Find 4 year old so annoying

[moovinon]

My Daughter is nearly 4 and she is so lovely, but I can't help but find her really, really annoying.

She doesn't stop talking. She speaks really loudly and she follows me around all day talking to me and asking me to play. Some days I am too exhausted due to my 1 year old and lack of sleep/working full time etc. Some days I will really make an effort to play, and then the next day it just goes back to her following me around the whole day. She asks questions non stop. I am quite introverted as well and I just find it really suffocating.

Any tips?

Take her out and do stuff. Go to the park, go for long walks and hikes (1 year old can go in a hiking backpack), go to a shopping centre, feed the ducks, go for a bike ride (1 year old can go on a kid's seat on the back of your bike), anything really. Make her run around as much as possible. At home, you can teach her to play on her own. May take a long time and some effort. Help her set up a game and get engrossed in it and then say you need to quickly do something and you'll be right back (maybe to fetch something for the game from another room), if she is happy with that and will play for 30 seconds without you, next time go for a minute. And so on. If she starts to want to follow you for these breaks you can reduce the time next time. At some stage she'll be able to play on her own and you can drop in and out of her game to help her stay engaged in it for the maximum time.

They can be pretty annoying. I'm quite introverted too and I find the constant "chatter" overwhelming at times, especially when added to the constantly having to be close/touching me. I love it 90% of the time but the rest of the time it can feel claustrophobic. I don't think we're alone in feeling like that (I hope not anyway!).

Sometimes it's the very last thing you can be arsed doing but getting out does make a huge difference, even just a ten minute walk can break the day up. . If you have a garden shove her out the back. My 4 Yr old can spend a good 30 mins playing with a calpol syringe and a bowl of water, that could give you a bit of breathing space to sit with a cuppa.

I like the tip to 'Fill their emotional bucket' which I read in Oh Crap I Have a Toddler (great book awful title) Supposedly they do this when they're feeling needy. She suggests you play intensely with them 1:1 for as long as you realistically can - say 20 mins but they might need longer at first - then get on with other stuff. If they feel they've had that reassurance it makes them more independent. I've only just started trying it but seems to help! Good luck.

I have similar with my 3.5yo (and it's painful to admit it). I aim for a version of what rebecca wrote above. Sympathies. I love nothing more than meeting up with another parent of a talkative child so they can talk at each other .

When the baby is napping, get in the bath. When 4 yr old has a question say you will help when you have washed, dried, dressed and cleaned the bath. No she cant come into the bathroom as you are naked and its important to respect peoples privacy.

Make sure you have set up a couple of games etc before you do this so she has something to occupy herself with.
Its amazing how having to wait for a very reasonable thing to happen (Mummy cant play with me if she is dripping wet) works. My dc would come to find me and go oooh nooo Mummys in the bath and then head off to entertain themselves for half an hour 🤣. I might have bathed a lot when they were really irritating me.

I also had a pretty bomb proof house that they couldnt cause too much havoc in and I could hear them from the bathroom

Could you implement an hour or half an hour of "quiet time" for you all during the day? So when baby is napping she has to stay in one room and look at books/draw & colour/ play with non noisy toys independently while you have a little break to relax and not answer a million questions?
Obviously you'll have to work up to a longer time period but it could work!
More info here busytoddler.com/2020/04/quiet-time/