Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school 4yo needing constant input?

Books on tape and CD were big for us when D2 was that age. We had most of the Harry Potter books on tape (in fact, I posted them on Freecycle to get rid of them recently, and had no takers... guess no one has a tape player any more). And then CDs of Lord of the Rings when she asked for those.

I endorse Ametrine's strategies of drawing boundaries around certain portions of the day for DS to self-entertain, and turning over primary responsibility for your DS when DH gets home (give DH about half an hour to decompress from the workday, though).

In addition, I wanted to comment on this...:


... because my DD is also one who watches from the edges before becoming involved, but being socially guarded should not, in her case, be confused with being introverted. She is wary of strangers, but once she makes up her mind about people, she's energized by being a part of a crowd, and wears the other people out. When she doesn't have a playmate she complains of being lonely.

So it's possible you're misreading these cues in your own DS as introverted behavior.

I also wouldn't lump in his sensory responses to sound as an extroverted/introverted behavior, because sensory sensitivity is not controlled by personality. Sometimes it's the other way around, though, where your DS may appear introverted because his senses are being overwhelmed, but placed in a quieter environment, he may respond quite differently.

Lastly, I would hypothesize that his sudden spurt of growing intensity in seeking your attention may be his response to some of your sense of being overwhelmed. He could be picking up on your reluctance to engage (you'll be sending him nonverbal and verbal cues on this, whether you know it or not), and that may be causing him some anxiety about being rejected. He responds by seeking more of your attention for self-validation, which in turn causes you to feel more overwhelmed, and the runaway feedback cycle continues.

The solution there is, as mentioned before, healthy boundaries. When DS understands that you're not rejecting him, you just need to get X done, or you need a little time to Y in order to be ready to spend quality time with him, and then that time you do spend with him is high quality time, then the psychological health of both of you is greatly enhanced.

On weekend mornings, I have a two cups of coffee rule. Anyone who starts pushing me to do things before I've finished my second cup of coffee can expect me to growl at them.

I hear you guys, and I promise I'm not slapping a "definitely introverted and sensitive" label on my kid willy-nilly.

Some of the "input! input!" thing he does, I think, is actually about feeling overwhelmed by his own thoughts, like they are too big and complex for his little brain, so that he's reaching out for help sorting through them, rather than like he preferentially processes ideas externally. I suspect (I am prepared to be proven wrong) that some of the information-seeking conversation is more about this and less about wanting to connect with others.

I'm not sure he has any anxiety about me leaving the room and so on. I'd actually say that a good side effect of his intense drive to be joined at the hip to a parent is that he is now pretty relaxed about being apart from us. There has actually been kind of a boom in him wanting to be more independent (this is a mixed bag), so I wonder if this was all part of the same developmental leap. Hard to say. Kids are weird.

I'm doing my best to enforce healthy boundaries about when I can talk about endless science questions, and when I need a little bit of quiet. It's slow going, but I'm doing my best. I also committed the outlandish sin of making a rule that we could no longer read science books at bedtime. It was like they were causing brain fever, and he would lie in the dark and almost fall asleep and then need to know if any of the metals are translucent and why are things translucent and how does it work, and wake himself up again.