Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy do GT kids talk more than ND?

This is a half humorous/half serious question...I know that all kids talk a lot, but do you think GT kids talk exponentially more? My DD5 just simply cannot be quiet! She said her first word at 3wks (ma) and hasn't stopped since. My brain gets so numb from the constant chatter that I drop things, lose my train of thought, forget how to do whatever I am doing at the time, etc. I try so hard to be patient and either answer her questions or acknowledge her statements but after an hour and a half of constant talk, I can't take anymore.
For instance, last night at dinner she was talking so much (and I was acknowledging her statements so much) that I finally had to stop her and say "sweetie I can't chew my food b/c I have to stop every other second to say 'uh huh' or 'mmmm'. I am swallowing food before it is thoroughly chewed in order to respond to you. Can you please eat and minimize the words you are saying?" She said yes, took a bite of macs and launched right back in to another 10-minute-straight-with-no-breaks conversation! I stopped her then and asked if she remembered I had asked her to stop talking and she said yes. Is there a technique I am missing? Has anyone else had any luck in this department?
I have half humorously/half seriously joked with my husband (who is 2E himself and just as exhausting) that I think I need to either keep a cocktail glued to my hands or get a prescription for an anxiety pill or something!

Well, you just described my DD5nextmonth perfectly She talks non stop. DS7 is the opposite. He exhibits all the other gifted traits except constant talking and overexcitability. After a few hours with DD my nerves are shot, but if I sit with DS for a bit, he will instantly calm me.

Ah, it's DS4.5 to a tee! The child is an extrovert in a family of introverts, and he JUST CAN'T STOP TALKING!

It makes me crazy some days. I recently asked for 30 seconds of silence so I could concentrate on a math problem, and he barely paused before he asked if it had been 30 seconds yet! Argh!

Personally, I think it probably has more to do with personality than GTness, though the excesses of GTness probably exacerbate the personality traits of an extrovert. In fact, really the only things that make me think DS4 is GT is his excessive sensitivity and his excessive verbal ability (limited to talking). Beyond those, he doesn't really present as GT. But in those areas, he is SOOOOO excessive!

The one thing that works for me with him sometimes is giving him my undivided attention for a few minutes. I mean, looking him in the eye, being fully engaged, and not even thinking about anything else. Then he knows he's been seen and heard, so when I give him a concrete task that he can do by himself for a few minutes without talking to me--like LEGOs, for example--he is more willing to do it.

But this doesn't always work, and it only works for a short time.

Otherwise, find a good sitter and get some time alone when you need it. It's the best I've managed!

Same here.

My dd's have kind of opposite personalities, yet the both talk nonstop.

DD8 is very quiet at school from the feedback I've gotten from teachers. At home it's nonstop monologues from both.

I'm very good at tuning people out, so I used to just smile and nod and pretend I was listening, but lately, DD8 has been busting me out.

Both of my kids like to talk, but my daughter didn't talk as much as my son as a child. Even though there is a big age difference, they talk to each other all the time, at least an hour or two each day. They are talking on the phone right now. My daughter usually calls to talk to him four or five times a day. My son puts her on speaker phone and talks while he works on whatever he is working on, including video games or practicing piano or whatever.

People sometimes ask him for advice on which game to get when we are shopping for a new video game. He loves this.

When I read to him he gets very talkative because he is always making connections between what we are reading and something else he read or heard or he comes up with jokes or puns that he just has to share and then tells me he can't just be quiet and listen because he says he has a rare form of Tourettes that makes it is impossible to keep his jokes and comments to himself. Most of the time I don't mind him talking because he often points out interesting things that I hadn't thought about. Most of the time it is fun, but by the end of the day I am so tired.

He gets really talkative right before bedtime, when he talks to his dad about all the things he did during the day.

I meant to add in my original post that DH was a HUGE talker when he was a child. I found this so hard to believe when his mother told me this, because in the 10 years we have been together, he has always been a very quiet person. He told me he got so tired of people telling him that he talked too much, that he finally just stopped talking So we are always very careful about how we handle DD.

DD5 and DD4 both do this until I feel like my head is going to explode. My solution is to give them something to do. What works with them is something to learn, so when they were younger it was count to 100 by 1's, 2's,3's,4's ... or spell words now its times tables and division once I get them started on something they go at it until it's learned, gives me time to keep sane.

I tried this and it doesn't work for my son. If I give him anything to do, he wants to talk about it before he does it, while he's doing it, and after he has finished.

If he senses that I am tired of listening, he tells me he thinks I need a break to de-depress. We both agree that the bathtub is my "de-depression chamber" but he still thinks of things he just has to tell me before I am ready to come out.

My daughter recently told him that I acted a little more tired and stressed than she remembered me being when she was younger. Maybe I need sound proof walls in my de-depression chamber.

My DS5nextmonth also is a nonstop talker. If he's bugging me by talking too much, and I am successful in redirecting him so he's not asking me questions, he'll still talk to himself! It's fun to listen to his conversations with himself though...

I have often said that this is my own fault, because I read somewhere that you should give a play-by-play to your infant. I did this, and I produced a child who doesn't stop talking!

Here's a funny - we recently discovered the Boomerang channel, with old cartoons. He watched his first episode of Topcat, and said "This is sort of like Tom and Jerry, because there's always someone chasing someone else, but Topcat talks constantly, like me!"

I suspect that on average GT kids talk more, or are at least more inquisitive than typical kids. That said, my DD7 is an introvert (like both her parents) and doesn't talk excessively. She can get going non-stop on topics of interest to her (Harry Potter at the moment). I've also noticed this occurs more often when she is tired or it is past her bedtime. That sometimes "flips the switch" and she just goes and goes and goes. ;-)