should I be worried?

[ElsaShmelsa]

So, DD is 6 in June and has been through a LOT already in her short life. She's had 4 operations, 2 to lift her eyelid (she has a left eye Ptosis) and 2 for Grommets.

In addition she is very small for her age (she's 102cm) and because this was raised by the School Health Visitor, we self-referred to a Paediatrician who organized for a number of blood tests to be done to check for all causes of Short Stature (including Turners, Dwarfism etc). But wasn't overly concerned as she was following the 0.4th centile and has very short Grandparents and Aunties on her Father's side.

As she expected, all tests came back completely clear (including normal Growth Hormone analysis). So she said she wouldn't need to see her again and she was perfectly happy that she was just small.

Move forward a year and DD is still following the 0.4th centile line, sometimes coming above it, but never below it. Intelligence-wise she is in the top sets for Maths and Literacy and actually reads 2 years above her age. The school don't have any concerns at all.

Over the weekend I had a visit from my sister who said 'have you checked DD for dwarfism? Her voice is very babyish for her age'. Now I've always put her very young voice down to her size as everything (voice box, airways etc) will be much smaller. She's had to have a second set of grommets recently because her ear canals are still too small to be able to clear themselves.

No-one has mentioned her voice on a professional level (doctors, the paediatrician, her singing teacher, school teachers) but my sister has now put this new worry in my head... She mentioned the dwarfism which irritated me as she knew all the horrid tests and everything DD has had to undergo which ruled all that out.

But now I'm worrying again...

I should have said, when I was upset at the weekend I text a friend about it who came back and said 'well your DD does sound different to other children of her age, but then I've always put it down to her size because she's so much smaller'.

My 7 (nearly) year old has a very babyish voice, very high pitched. On the phone she sounds like a toddler. It's becoming more noticeable as she gets older. She has also had some minor teasing a school because of it.

She's average height, but very slim (her bmi is in healthy range but only just).

I never put it down to her size, it's just the way she is I think. I know grown women with very high pitched voices. I guess it's just one of those things that vary like height or hair colour.

That should say nearly 8 in brackets.

Thank you oldcraftyhen, I know exactly what you mean, as adults all our voices are different. I just feel that I want to protect her from everything and I know I can't but with everything else she's been through, when someone points out just another thing they've noticed, I just want to hide away (where she can't see me) and cry for her.

Luckily she knows nothing about this recent 'comment' and I would never say anything to her!!

my DD is 7 in year 2 and has friends with much younger voices than hers. I didn't ever consider it a worry! They're all different...some are like little mice for longer than others. My DD sounds like Barbara Windsor when she laughs! As you say, small body...smaller voice!

My 11yo dd (who is very tall) has a very young voice-she slightly lisps which doesn't help. So nothing to do with size.

What I would wonder is how the other children in her form relate to her. I'm asking because I had a friend whose dd was very young in the year and also very small, and the other girls in the form talked to her in a baby way. Like "Have a sweet, Beth... Would little Lulu like a sweetie in her tum tums?"
And if they played imaginary games she was always the "baby". For her, it drove her crazy, so she didn't play up to it. However if she gets attention etc. it may be that encourages it.

Thank you MrsTawdry.

DeeWe, thank you for your message aswell. I know that she gets a lot of 'you're so cute' at school but not from the children in her class, more from the older children in the school who protect and mother her quite a lot. I thought she would get fed up with it but she doesn't seem to (at the moment). In fact, when I painted her face this morning for their red nose day celebrations she said 'ahhh I look really cute'. And I videoed her recent singing class and she watched the video of herself and said 'I like really cute!'. So she's not seeing it as a negative at the moment. I do suspect that will change though...

The rest of her class appear to not treat her any differently. When I've witnessed her at school in the mornings obviously they have to look down at her when they're talking because she is so much smaller than they are, but they don't appear to speak to her differently.

Plus DD has no idea that she sounds any different to anyone else I don't think. She mentions being smaller but she's never mentioned sounding different and she has a wicked laugh that makes everyone else smile around her.

That's not a very nice thing for your sister to have said, particularly as it sounds like she knows your DD has already been checked, and cleared, for dwarfism. Voices vary a huge amount, but if you're really worried why not go back to your doctor to talk about it? I'm sure s/he won't feel you're being unreasonable. It does sound like your DD is just small and if she's always been on the 0.4th percentile this is within normal limits and someone has to be at that shorter end of the scale.

Thanks Juneau, I was having a long chat with one of the Mums at the school this morning (she has also been a teacher of children with SEN for 25 years - so has met a lot of children!) and she said that she'd never even noticed DD's voice. She was helping out at the school when DD was in Reception and so was one of the teachers for about 6 months. She said that we have absolutely nothing to worry about and even if she has a high-pitched young sounding voice, her vocabulary and speech etc is excellent so what else can they do about her voice, not a lot!

My sister pays very little interest to my life TBH and I think I was just as upset that she didn't know what we'd been through with DD, as I was about the comment. Clearly we're not important enough to her.