Constant Talking --

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My 7r old son is at a stage where he (almost) constantly talks. I am not sure if it is an ADHD thing -- impulse control)(my son does not have an ADHD diagnosis, but there are possible signs, and my husband has it) if it is an autism thing (impulse control or vocal /auditory stim) or some combination thereof.

The other issue is, I don't think he is capable of not saying what he is thinking other than when he has autistic communication blocks, if you know what I am referring to. He talks to himself at night and at other times. I also don't think he understand the concept of self-censoring very well. He can sometimes word things in a nicer way, or just not answer when he perceives something to be hurtful (progress!) but not curtail chatter and brain dumps. When I try to explain it, he either ignores what I am saying/can't comply or he starts with the all-or-nothing thinking and perseverates about any talking being inappropriate.

Even if he is watching a program he likes (progress that he can (sort of ) sit through things0 he chatters and chatters about his own notion about what is interesting. I don't want to stop him talking about these things, just can him to defer it until after the program, or keep him from interrupting others to keep going on and on about whatever. He also expects you to pay attention and answer queries, so you can;t just tune it out sometimes if you want to watch something. Even if you explain you are trying to watch something, he naturally doesn't care.

Any non-med ideas?

Our whole family has some degree of this: it's a combination of Theory of Mind problems with impulse control problems with needing a "marker" for thoughts. That said, DS is getting slowly better at it without a lot of intervention - as he develops self-control in other ways, that one seems to be developing along on its own.

One thing - Tourettes is a not uncommon co-morbidity with autism; it might not be a bad idea to get it checked out by a professional. In looking that up, I found that a typical treatment (which also works for OCD and other repetitive/impulsive-related conditions) is called "habit reversal" http://ocd.about.com/od/treatment/a/Habitreversal.htm Might be something else to look into - makes sense to me.

My son talks nonstop too. He's almost 12. He had severe apraxia of speech when he was younger. That's where they can engage in voluntary speech but if you ask them a question or try to have a conversation they sort of lock up. There is a disconnect between the speech centers in the brain and the articulators. My son is super smart and he learned around the age of 5 that people think he's weird when he locks up and can't answer, so he just started talking, and hasn't really stopped... He uses his constant talking to control the interaction and not let the other person get a word in edgewise. If the other person asks a question, he might notice it and five sentences down the line he might answer it. Or he might not notice it at all. So it still seems to be a form of apraxia of speech.

He is also very demanding if he's wanting us to respond to what he's talking about. He can be in his second hour of talking nonstop during a road trip and he'll still get super mad if he doesn't get an immediate response... It's exhausting. I tell him when I can't take it anymore but he doesn't seem able to care or stop himself although he will apologize from time to time. Here's what's helped us so far:

- reading. Thank everything there is to thank that he enjoys reading. I know a lot of kids on the spectrum do not.

- hand held games. The DS, the tablet, my phone. I try to minimize their use but they work wonders when I just can't take it anymore. Mainly in the car.

- knowing about his autism diagnosis. He's not super pleased with his new diagnosis, so I've explained that what people notice are his behaviors, and if he can keep a lid on some of the behaviors, then he doesn't look like he's as troubled or different or whatever as he is. Of course I've explained that autism is just a way of being different, that kids can have any level of intelligence as it's not related, and in fact it's a bit like his previous diagnosis of bi-polar in that nobody has to know if he can modify his behaviors... In this way it's up to him how much people know about what's really going on with him. And if he can't, he can't, and tough luck for other people who might judge him and miss out on knowing him, but if he can and he chooses to, then that's great too. So now he'll ask for little prompts to help him appear not quite so odd. Helps a lot when there are other people around but when it's just family he feels free to let it all hang out.

I guess the worst thing for me has been the feeling that I'm not really getting to know him, like it's all superficial. And that has changed a lot as he's gotten older. We have lots of meaningful conversations now whereas in earlier years it was like pulling teeth to get the slightest bit of actual information from him about something *I* needed to know about (something he wanted me to know about was no problem, of course.)

But I really feel for you! It is the absolute truth when I say that my ears often hurt. It's non stop. It's loud. It's often not interesting or valuable to anybody but him. I try to remember back to when he wasn't talking at all, and how 30% of kids with apraxia of speech will never develop meaningful speech, and how worried we were, therapists included. Of course I would choose this over that, and that thought helps sustain me.

How long has your son been doing this? My son is just 4 and he's suddenly started talking non-stop. I am hoping it's just a phase.

He always was verbal, just not conversational. He had echolalia and scripting issues (he could repeat whole songs pitch-perfect and clear at 9 months) . Now he's started asking questions constantly and yelling if we don't answer right away. He even asks questions he knows the answer to, and tells us how to answer them. Like, "What color is our car? Say 'White.'"

ha ha, so cute, say white... Cute the first couple of times, I mean. My son started talking at 3 and started talking nonstop at about 4.5 and then it got much worse and is still pretty bad. If he must must must stop talking because I'm on an important phone call or we are in a movie theater, he can do it. But otherwise, he can't stop. He gets going and has a plan for what he's going to say, and if I ask him to stop for a while, he has to finish... He'll talk really really fast or more quietly to finish but it has to be finished. He also does a thing where if I ask him to talk more quietly, he'll have to repeat all of what he just said loudly, like he has to start over and can't change tactics or be interrupted. And he does get mad at us too, not so much for the "what color is the house, say white" anymore although he did do that stuff when younger, but say he's asked 14 times for me to get him an ice cream cone and I've said "look, I am not going to keep giving you the same anwser over and over", then he'll get super mad and keep asking me and scream "ANSWER ME!" ugh.

He also gets really frustrated because he'll ask me to choose which costume to wear in a game or which weapon to use in a game or which way to create his lego guys, and I'll sometimes say I don't know because I don't know the game and don't know the benefits of the different costumes or weapons or whatever, but he gets super mad and wants me to pick one. Maybe this is more of like a helpless thing. I vary my response depending on my time and energy in the moment, between just randomly picking something when I don't want to engage in a big "teachable moment", or taking the time and talking thru the considerations that I'd use to make my decision so that he gets some modeling, or just saying "I'm not going to pick, you pick!" which is almost always met with minor tantruming.

Recently he really really really wants to be allowed to play mine craft, so I've been using that a bit... At night, when his time is up for mine craft, he'll want to launch into an hour long monologue about what was happening in mine craft, so I've been telling him that a) it's boring for most people - what interests people who care about him like me is simply hearing that he's having fun, and maybe a general statement about something challenging that he accomplished or whatever, but not the detail after detail after detail that I have no clue about and b) other people who don't care about him the same way a parent or grandparent does would really only like to hear something like "so, yeah, I really like playing mine craft" and that would be the extent of it. And he's actually hearing me and talking about what I'm telling him because I also say "If you don't make an attempt to understand and put to practice what I'm telling you, I'm going to have to count the time you spend talking over and over and over about mine craft as time you're spending actually being involved in mine craft just as if you are playing it, and that's going to cut into your time for tomorrow." THAT got his attention.

So that is sort of carrying over into his daily non stop talking... I can sometimes say "dude, you're doing that droning on and on thing again" and he'll smile and stop for a minute or at least change topics. And sometimes I'll deliberately drone on and one about something and he'll say it to me. None of that sort of playful modification was possible when he was younger. Attempts at changing the manner in which he wanted to talk were just met with dismay and made him feel punished and unlovable. So it's very hard to be accepting yet to also try to teach them to be, well, less annoying.

Now that he's older he's starting to be able to understand the idea that he has the right to be as weird or annoying as he wants to be but that it's best if it's able to make a conscious decision about it so that he's not damaging first impressions or friendships just willy nilly without realizing why it's happening. I did and do some empathy building exercises, I guess you could call it, such as talking later about a person we met or saw that day who was doing something a bit odd - what might they be going thru, how does it make us feel about them when we see them acting that way, do they realize or care about the impression they are giving people... And now that he's older he's able to see the connection to the ways he behaves, a bit. Sometimes he flat out says he doesn't care - like if you read in other posts about the time he was mad and was kicking dirt on me and one of my clients and screaming. But other times he is starting to care, now that he's older.

So yes there might be hope for you! In the meantime just try to take a deep breath and not freak out. I have literally worn earplugs a few times, mainly in my right ear when I'm driving with him... I'll tell him I have an ear ache so he doesn't feel too bad about it being all his fault, but it really helps with the volume, because it is absolutely true that my ears often hurt, mainly after being in the car with him. And often we'll just turn up the music and sing. I love to hear him sing, and it is often better than him actually talking, particularly because it doesn't involve me needing to answer him!

I think this has to do with expectation or repetition. When I was young I asked people to retell jokes or stories over and over, and I found them funny every time. I also asked people to repeat funny-sounding words to me. I could say them myself, but it was funnier to hear other people say them. Perhaps your son just likes you to say 'white'.
I think it is something similar to music; there is usually some repetetive element and an expectation in music, and a buildup of tension and then a release. Very similar to a joke.

My son used to economize his speech and say as few words as possible. It started increasing over time gradually and starting this last school term, particularly the second half, became close to constant.

Momsparky: What do you mean regarding markers for thoughts?

This one's one of mine, so I recognized it in my son: sometimes my thoughts don't make sense to me until I say them out loud to someone. It's kind of like sticking it on a bulletin board for me; it takes the thought out of the abstract and puts it somewhere concrete. I'm not sure if I am describing this adequately, but that is sometimes the reason I find myself babbling about stuff.

I talked a lot my entire childhood, pretty much non-stop, like the OP's son, ever since I learned to talk. However, my parents' beliefs were "talk is cheap, silence is golden". The same was true for most of my relatives. Everybody in the family would tell me "be quiet" or "go away" every time I started talking. In fact, until age 5 or so, I thought my name was B. Quiet. I'm surprised I didn't tell my preschool teacher to be quiet when asked me what my name was. Maybe I made some sort of a distinction in my mind between "home name" and "school name", I don't know.

So how did I solve the problem? I'd talk to anyone and everyone who was willing to listen: non-immediate relatives that I rarely saw, preschool teachers, my friends' parents, instructors at lessons where my parents signed me up, strangers on the city buses, etc. And I'd ramble non-stop. Usually it was about my obsessions, but before I developed my first one, it was about the most random things, like the bird I saw on a tree on the way to the bus stop. My parents must have been as frustrated as the OP.

I'm not sure what advice to offer, though. My parents' solution was to make me thing my name is B. Quiet. I'm pretty convinced that the OP is looking for a different idea. But I got nothing.

I hadn't ever thought of it in those terms, of markers for thoughts, but I do this! Especially effective for me if I am typing it into a chat, because I can see the thread of conversation and not get so easily lost on a tangent. Sometimes I will grab someone and say, "Let me me explain this to you so I can figure out what I'm thinking." By the time I get it out, I usually have the solution worked out.

No, no, I definitely don't want him to go back to being quiet all the time. I just want him to learn balance--time and place.

My new theory is that the floodgates have been opened and he has all this pent up desire to communicate that is being unleashed and he doesn't see the need to contain it, nor does he have the ability to do so. He controls it best when hyper-focusing on something he doesn't feel the need to share and enjoy with others.

I will keep monitoring it, I think, and see if it subsides on its own, and just try to reinforce reciprocity in speech and the elements I can better explain to him.

Thank you, everyone.