My DS8 is a strange mixture of the two sides of the coin. When he was younger, he was a non-stop talker. He babbled constantly about everything, and would follow me into the bathroom to keep talking. The difference then was that he was constantly asking insatiable questions about the world around him. He wanted to know "why" about everything. Now that he is older, he still chatters about things constantly, but it seems different. Now he chatters to himself a lot, particularly when he sits and plays legos. There is a lot of space and battle noises and some dialogue between mini-figures. But he can also disappear behind a book for hours at a time and be completely silent and absorbed. It is almost as if he needs the extra sensory input that is missing from a quiet room. When reading a book, his mind is stimulated by the story and he doesn't need the extra sensory input.
But the flip side of the coin is to ask DS8 how his day was. Silence. Or at best, one word answers. Trying to info out of him is painful. And trying to get him to focus on answering my questions is just as bad. The "do you want a pretzel?" remark really hit home for me!! It is almost as if he will talk about abstract concepts much more readily than run of the mill/everyday events. Ask him about dark matter, DNA, or currently WW II battles and the moral issues that accompany them, and he will talk forever. Ask him about what he had for lunch or his day at school, and you will get no response.
