Excessive Talking

[Ringodingoo]

My 6 year old won't stop talking.
She narrates everything she does and tells endless stories about the most trivial things.
She also has a mild stutter and her therapist has repeatedly told me I need to listen to everything she says intently and lower myself to her level to help her feel calm and to relax the stutter.
This is bloody impossible.
I have 2 other young DCs who need my attention and I can not be meeting that need all the time which is genuinely what she needs.
I have spoken to her teachers about the possibility of ADHD as she is also fidgety and has a few nervous habits. Because she is very bright, her teachers dismissed my concerns.
I have friends who are a lot more anxious parents than I am, who find things harder than me in many ways, but none of them complain about incessant talking. I know this IS NOT NORMAL.
Some days it drives me to tears. I will go to the bathroom and she will be wittering on and on and on outside the door.
Most days I feel guilty for not giving her more eye-to-eye attention as I'm persistently trying to get away from her hounding me.
DH and I have been working a rota for the last 3 weeks and have come up with a routine where she gets 1:1 attention every single day. Much more than her siblings.
But 3 weeks in and it has made no difference whatsoever.
Meal times are the worst.
She speaks loudly and persistently throughout the entire meal about really obsure, pointless things, eating very quickly and slamming her fork down loudly on the table between each mouthful.
I was never allowed to speak at the table as a child, so always wanted to encourage family conversation at the table with my own kids. But this is horrendous.
I feel myself tensing all the way through the meal, eating quickly myself to make it all end.
-I have tried asking her not to speak for the first 5 minutes of every meal and we all sit quietly to enjoy our food for the first 5 minutes. She can't do it. It becomes a chore to expect this. She will just ask "when can I speak?" Or "Another 2 minutes to go, I can't wait that long!"

-I've tried telling her not to eat when she has food in her mouth to atleast give pauses inbetween her talking, this lasts a few minutes before she continues again qith gusto.

-I've tried getting her to take it in turns to talk, but she just can't stop talking.

At best, meal times end with me feeling mentally frazzled and burnt out and at worst, DH and I end up losing it and saying angrily, "shut up!"

If her therapist new we weren't adhering to the advice of listening carefully to every single thing she says and infact telling her to shut up she would be horrified.

Help.

My six year old is the same, as was I at that age and are a few six year olds I know. We just aren’t used to having to listen to them all day. We have rules - don’t talk with mouth full, listen if others talk and don’t interrupt - but mostly it is a stage and probably quite normal

We also don’t listen to everything that is said. She will have a running commentary when playing by herself, if she wants us to respond she has to say our names

My DS is a lot like this. He was my first and I thought it must just be normal but I remember once going on a walk with a family member and he talked NONSTOP for an hour and when we got back my family member said to me how on earth do you cope with him everyday, I then realised it wasn’t normal 😂
I tried telling him over the years to be quieter, that he didn’t need to talk at certain times etc and to be honest nothing really worked.
He’s now 13 and I’d say over about the last 4 years he’s become more aware of how annoying talking 24/7 is and when he’s been excessively talking and he can see I’ve zoned out and I’m not listening he’ll say I’m talking too much aren’t I and I’ll say yes you are and he’ll stop.
I know that isn’t much help but just wanted to say I can understand your frustration.
He’s also similar to your DD in the fact if I said you can’t talk for 5 mins he would sit there counting it down and therefore still talking, he’s still the same with punishment, if I take his phone for an hour he bombards me with 5 min updates saying it’s now so and so minutes until I have it back, it is stressful.

@Opinionatedloser this is exactly how DD is. It is exhausting! Similarly, my parents took me and the children on holiday when DH was working away. They both became extremely snappy with DC1 and couldn't quite get over the amount she talked. I think they had thought I was overreacting when I'd been telling them how constant it is. They had assumed she only did it when she visited them through excitement, it was a shock to the system when they learned she did it all the time.
She also always requires an answer, so nodding along pretending to listen doesn't work either. She asks many tag questions as she's talking, constantly seeking communication in return.
It's good to hear that she may become more aware of this, but I know that other children already find her overbearing 😔

I didn't really realise that my youngest could talk until various circumstances meant we ended up alone with him for a weekend. My middle child talked so much. All the time. Still bloody well does at age 11.

DS is still going strong at 12 years old and I would say I listen to about 60% of what he says. I was the same. It's really nothing to worry about.