My daughter talks constantly and it's leaving me frazzled.

[Cluelessat33]

Please be gentle because I'm feeling incredibly delicate. However I know this will probably sound shit.

My 5 year old talks. Constantly. Incessantly. From the moment she wakes to the moment she goes to sleep. Non stop. And not only that, she struggles to moderate her volume. She is a vibrant, inquisitive, intelligent girl. Which I love. But I am also struggling to cope with it. Its feels like a constant bombardment of demands, questions, requests, wants etc from the minute we wake up. The questions come quicker than I can respond or even think of an answer. My brain feel like it's turning to mush from about 9am. And by the time we get to bed time my brain is so fried that I'm actually struggling to read a book to her because my head and eyes and mouth just don't seem to be working together any more.

How do I cope better and try and manage this without getting snappy or asking her not to ask so many questions. I don't want to stop her and quash her inquisitiveness. But neither can I continue to answer her questions about what the dog is saying 50 times a day, for example

I'm a single Mum, and she does have contact with her Dad. I'm feeling frazzled all around, but the constant questioning, demanding and shouting/loud talking is not helping how I'm feeling generally. Either that or I'm just not in a good position to cope with it. I don't know really.

@Cuppasoupmonster Of course. I am merely sharing my own experiences with my own child and various other SEN children I know. The way the OP describes it is the relentless chatter that is part of the symptoms in many ADHD children. My son, for example, has talked at me, aside from when he ate dinner, since 3.30 pm when he came out of school. He is currently still talking and singing while sitting next to me on the sofa. He's 11. I can't describe how draining it can be.

But most 5 year olds in my experience talk incessantly. Especially if they’ve never ever been told not to/told to go off and play/told to let others talk.

@Kanaloa Yes of course that's true too. Again I'm speaking of my own experiences. That's all. I'm not diagnosing anybody! The comparison for me is my NT DD who didn't do this, even at five. Not anything like the exhausting relentless noise that my DS makes.

She sounds so much like my eldest and youngest both ND, one ADHD and one on the ASD/ADHD pathway.

At least with the youngest she had 3 older sisters to talk at/play with/exhaust and I could cook dinner in silence and solitude.

Exactly. We’re told we can’t tell them to stop because it’s ‘damaging’, so is it surprising? My 3 year old talks a lot, sometimes I just say please be quiet now as mummy needs a few minutes to do X/Y/Z. I too was a chatterbox, looking back it was just me being socially anxious and a silence-filler from an early age, I broke the habit in my early 20s when I realised it was unnecessary effort.

But in the absence of Op mentioning any other symptoms, and this ‘one’ being something fairly typical if annoying, is it really proportionate or necessary to suggest SEN as a potential ‘cause’? I’m on another thread at the moment reassuring a panicked mum of a 9 month baby that her baby is likely not autistic because she flaps her arms about when she’s excited.

It’s out of control on here and panicking new mums for no reason. The thing is once you mention it they will be ‘looking’ for other behaviours to make the diagnosis for even if they didn’t even register before.

@Cuppasoupmonster It was not my intention to panic the OP at all. Nor have I diagnosed. Again, I reiterate that I was imparting my own experiences with my own very different children. If you look back through the thread I am far from alone in my experiences. For the record, there is nothing "wrong" with my son despite his autism and ADHD. He is a wonderful little boy but this is the one aspect I struggle with. I have just sat down. This is the first quiet I have had since 3.30 pm. It isn't normal chatter. I'm bowing out now because clearly my contribution is unhelpful.

Is it the done thing to tell her to put a sock in it? No?

For me it's not about the chatter but not needing much sleep and basically passing out with exhaustion as well. The fact that they mostly ask very intricate questions as well as sometimes just wanting to engage. Engaging any adult in conversation.

I used to play the silent game. Who could be quiet for the longest. That worked every-time although dd always lost by giggling but gave me quite a few minutes of peace as at her instigation it would be pleaseeeee one more time so that she could win. She never did.

Another game I used to play when I was out and about was be the statue. So if I was looking at something in a shop or sitting in a cafe and wanted her to be quiet I'd say how long can you be a statue for. And she was terrible but again it would mean more still than the shuffle dance she always had going on.

Like your dd she never napped never needs to sleep to this day and she's almost 10 and still gets up and larks about. I don't know if my dd has adhd but she is 100 miles an house and it is hard. I've found sports to be the most wonderful thing. Firstly because she's not with me 24/7 she's at the sports team and secondly because if I'm not constantly tying to wear her down she's back on 100% mode all the time.

Screen time for our dd makes things much worse. It occupies her mind but not her body so she sits for too long not realising and then she hasn't 'moved' enough then have way too much energy left, she also used to get angry when the screen time ended too I think from concentrating too long.

Try to be patient, it can be a blessing being talkative. It's great in some ways and for some jobs so don't wish it away. I know it's hard. Occupy them and give yourself many many breaks!!

Solidarity OP, I have a 5 and 8 year old who are both like this!
They will literally argue with each other about whose turn it is to talk to me, talking over each other louder and louder to get my attention😭

We play the quiet game a lot, enforce quiet time a lot and sometimes I tell them I need a break and send them to their rooms (or lock myself in mine!).

I found @BertieBotts's advice upthread very good OP. I have a very similar child to her.

I think it's worth having neurodiversity on your radar. I disagree with the posters (there's always one) who suggest there's a rush to diagnosis (how? takes years and often £££).

The thing is sometimes it's 5 year olds being 5, sometimes it's personality, sometimes it's situational (if parent has many other stresses for instance), but sometimes parents are experiencing something out of the "norm", that continues long after age 5 and it's good to have support and ideas.

I have got a school friend who never got that and it has limited her adult life a bit.

Especially if they’ve never ever been told not to/told to go off and play/told to let others talk.

Sorry but this is ridiculous. If your child is driving you nuts to the extent described in the OP, of course you would tell them to go and do something else.

The problem is that it doesn't work. You can keep telling them until you're blue in the face and they act like they can't hear you. It feels bloody draconian to back it up with some kind of threat, so you wouldn't do that, but I dare say most people have got exasperated and told them to go away in less than pleasant terms and then their faces crumple and you feel awful. And it doesn't last anyway, they pop back up 2 minutes later.

Also IME I don't need to tell DS2 (4.5) to stop talking at me because he has a quota of words and then he gets bored of my input/attention and wanders off to do something by himself.

DS1 never ever got bored and didn't have the ability to self occupy. As a baby/toddler he sort of did, although now I think about it he was very screechy as a baby, I thought because he couldn't sit up until 9mo and so struggled to reach toys from lying down (he could crawl). When he was about 9 I remember doing something with him and the literal second the activity finished the next words out of his mouth were "I'm bored!" I used to despair, I told him that's not what being bored is, you can't be immediately bored. I worked on ideas for things for him to do alone, we made idea buckets, I bought activity books, I tried giving him household chores every time he said he was bored. (He actually liked this). The only thing that alleviated it was him getting a phone and reaching the age where his friends wanted to call each other. I'm not even convinced that his reliance on others to entertain him has waned but he now spreads it between me, several friends, occasionally his brother and it's not so intensely ON me all the time.

I think the incessant need to talk in some DC is low dopamine so once they're old enough to get that "hit" from e.g. video calling friends they don't need to constantly demand it from us.

I have had to have a lock on my home office door since 2020 because DD (while being perfectly well cared for by DH) is actually unable not to interrupt Teams calls etc and is only now at age 10 getting a bit of a grip on it.

My DS is 4.5 and is the same. Constantly talking when at home. I have no answers but am sending some solidarity!
DM bought him a microphone for Christmas. As you can imagine it’s not helped the situation 🤣

Yes the intricacies of the conversation are what I find most challenging! My two autisticADHD kids both pick up on really minor details in conversation that I don't perceive to matter at all, but that are very significant to them. I love trying to understand the way their brains work, and it takes an awful lot of energy trying to get on the same mental track as them, and then also helping them track with me. This is almost word for word a conversation that I had with DS the other day...

Me: "....and Grandad had worked there 12 years by that point, so it had been a very long time and he was quite unhappy" (his unhappiness in his job being the point of the story)
DS: "grandad worked there for 11 years"
Me: "Mmm"
DS: "mum...mum...MUM"
Me: "yes"
DS: "you said Grandad had worked there for 12 years"
Me: "yes"
DS:"Why did you say that?"
Me: "because I thought he had"
DS: "but he didn't, it was 11 years"
Me: "ok"
DS: "mum...mum...MUM. you said that Grandad had worked there 12 years but it was actually 11"
Me: "yes I know"
DS: "So why did you say it was 12?"
Me: when I told the story I thought it was 12 years but it was actually 11, but i didn't say much when you corrected me because the main point of the story is that he had worked there a long tim,e and there isn't a big difference between 11 and 12 years. The general gist of the story is the same because 11 years is still a long time"
DS: "I don't think it is"

There was a thread a while ago in relationships about people monologuing. One poster had a MIL who would start sentences with no idea how she was going to finish them and it was completely exhausting for the listener.

It isn’t kind to let a child become that person.

No, it isn’t ridiculous. OP says she never tells her and doesn’t want to have to tell her to stop. If your child has never been told ‘it’s time for quiet, we don’t need to talk all the time’ then it isn’t necessarily surprising that they don’t know. If you tell them they might then know!

And for what it’s worth my son is autistic and does enjoy monologuing. However it is socially inappropriate and extremely boring, and as he gets older it will come across as selfish and rude, regardless of how much he enjoys doing it. So we do teach him appropriate conversational skills, as well as boundaries. He cannot he allowed to just talk at people 24/7. And because we set boundaries in an appropriate way, we don’t make his ‘face crumple.’ He just knows that we are his family and not his audience.

There is nothing wrong in telling a child to be quiet.

Hi any updates

Why are people bumping old threads all of a sudden. Stobbit.

I have one of these. The constant talking actually means she doesn’t do much listening. The times she isn’t talking, she is waiting for her turn to talk. We do ask her to use her ears not her mouth sometimes, I don’t think it’s damaging her. She knows she is loved, this is in her character but we all have to be mindful how our own behaviour and characteristics impacts others. I explain that if I’m listening and answering, my brain isn’t working on other things like sorting dinner, or other things she might like me to do.

We do the ‘hand on the arm’ technique. If I’m doing something, or talking/listening to someone else, she puts her hand on me and I then acknowledge that she has something to say by putting my hand on hers. It reassures her that I will get to her, and sometimes she needs to wait a while. She doesn’t do it all the time, but it has helped. I do sometimes just ignore her if she is just babbling out loud, sometimes she answers her own questions.

I do feel for you, I get the whole ‘eyeballs pointing in different directions’ feeing of an evening. Unless you’re subjected to it ALL the time, it’s quite hard to imagine just how relentless it can be.

Agree with these posts.

Children learn consideration of others first, from their primary carer, you.
It is a valuable life skill to learn this.
You need down time.

My head was literally fried from my daughter.
I would at times feel dizzy.

I really empathise, however it is quite common with lively children, often girls.

As a teen she oscillates between chatterbox and needing down time.

Don't be afraid to ask for some peace, you are as entitled to it, as she is to your time.

You sound like an incredibly patient mother.