The Kids Talk Too Much!

Here’s the thing I want you to imagine: you have a four year old and your four-year-old is frustrated about something and turns around and hits someone. Okay, we just never tolerate that. We never tolerate that no part of you is like, oh, that’s cute, that’s fine, it’s okay. Now we all may have different responses, right? Some of you may bring the child to a corner and calm them down and talk them through it.

Some of you may just have a spanking rule. Like, hey, if you hit your brother, you get a spanking, right? Whatever the discipline is, we in our minds are pretty clear about it. We’re pretty clear that hitting is not okay. And we don’t want it to happen, no. In your family rules, you might decide that hitting is enough of like problem that you’re going to address it, but not enough of a issue that you’re going to do either of the other two things that I talked about, and you’ll just give a warning, like, whoa, you can’t eat your sister. You need to ask for that toy. Right? And especially in those training years, I think that’s often how we respond. Like if it’s a two year old in there hitting for the first time. We’re like, whoa, that’s not how we do it. We ask and we kind of role play with the kids. Like here, I want this toy and you don’t hit your sibling over that. Okay? But, I don’t do a ton of coaching on kids who are hitting.

And I think it’s because we as a society or as a culture have agreed, right? Hitting isn’t okay. And we let it happen a little bit at younger ages and we also have this belief that it’s going to shake out. Like pretty rarely do we have seven year old, 10 year old, 15 year old getting so frustrated that they’re hitting people. So we just have this trust that it’s a face, Okay?

It doesn’t mean that they’re a horrible person and listen, some of us have kids that are hitters and biters and it looks pretty bad and it lasts longer than we want it to. But still within that, there’s just this like acceptance or understanding that it’s going to be better. We’re not going to be in this place forever. I don’t have teenage boys yet, so I imagine there’s a different version of it that might pop up then. Where they’ve got hormones and they’re angry and I’ve heard some people talk about, like, he got so mad that he punched a hole through a wall, but there that’s just like so far from whatever was happening at ages three, four, and five, then there’s this kind of quiet downtime.

And then we see maybe teenage physical frustration. But again, as much as we don’t like it, we don’t wanna have to deal with that. We make sense of it in our minds, okay, he’s hormonal. He needs some tools. He’s frustrated, we gotta help this kid. But we really rarely think I’m going to have a hitter. This is my kid and he’s just going to hit forever or this is my life and I’m stuck here.

Okay. We really do have the sense that it’s a phase. As I say that, I hope it seems clear to you because now I want to go back to the kids who talk too much. And I think the reason it feels so painful is one, I think in general, most moms are overstimulated with noise and information. There’s just an abundance of noise around you and way too much information going into your eyeballs.

So too much information in your eyeballs and too much noise going into your ears chills from a sensory perspective, it doesn’t matter what the noise or information is but I was listening to somebody. The other day I said, hey, if we zapped someone from a hundred years ago into our world right now, they would just be so amazed at all the amazing, good things that we have.

And he was saying, we should all stop complaining because our life is just like a bajillion times better than it was a hundred years ago. But I wanted to grab that person and say yes, and that person also would probably shut down. Shut down from the amount of noise and information, it would be debilitating to them until they figured out how to handle it.

And even then, I’m not sure any of us are handling it. Well, I think one of the reasons that we see such a rise in mental health disorders is just the sheer volume of noise in the ear’s information, the eyeballs. It’s very bad for our brains. It’s bad. It’s too much you guys. And so yes, we do have dishwashers and you can, Uber eats food to your door, which is amazing. Okay, that’s amazing my friends but the other side of that coin; the other side of this kind of technological progress is that we just also have this overstimulation, which is causing us all to kind of lose our minds. Okay, so it’s not you, it’s not a you problem, okay? It’s a modern day overstimulation problem. So we ended up having too much information, too much noise.

And then on top of that, kids talk all the time. And it really has only been for a short period of time that children were allowed in adult spaces, like, access to adults all the time and that they were allowed to talk to them all the time, right? Your parents, like if you just ask your parents most of them, we’re not really allowed to talk to adults unless the adults spoke to them first. Your parents were still of the generation where, when an adult walked in the room, all the kids stopped talking. A lot of times they were required to stand up and look at the adult and just wait for feedback, like, they were just ready to work.

They were ready to leave. They ready to answer a question? There was not this kids that can ask questions all the time things, no, I kind of like this softer approach to parenting that we’ve evolved into. I like that the kids are integrated into our lives, but I think we’ve swung too far. And moms feel like they have no boundaries, no protection. And I mean from questions and noise and we feel like we’re bad parents if we don’t acknowledge and address the children all the time. And so, I just want to give you some strategies. Some tools that you can use to feel more protected in your own house and I really want you to begin to think about it like that. That your job is to keep yourself safe. And a lot of you don’t feel safe in your own home because you feel like you have to let the children do whatever they want. Otherwise, you’re a bad mom.

And so you don’t want to be a bad mom. But you’re also kind of like drowning and noise and questions, okay? And so first, I just want to tell you, your children to not have to have access to you all the time. You can go into a room and say, you may not follow me into this room, okay? So to me, that’s kind of a compromise from what I imagine at some point. It was, hey, you need to leave the house in the morning and go to school or play outside and I’ll see you for dinner. Here’s an apple, right? I don’t know if it was always that extreme, but the kids weren’t hanging out in the house all the time and they weren’t talking to mom all the time. And so now we’ve integrated them more. But I think that a lot of moms don’t get any time. Where the kids aren’t allowed to talk to them or ask them questions. And I do this at my house, and I really want to describe it to you.

So you see that it doesn’t feel rude or awful, okay? I’m not like children must be, you know, seen and not heard. I’m not like, don’t talk to me all right? Like that’s not at all the tone of my house. But what I usually do is I like to just front-load it. And I gathered them all together and I’m like, okay, ducklings, I’m about to go in my room, go in my office, clean this area of the house. And so ask me your questions now.

Like I’m in a good mood. When I tell them this, I answer all their questions and I meet all their needs. And then also when I’m in a place by myself, if something is really wrong, I always address it with them. Like if somebody falls down and has a really big bonk, I will come out of my space and comfort them. I might be annoyed. I might be like, ugh, because it’s usually like stupid kid stuff, but I’m not like this is my time. I will not acknowledge you. So, I just want you to know that you won’t act accidentally become a parent. Who doesn’t have attachment or appropriate response to the kids, but I will say I am not responding to everything. They are required to work some things out for themselves.

And I think that is really good for them too. It’s really good for them to not have me. Make all of their decisions and they do just have to figure some things out sometimes. I think we’ve lost a little bit of that. So there’s something positive about them not having access to you for them. Not just for you. And so you can start with 5, 10, 15 minutes you guys. You don’t even have to do this for three hours. You can just start with a small amount of time where you go, hey, is everybody good? Cool. I’m going to be in this place, and you can go clean something. I will tell you cleaning something with no children, noise or interruptions is wonderful. It’s that we don’t like cleaning and on top of having to clean. Someone asks us a hundred questions and that makes it way worse.

And so I realized that, you know, for the under two crowd, there’s just some amount of like they’re with us. We have to keep them safe. But, but again, I want to challenge those of you in that phase of parenting, you create a safe room or like a play yard or something where they can be somewhere for 20 minutes and not get out and it’s safe. Can you even with those young ages, give them safe spaces so that you can get away because all of this noise and information overload? Which is not the fault of the children.

It’s the fault of the internet and your phone. They’re just piling on top of that. Because of that, you just, your body just doesn’t feel safe a lot. Just at a core, basic level, your body is just like, woo I’m anxious. Things are dangerous. I can’t get out of here. I’m stuck here. I’m fritzed out. I’m overwhelmed and it’s just everyone. And the reason I know that it’s not just the kids is because I will coach people who have older kids. That are pretty self-sufficient or adult kids that are out of the house and they still are feeling weird.

And so, yes. Life in many ways is better than it was a hundred years ago, but in a lot of ways, we are living through such a new time where brains are having to cope with so much noise and information. And then we’re looking at the kids and we’re like, oh, maybe it’s parenting, or maybe it’s me. And it’s just not, I want you to just to know, hey, this is a weird environment for all of us. Let’s acknowledge that. And then we can do what we can to make it better. So kids do not have access all the time.

The next one is kids being loud. Did you know that you do not have to let your kids be loud? It requires some training to teach them how to not speak loudly. You need to explain it to them. This is quiet, like a mouse. I’m not going to do it, but this is loud like a lion. We are not going to be loud in the house or in this room. So for us, it’s actually, we kind of do it upstairs. Like upstairs is our quiet floor. And then downstairs, we go to the crazy floor and we go, hey, if you want to be crazy, go downstairs. They have a big playroom and they can be loud and crazy down there, not during nap time.

But again, like I want children to be children. I want them to be wild and crazy and silly and rough. But they just don’t get to do it everywhere. And they don’t get to do it all the time. And I think the other thing that’s really negative for the children is I think a lot of parents are there. Their internal thermometer is rising for their noise capability and so there’s like it’s rising, it’s rising. There’s more and more noise. And when it gets at the top of the thermometer, then we yell at them for being too loud. But I want you to know that at that moment, they didn’t see it coming. And it is completely random to them. It’s not random to you. I could get you to describe how your body feels right before you tip over. So, you know that it’s coming, they don’t know that it’s coming.

They don’t understand why sometimes they play with their siblings and they wrestle around and it’s fine. But then on this Tuesday, when mom was overstimulated, she freaked out on everyone. And so, it also doesn’t teach them anything. It doesn’t teach them the rules. It doesn’t teach them how to predict your behavior. And so, I think in an effort to love the kids and be connected to them, we’ve dropped a lot of rules and scaffolding. And then actually it just comes out in chaos for both the mom and the kids.

And so it’s really good for the kids to have some structure. And you guys know I’m kind of rebellious, we’re unschoolers; so we have a lot of unstructured stuff too. But within that, we have got to cope as a family. We’ve got to create an environment that feels safe for everyone. And that includes the parents. And so, teaching kids when to be quiet and when to be loud and do it before they get into their activity, just make it clear to them. This is a quiet time, a medium time or allowed time. And then, that is something that I will give them chances on. It’s not automatic like punishment or timeout, or you have to leave this room.

I’m usually like, hey, your voice is being too loud, can you be quiet? But it is because I put in the time training them, what those words mean. That they then understand what I mean. So the next thing is questions. Okay, let’s say the kids have figured out not to talk too much at you. They’re getting a better sense of when are the good times and when aren’t the bad times for general talking and they’re not speaking too loudly, then there’s a question. How many questions? When is a good time to ask a question? How many times are we going to ask the same question? I was with a little girl recently and she was asking me for something cute, like water.

Okay. Mr. Lynn, can I have water? Ms.Sterling, can I have some water? Ms. Sterling? Can I have some water? And I was doing something or talking to someone else and she just kept going. I mean, it was at least six times just back-to-back said the same question. And so I said, hey, and she was a little, I was like, hey, you may ask me a question one time and then you may wait until I give you the answer. Do you understand? Could you wait here until I’m ready to do it? And she said, yes. And then I turned and either finished my thing or was talking to somebody else. Then I came back and acknowledged her and said, oh, would you like some water now? She said, yes. And so I want you to see that, like, we don’t have to be snarly monsters to the kids. The truth is when you feel in control of the situation, you won’t be a snarly monster.

You’re a snarling monster when you don’t feel like you can control it. When they’re asking questions all the time and you think it would make you a bad mom to not let them ask you questions and then you just reached this, you know, building point where then you tip over and snarl. And so, you can really train them in some very specific things. And then as they got older, my husband and I both challenged the kids to ask good questions. So we’ll say, hmm, I don’t think that was a good question, rephrase it. And then they have to pause and be like, why was that not a good question? For example, a child might come up to you near the kitchen and be like, do we have any apples? And what they really mean is can I have an apple right now? But they don’t want to ask that for whatever reason. So they ask a sneaky question.

And so we’ll say, or we’ll say that doesn’t seem like the question you really want to ask. What’s the question you really want to ask and again, no sharpness, no shame they’re not in trouble; It’s a training. And then I ask them to speak kindly to each other when they ask questions. So, you know, one sister might ask another sister a reasonable question, a reasonable request, but she’ll do it sharply and I’ll be like, I liked that question, but I think it was a little sharp. Can you try it again? A little softer this time.

Because there is noise and questions to each other are also part of your stress. Right when they are snarky with each other or loud or. I just mean that will also make your thermometer rise, but they may not be experiencing it the same way. There are thermometers that may not be rising. It may not be even as big of a deal to them as it is to you, but you have this total picture of all the information going into your eyeballs and all the noise going into your ears.

So of course. So we’ve talked about not having access to you all the time. How loud they are. And then questions; training them about questions. We will say we will often ask around mealtime, say, ask your questions right now, and then you may not ask any more questions or actually it’s more around the meal prep time.

We’ll be like, listen, we are getting dinner ready, please save your questions until after everyone has their dinner. Because there’s just this crunch time of getting dinner ready. And then the kids will just come up and ask, you know, ridiculous questions to the adults. The kids think it’s just at the forefront of their minds.

So they’re like, I want some socks for tomorrow and we’re like, hey, we are getting dinner ready? Nobody will ask any questions until everyone has dinner. Then once everybody has gotten food on a plate and sat down, then usually there’s some space for talking. But so it’s, when can they ask questions?

How do you want them to ask questions? Can they ask a question more than once? And what tone do, make me ask the question and do you feel comfortable? Training them to ask better questions. So a whole bunch of stuff around questions. But listen for those of you that have older kids, it’s like when you have little kids, You just long for the days where there isn’t a lot of crying, but crying just gets replaced with talking and questions. So what happens? And so we’ve got to be able to help them through that.

The next thing is to pay attention to the information going in your eyeballs and the noise that you are putting in, in your ears, okay? Because we think that it’s a kid problem, but it’s, their noise is getting mixed in with these other two things. And so how often are you looking at the news? How often are you scrolling through social media or your text messages or your email?

All right. We just have this idea that we need to be accessible, particularly text messaging and email all the time, and that’s just not true. You can begin to give yourself an hour to three hours where you are not looking at those things where you are not dragging your attention here and there and then somewhere else. And letting other people dictate what you’re thinking about. If you can compartmentalize that piece a little bit, you’re gonna feel more present to the kids and their noise won’t bother you as much. But for most of us we’ve got to put some boundaries around the information that’s getting put into our eyeballs because it’s stressing us out. And that’s the thing that the person a hundred years ago would feel sorry for us about they’d be like, oh, they had time where they built in time, where there was no noise and there was a rhythmic activity. Like walking to church, or I’m not sure we were churning butter even still a hundred years ago, but hanging up the clothes to dry.

There were these quiet, rhythmic activities that were kind of resetting us. And a lot of modern day Americans don’t have that at all. It’s just go, go, go, go, go, go from the time that you’re up till the time that you shut down emotionally, and then you’re just like, watching television and numbing yourself out because your brain is already fritzed. It Fritz!

And now we’re just coping. And coping is not the same thing as true relaxation or leisure. One just likes to have some gentleness with yourself. I think we live in a crazy time that we have no language for yet. And it’s really, really not good for the brain, no. That doesn’t mean I’m choosing the Benedict option to go live in the woods with no phone. I’m not saying that we should do that, like, this is our environment. We do need to learn how to work with the environment. But I think controlling the information and noise on your end. Which is helpful. I’ve been playing a lot of just classical music or Gregorian chant and just softly. And it’s just been so lovely. I even put them on my headphones, like while I’m around the house, like maybe the kids don’t want to listen to that, or I just don’t want to put it on for everybody, but I put it on for me and then it just minimizes what I can hear.

And I just heard something really beautiful. And so, yes kids talk too much. But part of it is we swung too far to the other end of not training them and giving them access to us all the time and that’s not their fault. That’s our fault. And I’m glad that we don’t do the children should be seen and not heard type of parenting anymore. I’m glad that they’re integrated more into our lives. But we have to have some space where we feel safe and protected from noise. And you’re going to have to do it for yourself.

It does not happen by accident. It’s not natural, like it doesn’t just fall into place. Like you’re going to have to create that. And if it’s new, I would communicate it to the kids. From a place of love and happiness, like, hey, I’m going to start doing this new thing and it’s going to be better for me and better for you. Not like, oh my gosh, it’s so hard to live with you.

And everything’s terrible. And I have to do this thing now. I’m like, no, just mom. And I would just talk about your brain, my brain, and all of our brains need some time where it’s quiet, where there’s some space and I’m going to create that. And by the way, you might create that for them to help them to create places that they can go for quiet time or limit. The amount of noise that they’re being exposed to. We had to do that. I want to say it was two years ago that our girls were listening to audio books. And then maybe music. Anyway, we just noticed that they didn’t know how to not listen to anything. They were just getting in the habit of listening to things. And we were like, no. And so then we were like, you need to have time where there is silence. Where you’re outside. And we had to train that into them. Because we all do, we live such a technological life now. That we’re all so susceptible to that.

So I hope this episode was helpful for you. I hope it makes you feel seen and loved. I think modern name parenting is insane and we just don’t know how to talk about it yet. And that doesn’t bum me out. It just makes me feel like a warrior. It makes me feel like, okay I’m gonna put my armor on. I’m going to do the best that I can in this crazy environment. And I’m not afraid to be counter-cultural. And just say, nope, we’re not going to do this in our house. This is not what that’s going to look like.

And I know that having structure for kids makes everyone happier and feel safer. That’s really what it’s about. When things are predictable for children, they feel safer. And when things are predictable for you, you feel safer. And so knowing, okay at two o’clock, we’re going to have quiet time and I get to be in this room and nobody can come interrupt me. That being able to predict that that time is coming will help you enjoy all the time up until then more because you know that that’s coming.

All right my friends, I love you. You are doing a good job. God sees you as a mom. He sees your efforts. And we’re all just trying to figure out. This is like a new frontier of a world and the brains are still catching up.

But you can feel safe in your own home. And when you do, I promise you’re going to have a better connection with those kids, and that’s what you really want. All right my friends, thank you so much for listening and have a blessed.