Make Him Quiet?

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Dear lord please do.

My HFA son is 4.5yrs old and has not stopped talking for about a fortnight. I am ready to cry. He went to bed an hour ago and is still talking now. He will probably fall asleep around 9pm, then wake around 1am or 2am to talk for an hour or so, then back to sleep until 7am when it will start all over again.

He just can't shut up. Whether he's talking to me, at me or just for the hell of talking - he cannot be quiet lately. I'm sick to death of the sound of my own child's voice. I feel awful saying that but it's true, I just can't believe he needs to talk all day, every day like this.

FYI what he is saying really isn't relevent - it is just any excuse to talk about absolutely anything, even if there is nobody there to hear it except himself. He has always talked a lot but it's got out of hand in recent weeks. Even the autism advisory teacher noted that he is "an extremely intense child" last week - and she deals with a lot of autistic children.

I've been told not to answer any pointless questions anymore and to try using much shorter sentences in general conversation. So far it hasn't worked at all but these things usually take time. Any other ideas to encourage spells of silence throughout the day?

My son does this a lot of the time too. I feel your pain. I believe it is some sort of vocal stimulation that they are seeking. Sometimes I try to get into the conversations and make it into something more meaningful, and sometimes I just ignore it and block it out. Sometimes I try to get him involved in something else to get his mind off of what he is talking about. I wish I had the answers!! !

Oh, how I remember those day. I hope it is just a phase.

Something that helped when my son was like that was to put music on.

Is there a room where he's safe to be left unsupervised? You could give yourself a time-out.

I can't tell you how to stop it, but a lot of us talk to ourselves pretty much constantly, it's such a problem for me that even when I don't externalize it, my inner monologue runs non-stop and keeps me awake nights.

But for me, if I'm speaking aloud clearly and audibly like that, it usually means I'm under a tremendous amount of stress, or generally upset about something. Of course, one would think most of his talk would be about whatever was bothering him, but that's not necessarily the case. I can fill hours talking about everything except what's actually bothering me. In any case, it's triggered by anxiety.

^I agree that putting on music, if it's not too loud, might divert it somewhat.

I agree with Willard... it sounds more like a compulsion of some sort, an emergent symptom of some deeper anxiety.

Music, weighted blankets, etc. to soothe the jangley nerve endings.

And you need a quiet space, too, to unwind and relax. And let your buzzy nerves calm down.

And take advantage of this opportunity to understand why the human voice can drive an Aspie over the freakin' edge! (just trying to find the benefit of this phase for you). You've no doubt heard us complain of the endless meaningless chatter of NTs...

[I'm one of the quiet Aspies, and I frequently wish everyone would just shut up... ]

If you don't think it would hurt his feelings, ear buds would help. They save my sanity. Even my oldest, a fairly together 12-year-old, sometimes just can't seem to stop talking (I remember actually begging her to stop when she was 6, but I suppose that make her worse). I am undiagnosed AS but things like this go a long way toward making me believe I'm on the spectrum.

That said, you don't have to be on the spectrum to be driven crazy by non-stop talking, it seems. I won't say "hang in there" because it's silly. But I wish you much patience.

As the mother of a former four-year-old chatterbox, I can tell you, some kids just talk a lot. I once had to send my daughter out of the room because she'd been chattering at me nonstop for hours, then heard her talking to someone and went to find her. She was talking to the wall in the corner of an empty room. My main complaint during those days was, "Dear lord, child, your mouth is still moving!" She'd just giggle and keep talking.

The music might help. What will help more is sending him to his room to play by himself for a while and putting on some music in your room that drowns out his voice and chilling out for a while.

It's true, all my online mom friends have complained about this, usually when their kids are right about this age. The moms of autistic kids seem to feel it the worst, but maybe they're just more sensitive.

Great replies thanks, and some funny ones too LOL. It's good to know I'm not alone!! I'll have a think on what's been said thanks. Got to cut this short as he's waiting for me now x

I think I read somewhere that self talking is actually a normal phase of development for all children. Some just do it more than others, and with our children, they may do it longer or at a different time since they are delayed in some areas.

The funny thing about my son is that he can speak in perfectly good sentences that make perfect sense, and then he turns around and says all of this non-sensical, jabber and blurts stuff out loud when my husband and I are trying to talk to each other---It really drives us nuts! We are really trying to work on this with him to teach him that there is a time to talk and a time to be quiet. We do give him plenty of opportunity though to just be loud and say whatever he wants (the bathtub seems to be a good place for that!) For a while, I thought maybe he had Tourette's, but I saw a movie about a guy with Tourettes' and his symptoms were not like my son's at all. I think my son is doing verbal stimming.