4.10 year old shouting/talking very loudly ALL the time! AAAAARGH

[Pavlovthecat]

I know, I am moaning (have another thread moaning about children).

My DD is lovely, well behaved for the most part. She sometimes shouts at us crossly, and we are working on that, getting better, rewarding positive behaviour with stars/smileys, really bad behaviour such as being shouted at with frowns (only as last resort). Getting some results.

But. Her volume switch generally is increasing, we thought it was her shouting at us, but actually i don't think she is even meaning to. She shouts everything she says, she is a quite exciteable little girl, and has only just learnt to squeal, so she is shouting and squealing and whooping pretty much the entire time, to express annoyance, anger, happiness excitement. She appears unable to talk at a 'normal' level. And to top it off she talks endlessly. ENDLESSLY AND LOUDLY. She will sing as loud as she possibly can, opens up the back door and hollars at the top of her voice, she will shout down the hallway for our attention, she will be sat right by our ears, and talk so loudly she makes my eardum vibrate.

And it is driving us absolutely bananas. In particular today. DH and I actually have a headache now. And we have reached the end of our patience today.

Any suggestions on how to deal with this? Why is it? DH wonders if it is an attention thing due to DS aged 18 months. But it does not seem she is shouting to shout, if that make herself heard, rather that she does not realise she is - we when we ask her to talk quietly she then starts shouting that she is not shouting!!!

Perhaps a silly question but have you had her hearing checked?

DD was like this until we got her ears syringed - there was loads of wax in them. She also used to have the TV on too loud.

My first thought was hearing too. :)
My second is, once you have that checked, is she at nursery or school and does she yell all the time there?
Then I'd look at the negative consequences for her, not stars on a chart but marbles or the equivalent in a jar, working towards something she likes. A DVD watching, a baking session whatever she would enjoy as a treat.
You can remove marbles from the jar so that she has a visual reminder that it can go down as well as up.
Frowning might not be enough.

I think I will get her hearing checked. She also ignores, or appears not to hear things, but we had put this down to her being 4! I had mentioned it to DH but is not convinced. It won't hurt to get her ears checked though, if it is not, we can re-visit how we will approach it.

goblin, we do the treat thing. She gets stars for good things, and when she gets 7 she gets a treat. If she does something extra well behaved she gets a superstar (or, sparkly princess as it actually is- like when her brother fell over and she scooped him up and shh'd him, called me to tell he hurt himself, very lovely!) then she gets a big treat. Normal treats are Staying up half hour late and making bead necklace with mummy, going on the computer for half hour in the week which she is not allowed, extra trip to the park. Big treats are going swimming without her brother, making fairy cakes, occasional present. Maybe we should make it more visual, but she is part of the process of stars, she made her own chart, picked her own stickers, puts them on as soon as she earns one. If we do a marble thing, she will at this rate have negative number of marbles!

The problem is, I am happy to negatively discipline the clearly bad behaviour, the shouting in anger at us, but the general shouting loudly as just her volume level I feel uncomfortable doing, i don't want her to stop communicating. Not sure if that makes sense.

Also, she is such a good girl normally. Has her moments, is fierecely independent, which coupled with the shouting causes some conflict recently, but is a happy fun little girl and I don't want this to cloud that.

Our reception have a 'volume control' on the wall that they turn down as a sign to the class that it's getting too noisy. They also seem to do a lot of quiet action games so that children have the chance to practise being quiet and thinking about what they are doing.

Isn't glue ear quite common at this age?

I do feel for you, my DS had no volume control for years, partly being him, partly the AS.
He did acquire it, but he still responds to the hand signals I developed with him to make him aware of when he needs to lower his voice.

DD's (3.10) volume control has been going up recently too - and I was beginning to wonder about her hearing (DH has difficulties with his hearing, that he says are related to a firework incident as a kid, but I'm not 100% sure it's not something more than that).

Before I took her to get her hearing checked, I tried the 'chocolate' and 'sweet paper' tests (whisper 'chocolate' behind her, and/or quietly rustle a sweet paper ) There was no problem with those. I began to realise that she just doesn't know she's doing it, and that the volume increases gradually (and then my volume increases in reaction until everyone is shouting).

I've found that bringing my voice down low helps a little - seems to 'reset' her volume a little. And remind her "I'm just next to you, you can hear me when I speak like this, can't you". Seems to help a bit.

Now if I could only control the amount of talking...

See now, she did have selective hearing, but recently she switches off to even those things, unless we repeat them. DH said to her yesterday 'DD do you still want to go to the park' while she was watching a film with me snuggled in bed and she did not hear him, he asked her twice and I had to nudge her and say 'daddy is asking you a question' 'oh? sorry daddy i could not hear you because brother was crying' (he was but not loudly). Now it could be she was engrossed in the film, but normally she would be jumping up to go.

In Reception classes they often teach children about 'indoor voices' and 'outdoor voices' and do exercises to help children understand how to control their voice and what it feels like. For example asking the children to put their finger tips against their voicebox/throat/roughly where the adam's apple is (gently!) and then getting them to whisper, talk then shout. The children can then feel the difference in the vibrations and get used to what their body can do. 'Shout' can be quite a negative word, a gentle prompt to use an 'indoor voice' puts a different slant on it..

Attention is key to listening, so I've found getting down to the same head height and sometimes stroking my son's face to prompt his eye contact makes all the difference to getting his attention and then he listens :)

sammy oh i like that idea. I will give that a go. I agree with shouting/yelling being a negative word and it makes DD defensive, esp as she is not intending to be loud. If we distinguish between asking her not to shout (when she is being angry with us) and to use her indoor voice, she will learn that we are not accusing her of being angry when she is not being.

I shall talk to DH about that, thanks for the idea

Lovely, let me know how it goes... :)

Pavlov, we have matching daughters. Although mine is 5 months younger. Infuriating, isn't it? Have no advice but you are not alone; I have also wondered about hearing.

Robino yes it is. It actually gives me a headache atm! I hope yours improves. I am going to get her hearing tested this week, just to rule it out.