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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To ask how to cope with a kid who is just so irritating?

177 replies

roamfarandwide · 17/05/2026 08:45

I feel horrible saying this but I am on my last nerve with my five year old. I find him so irritating and I’m sure he must sense it and it must impact his self esteem.

Constant talking. A lot of it makes virtually no sense - I’m sure it does to him but it’s this stream of consciousness that is hard to decipher … he was wittering about these ‘three tigers and if they said no then they’d be there but if they didn’t then they would wouldn’t they mummy …’ and it’s almost always when I’m trying to get everybody ready or dealing with something else and I just don’t have the time to stand there and ask leading questions to work out what he’s on about. I was trying to leave for work the other day and he was just stood there wittering about something … horrible I know.

The noise, my god. So loud. Yes of course I’ve asked him nicely to make less noise. Sometimes he does for seconds later it to start again. He was playing some game this morning involving throwing a large monster truck around in the room with wooden floors and all I can hear is crash bang crash … just so wearing.

Stupid behaviour … nearly had to take him home from a party last week for throwing ketchup around.

Winding sibling up and making her scream. Messy and leaving things lying around.

I do work on it. I really try hard to address the behaviours. But the problem is I’m constantly on at him, I mean all the time. (and doing the ‘tell him what he should be doing’ doesn’t work - he often needs telling really firmly and sharply to knock it off.)

I feel horrible.

OP posts:
JustSaying10 · 01/09/2026 18:37

MyThreeWords · 17/05/2026 09:11

I feel a bit dismayed that the thread goes straight to the idea of adhd. ~Thhat seems to be invoked sooooo readily these days. All five-years-olds have the capacity to be irritating. In itself, it is not remotely a grounds for rushing to the idea of something diagnosable.

I'm guessing that he is a child that has been attentively parented and expects a high degree of parental input. When he sees that you are stressed and unwilling to centre him, that makes him a bit anxious and agitated and he seeks reassurance by ramping up the attention-seeking behaviour. When he sees that you are positively exasperated with him, his anxiety rises even further and he becomes more and more disregulated.

To an extent it is a trap that we make for ourselves by centring our children more than is healthy for them, and more than is sustainable to us.

I think you need to work on yourself, in the first instance. Make sure that you have some downtime, ( ideally apart from him so that he can learn a bit of emotional self-reliance) and do whatever things you need in order to feel more relaxed. Once you are less stressed and irritated, it will be easier to respond calmly to him and dial back the irritable over-engagement you have with his challenging behaviour.

Once you have taken your visible irritation and anger out of the equation, you might find that you can withdraw a little from his play and behaviour without him experiencing that as a rejection or a reprimand. Then you will both be more at peace in the relationship.

This is brilliant

SaySomethingMan · 01/09/2026 18:41

Can you not tune out some of the constant talking? Nod and “hmm” along?
You’re right it won’t be good for his self esteem but it’s hard!

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