How to motivate a v chatty boy in class to stop chatting?

[Thelowquietsea]

DS, 8, Y3 is a wonderful soul but just very chatty. He is always talking, always asking questions - which is great, of course, but not when he's in class.

This year he has a fabulous teacher. I think she is just great. However, she and I have had loads of chats about DS who she says is just very chatty at the wrong time. WHilst he's not alone, he's a regular. He's academic v strong, in the top few in the class - she says that whilst he can pick things up after listening half an ear - he's talking to others who need to really listen. So it's really disruptive from that POV as well.

She's done everything - carrot/stick/moving him, talking to him - I feel we've done everything - reward/talk about respect regularly/incentives/punishment/ on and on and on from term 1.

Nothing changes. Or if it does, it's for a short time.

I don't know what to do! It's so annoying. Before anyone wades in with does he have SEN - No, he doesn't at all. He just seems to lack self-control. Or he doesn't WANT it enough or to please me enough!

Aagh. I know he'll grow up and hopefully improve, but any thoughts or tips on how to change this around would be welcome.

If it helps, I am 34.

Well I'm properly ancient at 45 then. My youngest DC isn't much older than the OP's DS however.

I agree that old fashioned "children should be seen and not heard" style parenting and teaching isn't a good thing.

But the current trend of giving young children too much "positive attention" actually often sends mixed messages and gives them too much responsibility and allows them to take up much more time and space than is helpful to them or those around them.

Beachcomber

I agree. Basics are basics. You don’t talk over people without good reason.

herculepoirot2 Beachcomber
👏👏👏
It's basic manners and consideration.

I don't believe in 'seen and not heard' but do believe in 'know how and when to voice your ideas, be polite, kind and respectful'.

There are some children who are clearly used to having a lot of air time and attention, talking over people to be heard, talk over the teacher, whisper when their peers are givinf answers, talking theough a short video clip and so on and then expect to hold court in a class of 30. They were just getting someone's attention, just sharing their opinion, just asking a question that you're actually explaining but they've butted In, just asking a friend something.

I think I'm grumpy because I've started calling it out for what it is: being rude.

Yup.

I'll take that a step further and suggest that you especially don't talk over those older than you whose job it is to teach you stuff they know inside out and you don't know. No matter how bright you are.

A previous poster encouraged us to answer our children's questions as this is how they learn. I don't disagree but I also think teaching our children to pipe down and listen is one of the most important things that we can teach them. Most questions have already been asked.

I love questions. I love answering questions when pupils are stuck and i specially cool and interesting ones that take the lesson in a different direction for a while. I dislike silly questions with a passion.

Some people say there's no such thing as a silly question. There is.
E.g. Don't ask me if that's our date and title 30 seconds after I've just told you to write it down & it's in the same place as it has been all year. It's not funny and because our class ethos doesn't value clowns and disruption, your peers aren't finding you funny either.

The sooner those students realised they can get positive attention by listening and thinking before asking a really interesting question or making a relevant contribution, the quicker they stopped trying to claim airtime for whatever happened to cross their mind.
By secondary, watching the faces of the class when the same few 'talkative' types hog the airtime is quite interesting. Most of them are totally unimpressed.

Would some kind of 'talking token' within the class (at least some of the time) work?

So the teacher talks initially, and might be holding the token. Someone put their hand up to ask a question - they get the token. Or there can be several tokens - but the point is that if you aren't holding the token, you can't talk. Obviously talking without the token means that you don't get the token for a while...

The 'three tokens' approach is good.

Or, to be honest, separate seating. A separate desk or table, screened from the rest of the class or just facing the wall. Or seated at a table while everyone else is on the carpet. I have 'that' class at the moment and have a variety of 'graded separation' forms of seating, used flexibly for quite a large group of chatty children

Sorry I stopped reading after page two but OP it's really refreshing to read a post where the poster considers others opinions and doesn't think the sun shines out of their DC arse. I'd imagine from your approach you are managing this better than most.

Thelowquietsea
As I said above, dd was similar but despite the chatting she gave back a lot to the lessons, she exasperated her teachers, but they used her to bounce off of and liven up the class.
Shes at uni now and doing well in a health related course where good communication with service users is vital, and reports say she is always appropriate and professional

Wow bruffin sounds like you had some unusual teachers there.

I have never heard a teacher saying they would like to "liven up" a class! It's generally the total opposite.

When I talk with the primary school teachers I know, they all, without exception say that one of the biggest challenges they face is chatting. It's quite sobering to hear a teacher talk about this problem when they are saying what they really think as opposed to trying to diplomatically talk to a parent about their child.

I know one of my teacher friends is trying to do less of the diplomatic "it's all positive really" speak in an effort to sort out the problem. She is considering leaving teaching - a job she used to love and has a lot of experience in.

She has decided to stop using language like "chatting" as it sounds innocuous and fairly normal behavior and start naming this behavior for what it really is. So she is now talking to parents about "not listening / talking over others / rudeness / constant interruptions / time wasting / class disruption / etc".

She says she gets a lot of parents saying "but x is only x age / others do it too / it's only chatting / x just has so many bright ideas and finds it hard to wait / etc.

Problem is that she has 30 kids and well over half of them are like this. She says that nowadays she doesn't get through nearly as much lesson content as she used to and that she sees a real difference in the level of manners and respect that children have for their teachers. She and her colleagues don't know what to do to address the problem as they say that it is a general attitude of children being given too much airtime and therefore thinking they are entitled to it. She also says that expectations WRT manners and self-control are much lower and therefore children continue to blurt out their thoughts as they get older whereas in the past after the first year of primary they had learnt that they are in a collective space which functions differently to their home environment and which has non negociable rules that apply to everyone.

She has decided to stop using language like "chatting" as it sounds innocuous and fairly normal behavior and start naming this behavior for what it really is. So she is now talking to parents about "not listening / talking over others / rudeness / constant interruptions / time wasting / class disruption / etc".

I bet she is criticised for being “negative”?

She also says that expectations WRT manners and self-control are much lower

Yes. And it starts at home.
Delayed punishments don't work with young children.
Teaching them at home how to wait to talk is a much better bet.
Don't tolerate interruptions if you're talking with someone else. Don't interrupt your reading/tv immediately. Teach them how to wait to talk. Teach them how to be quiet for periods of time.

Delayed punishments don't work with young children.

I hear this a lot, but actually he is 8, not 2. Providing he has a level of understanding whereby you can explain that he is being punished for his behaviour during the school day, why wouldn’t it work? The limitation on effectiveness of a punishment that is delayed is surely only that the child might not understand the link between the behaviour and the punishment. If you explain it, it will work.

herculepoirot2. Yes. She is worn out trying to get children to be quiet and worn out by having parents resist hearing anything franker than "x is bright and a much appreciated member of the class and would be even more marvelous if they were able to channel their expressiveness more effectively".

That's the problem. Being negative without a big sugar lump of praise to help the medicine go down is considered beyond the pale nowadays.

The children, of course, take away the message that they are bright, appreciated and marvelous (and unique). Not that they are bad mannered and disruptive and just like everyone else.

Not even at 8. A couple of hours, maybe. TV much later, is clearly not working, if I needed more arguments.

When DS started school I told the teacher, in front of him, that I wanted to know if he was punished in school because he'd be punished at home too.
The thing is he knew I'd follow through and did act as a deterrent. He didn't get in trouble in school, although it's not in his nature.
All his punishments from me have been immediate.

The work to be done at home is to teach him control. And that should be directly on the behaviour at home. But he's so clever and can't wait to talk. You can't tolerate one behaviour at home and punish it from school.
Children can and do behave differently in school and at home, but it works better when they know the expectations are different. And behaviour is dealt there and then. Not several hours later.

Adults aren't that different. People still get drunk despite having hangovers later.

When I was a kid all the parents in my circle would have gone ballistic if they had been called into school to discuss their child's behavior. And they would have been incredulous if they had to have this discussion more than once. Nowadays it's normal.

@Beachcomber When I was a kid all the parents in my circle would have gone ballistic if they had been called into school to discuss their child's behavior. And they would have been incredulous if they had to have this discussion more than once. Nowadays it's normal.

A few individuals on this thread have decided to turn it into a rather tedious critique of children nowdays. I am going to reiterate, even though I am bored of doing so, that I do not condone my DS for his behaviour. Not ever. I do not find sugar to make the negativity go down. I tell him like it is. So does his teacher. I do not think, and have never thought, he is marvellous and needs his creativity to be nurtured, and his behaviour to be secondary. Obviously, it will be pointed out to me that whatever I am doing is not working - which i have clearly agreed with and the reason I came on here because I am frustrated. But I find all these latter posts rather cringing and as if a small, self-congratulatory group has started, who apparently only have to look at their children for their bad behaviour to seep away. Well done, you all. I am failing, you are not.

I know how hard it is for teachers. I know how selfish my DS is being. If I wanted a lecture on what it was like for schools, I'd read the Daily Mail, not come on this thread.

I will not be posting again.

Lweji

Your attitude sounds sensible enough. Punishments should obviously be as soon as is practical.

Beachcomber

The other attitude which is normal is the “Why are you calling me about something that is happening at school?” As if the two things aren’t connected.

Thelowquietsea. You are right, there is a general discussion going on here about children's behavior nowadays.

It's a shame that you find it tedious IMO. The discussion isn't entirely focused on your DS but rather on a wider problem of which his behavior (and that of the other classmates you have mentioned) is a part because there are millions of kids exhibiting this behavior up and down the land and it is part of a pattern.

That may be incredibly tedious for you to have read about but I can assure you that it is a whole lot more tedious to try to teach these kids.

Sorry I can't help you. I don't know why your DS is continuing to behave badly in class when his parents and teacher are being consistently very tough on him and clearly communicating zero tolerance for his disruptive behavior.

Sorry I can't help you. I don't know why your DS is continuing to behave badly in class when his parents and teacher are being consistently very tough on him and clearly communicating zero tolerance for his disruptive behavior.

Perhaps because that isn’t happening?

I think your choice of words is the problem. You used the term 'chatty' in your title. Chatty is usually a positive term to describe someone outgoing and friendly. If you had used a more honest term eg 'disruptive' posters would have been more inclined to believe you were serious about the effect your ds was having on the class

DS was like this, I did all the things others have suggested (getting him to wait / not talk at us when we're doing something at home etc etc) but I found the one thing that worked best in the end was getting him to understand the effect his talking might have on his friends/classmates.

Just because he has finished the task given by the teacher it doesn't mean his friends have and his talking is stopping them finishing.

Just because he has understood the teachers explanation of the task it doesn't mean his friends have and his talking over the teacher is preventing his friends listening and understanding.

This seemed to do the trick!

I will not be posting again.

If you want another try later on then you might get more focussed advice and less general plaints about parents/kids/classrooms today on the MN Behaviour & Development board. AIBU is a bit of a bear garden.

I hope you and the school find a solution for your DS.

To address impulsive talking, especially asking questions repeatedly I have worked a token system but as a positive way of supporting pupils to make decisions and learn to priorities rather than as a negative 'ask a question lose a token'.

So, child is given say 5 'tokens'. Over the course of a session/day ( what ever is agreed) the child can use up these 5 tokens by asking questions, (positive response to behaviour management encourage engagement) but because the tokens are limited the child has to prioritise the questions he wants to ask. Once the tokens are gone, they are gone so no more questions.

In preparing for this, at start of each session, when the class teacher is sharing the learning objectives, pupils have chance to think through the session and formulate any questions, perhaps on a white board.
These can be adapted through the lesson, added to, removed.

Overtime this values the pupils contribution, gives other pupils a chance and also offers the pupil a chance to further develop their own learning skills (summarizing details, questioning and evaluation, setting priorities). With rigorous application this can break the cycle of always needing to contribute whilst adding to this child's learning.