Following the endless conversations in the car this afternoon that stressed me out beyond belief.....

[Blandmum]

.....Does anyone know how I should talk to my kids to stop them talking to me????

DD started talking at 11 months. She is now 10, and off hand, I don't think that she has ever stopped talking

MB - do yours talk when there's no-one there? We keep stressing to ds1 that he must have a conversation - i.e. talk and listen - it has to be two-way, and it has to be something the other person is interested in. He is getting better now.

But ds2 atm! He just witters away constantly. If he's upstairs in the playroom by himself, and has been for 25 mins, when you pop upstairs you can hear him chattering away incessantly!

If he comes into the room to talk to me and I'm busy, he just carries on talking regardless as I shoo him out of the room, and jabbers on for another 5 mins in the next room! Even though no-one is even there let alone listening.

I think my mistake was to listen a lot when they were little, so they gained the mistaken opinion that I was interested in everything.

I'm trying to set the record straight now, but it doesn't seem to be working.

Oh thank goodness - mothers of witterers unite !

Does my head in - it really does !

MB. I know you know the answer. Come on, all together now - 'aha, uhum, aha. mmmm, uhuh.'

OH god. Try the Inferiorettes. Endless bloody talking. On and on and on and on. No, I don't know what that fence is made of. OK, I've just agreed to something I can't even remember. They're worse than me

Mr Inferior is really quite quiet

lol, dd is exactly the same! She is nearly 4 and never stops chattering! On Friday in the course of a 3 mile journey we covered gravity, refraction of light, creationism versus Darwinism...

(and I'm not joking! These were all questions she was asking - 'how does the sun stay up in the sky' 'how is a rainbow made' 'did God make the sun?' 'why are we made out of skin and bone?'

I want to ask just how bothered I look, FFS.

Oh yes, my 5yo DD just talks constantly! And if no one real is around she will talk to her dolls, her gerbils, anything at all. I am sure it is why she developed imaginery friends - someone more to talk to!

Sorry - meant to say something helpful as well as empathise !!

At the weekend we were clearing out ready to move house and found an old CD walkman player - and I said "Aha - that would be useful in the car with story CDs !!" - might something like that help ?

Or what about a DVD player for long journeys - or one of those DS lite handheld game thingummies ?

Or failing that - an ipod for you !!

ds1 is the same
never shuts up from when he wakes til he goes to sleep
he even talks in his sleep most nights
questions and wittering
he sounds like your ds2 gess

yell "be quiet"

and turn the radio up

I know the problem mb. You just know you should be fascinated by every litle verbal gem that drops from her childish lips ....but the horrid truth is that after a while you just want to scream "shuddup shuddup shuddup and let me think/listen to this play on the radio/hear what someone else has to say/hear the blessed silence". And you can't just shut it out because they know when you're doing it and say "mummy are you listening" louder and louder until you have to respond. It's a form of torture I beleive....

we often play 'who can be quietest for the longest'
ds1 is so competitive as well as talkative so that is my last resort

I have one like that too - never stops - drives me crazy

mine are so bad that strangers publicly sympathise with me and even on packed trains, we can clear whole sections of the carriage they talk so much.

in fact, the bloke in the bike shop asked me how I have kept my sanity because mine hardly even seem to hvae time to breathe .

I make them listen to harry potter in the car.

I'd rather listen to Stephen Fry than dd wittering, or ds carrying out his endless monologues.

Todays was about global warming. FFS I don't want to hear about it, IM a SCIENCE TEACHER. I gave at the office!!!!!!!

my sister, 33, still suffers from verbal diarrhea
She Never Stops Talking!

I once reversed over a tree when DD was at her most annoying.

I burst into tears with the music teacher (who owned the tree) and said, 'It was DC, You know what she is like!'

The woman sighed and sympathised

Mine vary it sometimes by rowing with each other, if we're in the car. Usually because the other one is 'not letting me talk'.

DS#1 can talk for hours about PS2 games. I'm sure he can see that I'm talking through gritted teeth and my eyes are glazing over.

lol

I actually love public sympathy - makes me feel more human.

I have just ordered 4 grr packs of ice creams from ocado because they were both standing next to me screeching 'ice-cream, mini-milk, look mini-milks, there they are, there they are, mumeeeeeeeeeee there are the mini-milks' that I just cracked and clicked on it multiple times just to get them to go away and let me shop in peace!

sometimes i pay mine to shut up

in the car i just turn the music up louder than them

At one time I thought dd would never stop talking long enough for me to brush her teeth.

I am occasionally reduced to tearful begging for silence, which they give me very thoughtfully and considerately and generally guilt-inducingly.