Ds2 is in year 2 and approaching 8. He is happy, academically able, loyal to family and classmates and his big brother who is his constant playmate. He loves the order and predictability of school life with its emphasis on keeping order and bite-size adventures.
He is wary in most groups of children where activities are unstructured, preferring to hang back and watch. He is happy on the playground though and describes the games he plays with a small circle of friends. he will tend to be the third friend in groups of three. He therefore misses out socially a bit though he has been to a couple of small parties this year, from children who consider him a friend.
I joined this forum when he was a non verbal toddler with severe receptive language delay and sensory issues living in a richly musical world and I led him out of that world with your help.
In year 1 his teacher gently pointed out that ds2 tends to use a strident voice when trying to negotiate with his peers and also we noted that he would tend to copy the vocabulary of an adult (eg attempting to impose closed choices) rather than copy the techniques of socially successful children.
At home he has, over the past year, increasingly used a shrieky, inarticulate, homer-Simpson-quoting voice even when cuddling me in the morning, punctuated by a constant series of song snatches. But if he has a question about schoolwork or an observation about, say, grandma's house, he has a lower,quiter,altogether more pleasant voice and is more articulate.
I suspect that the annoying voice thing is a combo of over sensitivity to voice tone plus a way of dealing with his social anxiety.
It annoys his brother too.
Are there any techniques or philosophies for dealing with this? Do I ban him from watching The Simpsons? Play him recordings of himself? Try to insist on a normal voice if he is requesting something? Continue to work on the social anxiety? (Harder now he is older). Or should I think of this behaviour as being as much part of the continuum of normal behaviour as non NT-quirk behaviour? Or as something may settle down?
All thoughts appreciated.