How to stop nonesense (sort of) chatter and distraction from literally everything

[Jannt86]

So I've recently started really taking my 34MO out on walks. She's a little champ and will do a 1.5mile treck to the park and back either on foot or on bike with barely any protest. However the whole trip can easily take 3 hours no exaggeration. This is down to 2 things which I'm sure are totally typical for her age but I still don't know how to deal with them...

1. literally everything being the most interesting/amazing thing ever (eg a fence/a piece of rubbish etc. This morning she said she said she was dissappointed that some men working on a house that had been there the day before weren't there bless her. I really don't mind this but when she won't listen to me say it's time to get moving because I'm trying to get her home for nap and lunch for example then it does become a bit frustrating as there's literally only so many hours of the day we can be out

2. nonsense chat by which I mean either asking me questions I can't possibly answer. Her favourite is 'what's that house called?' Wtf?! Lol. I tried telling her houses don't really have names but she persisted for every other freaking house on our walk a bit so now I just tell her what the address is. Other questions are like 'what's that man doing over there' I will sometimes elaborate and say what I think they might be up to etc and sometimes tell her I don't know. The one that drives me most potty though is when she asks what something is eg a dog but she knows full well what it is and how to say it. I ask what she thinks it is but she just says 'tell me'. Sometimes I indulge and sometimes I use humour and give the wrong answer. Is she looking for specific answers to these sorts of questions? Or just trying to make chit chat with me? I really don't mind as such I just don't know what she actually wants from me lol

I'm not at all worried about any of this and she's developing just fine but it's just perplexing me a bit so I thought I'd see if anyone has any similar characters out there and how they deal with it. Thanks x

Sounds like normal toddler behaviour if you ask me my niece went through a whats that phase for EVERYTHING does test ur patience a bit so dont feel bad if it drives you potty sometimes lol it is funny some of the statements LOs produce randomly

A tactic i tried with my neice was distraction playing games on a walk lets see how many red cars we can find today or lets have a race to the end of the street or what activites we could get up to when we got home sometimes distracted her sometimes didnt

Oh my goodness my 38 month old is absolutely identical. I have no other techniques than the ones you are already using. His favourite questions are "where is mummy?"'to me and "where is DS2?" when he is in the buggy with us. Drives me bonkers. The "what is that?" questions to things like a flipping cat are endless too. It will end one day I'm sure. Totally normal though.

Kids her age ask questions as conversation starters. Sometimes they know the answer "what colour is that car?" but other times they just want your attention and for you to chat to them. In the case of "what is that house called?" , I'd reply "10" if there's a number 10 or ask her what she thinks it's called.

Definitely normal to find everything interesting. Sticks, stones, rubbish... as long as you're not in a hurry to be somewhere, it's a lovely stage for awe and wonder

This is a big part of normal development and actually great for them learning, understanding context and just wanting interaction and conversation but not knowing how to ‘chat’ as an adult would. Don’t discourage it! What you’re doing sounds great.

Dd used to ask about house names..... sometimes I’d say the number or name if it had one, other times I’d give them silly names and she’d giggle because she knew that the house wasn’t really called Aunt Betty for example.

To hurry along I’d make a game such as “I wonder if we can get to the postbox before we count to 20” or similar. Or if dh was due home I’d say we were racing him back and we needed to be quick so we win. Then on the days where there was no hurry I’d let her take hours looking at everything, which was sometimes very frustrating.