Why Is My Older Young Kid Talking Like a Toddler? A Classroom Teacher Explains What’s Going On
Tuesday morning circle time two weeks ago, we were filling out the tops of Mother’s Day cards, going around and sharing our mom’s first name so kids could spell it out or copy it from me. I got to Lila, who’s 5, can write her full name unprompted and correctly identifies every dinosaur in our classroom bin. She blinked at me, twisted the frayed edge of her unicorn tights, and said, “Mommy.” I smiled and asked again, “I know, that’s what you call her! What’s the name her friends use?” She shrugged, and her voice dropped to that high, wobbly babyish lilt I’ve heard a dozen times in 8 years of teaching pre-K and K-2 aftercare. “I dunno,” she said, like she was two, not five months away from kindergarten.
After circle, I was tying shoes by the door and saw it again with Milo, our 7-year-old who spends afternoons here while his dad finishes work. He’d just lost a game of four square to the 8-year-olds, and he was standing by my feet, making these soft grunts that barely counted as words, when 20 minutes earlier he’d explained the entire plot of the latest Minecraft update to me, full of complex sentences and terms I still don’t understand.
Lila’s mom came in that afternoon, harried, holding her new 2-month-old in a car seat, and I mentioned the circle time exchange. She stared, then said, “She knows my name! She yells ‘JENNNNIFER’ across the playground when I’m late to pick her up. Why is she acting like this?” I told her I’ve seen this dozens of times: 5-year-olds talking like 2-year-olds, 7-year-olds sounding half their age, forgetting basic things they’ve known for years like their parents’ names or their address. A lot of people panic, think it’s a speech delay, or something’s wrong developmentally, but most of the time, it’s just kids’ way of hitting pause when everything feels too big.
I saw it with my own kid, when I went back to full-time teaching after he turned 4. He’d been potty trained for two years, knew all his letters, and suddenly he was asking for a bottle at bedtime and calling juice “joose” like he was 2. I freaked out, called the pediatrician, who just asked what had changed in our routine. I told her, and she said it’s just a step back: when all the new big kid expectations pile up, kids go back to a time when things were easier, when everyone took care of them without asking anything of them.
What I’ve learned works, with my own kid and my students, is don’t call attention to it. The worst thing you can do is say “You know how to talk better than that” or “Stop acting like a baby.” That just shames them, makes them think their feelings are wrong, so they’ll do it more to get the attention (even bad attention) they’re craving.
Instead, I just don’t comment on the speech change. When Lila was talking that way in circle time, I just moved on to the next kid, and then 10 minutes later when we were gluing tissue paper on our cards, I sat down next to her and said “I write my mom’s name right at the top here. What does your grandma call your mom when she leaves a voicemail?” She giggled and said “Oh, it’s Jennifer. Duh.” I wrote it out in pencil for her, she traced it, no big deal.
I also tell parents to give them intentional small doses of baby time, so they don’t have to ask for it by regressing. For Lila’s mom, I suggested she let Lila sit on her lap for 5 minutes every night after the baby goes to bed, just like she does when the baby is fussy. Let Lila drink from a sippy cup if she wants, rock her a little, no talking about big kid stuff like “you have to be a good example for the baby.” Just 5 minutes where she doesn’t have to be the big kid. She tried it, and a week later Lila was volunteering her mom’s name unprompted at circle time.
For Milo, who goes back and forth between his mom’s and dad’s house after the split, I keep a little frayed rocking chair in the corner of my room. When he comes in talking that garbled, little kid talk, I just nod toward the chair and say “Want me to sit with you for two minutes before you go play?” Sometimes he just sits, sometimes he lets me rock him a little, and by the time the two minutes are up, he’s talking normally again, ready to go build with LEGOs.
Of course, it’s not always just stress. If your kid has been talking like a much younger kid for more than two months, if they’ve stopped doing all the things they used to do that were age appropriate, if it comes with big changes in sleeping or eating, it’s worth checking in with your pediatrician or a speech therapist to rule out any underlying issues. But 9 times out of 10, it’s just a signal they need a little extra right now, not a problem to fix.
Last week, Milo had a bad Sunday night switching houses. He came in Tuesday still a little wobbly, talking in that soft 4-year-old voice after he fell off his bike on the playground. I sat with him in the rocking chair for five minutes, he held my hand, and then he got up and went to teach a group of 5-year-olds how to build a bike ramp out of loose blocks, clear as day, big kid words all the way. It doesn’t happen overnight, and it doesn’t just go away forever. Some weeks are harder than others. All you have to do is give them the little bit of space they’re asking for, and most of the time, they find their way back to their big kid voice when they’re ready.
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