Year 2007, I left and worked overseas when my daughter was just a year and nine months old. She can only utter couple of syllables such as “ma-ma” that time and I never get to hear her first full words. I noticed her development in speaking only on phone calls I made back then. Now that she is in the 1st Grade, she is talkative and rarely quiet. She wants to talk while dressing, eating and brushing her teeth. She talks to herself in the mirror when she’s playing and acting. She discovered the audio recorder on my cellphone and records herself mimicking the newscasters on TV. She talks a lot in the poolside during swim trainings, Heck- she talks in her sleep sometimes. She is a kid who loves asking questions and enthusiastically talking about her experiences and the surroundings. If she doesn’t have anything to talk about, then she would just keep repeating the rhymes, telling self-imagined/invented stories and counting numbers.
For the past two years, I only have one concerned question to her teachers during classroom meetings. “Is she noisy and talking too much?” So far, both Junior and Senior kindergarten teachers that she had told me she’s just like the other pupils. She is active and participates well. That doesn’t really answer my question, does it? Since they don’t complain, I assume that her chatty character is only at home or other places where she feels at home(like the pool perhaps? after all, I named her WATER). Without negative feedbacks from school, I am proud that she is smart and maintains her rank in the honor roll.
It’s been three weeks since current school year started and I am surprised with both of my kids’ adjustment to schedules. School work is manageable and school assignments are something they both look forward to work on with me. With that, I am thankful and silently hoping for this good vibes to last.
Today, my daughter told me something that caused me to realize that her chatty behavior after all is now unstoppable. She is just as chatty and talkative in school as she is at home.
I understand, that as parents, we should never discourage our talkative children. This is because they show interest in talking and this is their way of expressing their feelings towards us and to people around them. Communication as a matter of fact is an effective means of interaction. It is easy to picture out what they have in mind when they speak about it. It would be helpful too determine if kids are being bullied or not because they are comfortable talking about it rather than keeping it a secret as most aloof and introvert children often do. If my daughter is quiet, I start to worry and often times it happened when she is not feeling well.
If a talkative child is being disruptive and interrupting in class, therefore, it is an issue that needs careful attention and approach. I asked my daughter how it made her feel when she was told to move to the front because she is talking too much. She said she was embarrassed. On the lighter note, she was glad because she had always wanted to sit in the front. I told her that chances are, she will be asked to move again if she talks too much while sitting at the front. Her looks told me she doesn’t want that to happen and I acknowledged this reaction as positive. Hopefully.
I admit I am chatty and talkative too, so she must have inherited that from me. Though I was never reprimanded for being talkative during my own school years(as far as I can remember). I used to hear the line that says “Children are three times more of what their parents are” and I guess that is true for this case.
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