My children are driving me round the bend

[SamsungAndDelilah]

DS1 is nearly 6. He asks questions, loudly, all the time. It's doing my head in. And when I tell him what the most poisonous substance on earth is, and why it's more poisonous than the second most poisonous substance, and why, then he moves on to talking about wormholes and time travel and event horizons and then switches to a diatribe on why he should be allowed jam in his sandwiches every day before going back to the third most poisonous substance and what it can poison.

DS2 is just 4. He's the quiet one, but he's into his numbers, and likes talking about why a semicircle is just as infinite as a circle. And why Wednesday is always after Tuesday, and why couldn't we call it something else as it's just 24 hours, and there isn't anything Wednesday about it except some people have chosen it to be Wednesday.

All day. From 6am to 7pm. I want a bit of peace. They're lovely, and I wouldn't swap them for the world, but just wanted to offload. I need to go into school and talk to their teacher, as DS1 is bored (and cross with his teacher for not understanding the electromagnetic spectrum) and DS2 is pretending he can't read.

DD is 1. She can't yet talk. Bliss (for a few years)

I feel your pain.

I would say it gets better, but DS has just turned 13 and conversational gambits at the moment tend to revolve around questions like 'how many countries in Asia are doubly land-locked?' and how many countries the US has been involved in wars with in the past 100 years, compared with how many it has actually declared war on....

DD (8) veers between feeding me information on obscure Australian jellyfish, and telling me all about the different puffles you can get on Club Penguin.

Enjoy your DD while the silence lasts....

"go and look it up in a book" and bugger off

it is bad enough when they are 4/5 and going through the normal question asking phase, but at least then you have some chance at hazarding a good guess. (how tall is an elephant seems a lot easier!)

I feel your pain, but can assure you that it is no easier to have a very talkative child who is not gifted- they make as much noise; it just makes less sense. I found intelligent drivel far more bearable than non-intelligent drivel.

Cory I love your posts. You should write a book on common sense (or they need to have a "like" option to tick on mumsnet).

Aaah it all just makes me so tired! I used to put the timer on for 'quiet time' once my DS1 got to 4 as he was really unable to do without adult stimulation/conversation. It did help a bit and we got to half an hour but initially he could only manage about 2 minutes. My friend tried limiting the total questions per day once on holiday but he'd reached his limit after about half an hour... I think it did get quite a lot better once he learnt to read though he was reluctant with this for a while until he could read at the level of text that I was reading to him. My only solution now is to keep him busy in clubs and activities as much as possible. I'm not sure that does much for his relationship with me, but as he's got older the need to ask questions has turned into arguing the toss about things, almost out of policy to amuse himself, which is pretty tedious.

I recognise the extracurricular route ( honestly I am trying to expand his interests/make sure he gets lots of exercise....whisper it get an extra hours peace and quiet). I just think he is very talkative and takes after Mummy a bit too much!