Any ideas about how to quieten down my 5 1/2 yo DS (withough gagging him)!

[Maddison]

Title says it all really! I only ask him to be quiet when I need him to be e.g when I'm trying to get 13 month old DS2 to sleep, but within 30 seconds he's back up to the volume he was before!!

Any suggestions!!

Hi I'm a teacher and in school with 5yr olds I use traffic lights. 3 simple circles of traffic light colours which I display for the children to know which volume level is appropriate. red - no talking time to listen, amber - very quiet talking we need to concentrate, green - you can choose how loud you want to be eg. playtime.
Maybe you could adapt this to your home. red-whispers only, amber quiet talking, green-you choose.
If you decide to try it you'll need to introduce it as a game out in the garden and make it fun and then talk about the times of day you'll use it in the house. Make sure yo use it consistently and remember to change the colours. Also you need to abide by the rules yourself of course.

Good luck

I like that idea. We have noise problems too.

It can't be done.

Children do things for teachers that they'd never do for their parents.

Thanks for that bouncyball, I'll give it a try, although like Soupy I find that he seems to be a bit more willing for his teacher. Worth a shot though, thanks!!

I teach pre school music classes and we sing different volumes, I have cards with a mouse and one with an elephant and I say the italian term and show them the animal. Once they can sing different volumes their parents report that they can ask them to be "piano" and somehow that works better than being "quiet", probably because kids love to show off.