ADHD criteria "talks excessively"- what does it mean?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:While the PP's story absolutely sounds like ADHD, I will also note that my kid is very talkative and has days or phases where she can talk like that (very familiar with having to back out of a room like "I'm sorry I have to got to the bathroom, can you finish this story later???"). However she was evaluated for ADHD and not diagnosed. Her psychiatrist thought the talkatively was a reflection of high intelligence mixed with anxiety, and her therapist recommended keeping a daily journal. Which helped!

ADHD talking is happy "fun" (for the talker).

Anxiety talking is unhappy stressed complaining/worrying and "problem-solving" (but not solving)

Really not necessarily. I’m the adult with adhd that posted previously. At some point you have enough social skills to realize you are making others uncomfortable or that they are laughing at you in a mean way. That’s not a happy feeling. But it’s like your brain is a train on a track and it takes a lot of effort to stop it or reroute it. And then you stop it but then there’s another thing that pops into your head and before you realize it the train is moving again.
It’s one of the reasons why people with adhd often have self esteem problems or depression problems. We’re not just bothering idiots. We typically know that we’re not fitting into social expectations.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:While the PP's story absolutely sounds like ADHD, I will also note that my kid is very talkative and has days or phases where she can talk like that (very familiar with having to back out of a room like "I'm sorry I have to got to the bathroom, can you finish this story later???"). However she was evaluated for ADHD and not diagnosed. Her psychiatrist thought the talkatively was a reflection of high intelligence mixed with anxiety, and her therapist recommended keeping a daily journal. Which helped!

ADHD talking is happy "fun" (for the talker).

Anxiety talking is unhappy stressed complaining/worrying and "problem-solving" (but not solving)

Yes!!!my child loves to talk and is so happy as he tells me obscure sports facts that he is reading. I totally relate to the poster who says she has coping mechanisms to keep her sanity due to her child’s excessive talking. But he’s so happy to be telling me things!! But yeah, I sometimes need to be like, please stop, please be silent just for a minute. My ears are so tired.

[Anonymous]

And my son had a period in 4th grade where his self esteem took a hit because he said as soon as he opened his mouth to say anything during recess or on the bus ride home, the other kids would be like, “talk talk talk talk!!” and basically tease him about talking too much. He was like, I can’t even say ANYTHING sometimes! He was so frustrated. It did lead- FINALLY- to some introspection about the excessive talking that I had always gently tried to help him with and I’m glad it happened, even though it was a struggle for him for a few months, because that very blunt peer feedback is what he honestly needed to learn to turn off the verbal faucet.

[Anonymous]

Excessive talking can be a characteristic of multiple conditions. So it’s a question that comes up on diagnostic checklists for multiple conditions. By itself, it’s an indication that something going on and that maybe investigation is in order.

Lots of symptoms are this way. Fever, for example.

[Anonymous]

I have ADHD and do not talk excessively. My child does and they do sometimes talk excessively. It’s but one way ADHD can present.

[Anonymous]

I’m an adult with an ADHD diagnosis. I have also taught a lot of ADHD kids. Talking excessively can manifest in a lot of different ways. Not every overly chatty kid will show all of the below, and this symptom can look a bit different for each child.
-A child can’t inhibit talking when an idea springs into his/her mind. The child may talk during teacher instruction, movies, or presentations. They might interrupt another speaker frequently. They may talk despite reminders that it’s not an appropriate time for talking.
- A child monopolizes casual conversation without reading social cues that the other person wants to share something, needs to wrap up the chat, disagrees with the speaker or isn’t interested in the topic. The child might talk for excessively long periods of time without a break.
-A child might interject often, ignoring that others aren’t speaking up and/or that it’s not an appropriate time for individual comments. For example, if an art teacher is showing a painting with a lot of red in it, a student might feel compelled to share something about how they like red, other paintings with red as a dominant color, etc. If a teacher is reading spelling words, the student might offer example sentences with each word.
- A child might ask a question and then interrupt the speaker more than once while receiving the answer to the question.

To a certain extent, these behaviors are normal for kids from time to time. Evaluating when talking is “too much” depends on if it’s meaningfully affecting school and social situations (routinely exhausting parents counts). Keep an eye out also for kids who really can’t seem to control their chattiness in spite of reminders, redirections, routines, and social cues.

[Anonymous]

As a child of someone with ADHD, my mom can talk for an hour straight about a topic that no one cares about but her. Irrelevant details l, side stories, laughing at her own story, and continuing on no matter what.

I could say hey, I gotta go because the ambulance is here to take my kid to the ER, and she’d say, oh, right, one quick thing, and then talk straight through another 40 minutes.

[Anonymous]

I have two kids with ADHD, and one does not *shut up* and one who’s actually pretty quiet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have two kids with ADHD, and one does not *shut up* and one who’s actually pretty quiet.

This. Although the one who is quiet does have trouble telling a story or information in a succinct way. He has the rambling oral language style of someone with ADHD.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m an adult with an ADHD diagnosis. I have also taught a lot of ADHD kids. Talking excessively can manifest in a lot of different ways. Not every overly chatty kid will show all of the below, and this symptom can look a bit different for each child.
-A child can’t inhibit talking when an idea springs into his/her mind. The child may talk during teacher instruction, movies, or presentations. They might interrupt another speaker frequently. They may talk despite reminders that it’s not an appropriate time for talking.
- A child monopolizes casual conversation without reading social cues that the other person wants to share something, needs to wrap up the chat, disagrees with the speaker or isn’t interested in the topic. The child might talk for excessively long periods of time without a break.
-A child might interject often, ignoring that others aren’t speaking up and/or that it’s not an appropriate time for individual comments. For example, if an art teacher is showing a painting with a lot of red in it, a student might feel compelled to share something about how they like red, other paintings with red as a dominant color, etc. If a teacher is reading spelling words, the student might offer example sentences with each word.
- A child might ask a question and then interrupt the speaker more than once while receiving the answer to the question.

To a certain extent, these behaviors are normal for kids from time to time. Evaluating when talking is “too much” depends on if it’s meaningfully affecting school and social situations (routinely exhausting parents counts). Keep an eye out also for kids who really can’t seem to control their chattiness in spite of reminders, redirections, routines, and social cues.

This is a very good description of various ADHd communication styles. I see the same when tutoring students and in our own ADHD family member’s communication styles.

I would just add that a lot of these communication patterns are (mis)interpreted as “bad” - rude, insubordinate, or egoistic - in school and socially.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:While the PP's story absolutely sounds like ADHD, I will also note that my kid is very talkative and has days or phases where she can talk like that (very familiar with having to back out of a room like "I'm sorry I have to got to the bathroom, can you finish this story later???"). However she was evaluated for ADHD and not diagnosed. Her psychiatrist thought the talkatively was a reflection of high intelligence mixed with anxiety, and her therapist recommended keeping a daily journal. Which helped!

ADHD talking is happy "fun" (for the talker).

Anxiety talking is unhappy stressed complaining/worrying and "problem-solving" (but not solving)

Yup. My ADHD kid and my kid with anxiety both talk a ton, but it is very different type of talk. My ADHD kid (a teen) sometimes seems like he just says everything in his head out loud!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m an adult with an ADHD diagnosis. I have also taught a lot of ADHD kids. Talking excessively can manifest in a lot of different ways. Not every overly chatty kid will show all of the below, and this symptom can look a bit different for each child.
-A child can’t inhibit talking when an idea springs into his/her mind. The child may talk during teacher instruction, movies, or presentations. They might interrupt another speaker frequently. They may talk despite reminders that it’s not an appropriate time for talking.
- A child monopolizes casual conversation without reading social cues that the other person wants to share something, needs to wrap up the chat, disagrees with the speaker or isn’t interested in the topic. The child might talk for excessively long periods of time without a break.
-A child might interject often, ignoring that others aren’t speaking up and/or that it’s not an appropriate time for individual comments. For example, if an art teacher is showing a painting with a lot of red in it, a student might feel compelled to share something about how they like red, other paintings with red as a dominant color, etc. If a teacher is reading spelling words, the student might offer example sentences with each word.
- A child might ask a question and then interrupt the speaker more than once while receiving the answer to the question.

To a certain extent, these behaviors are normal for kids from time to time. Evaluating when talking is “too much” depends on if it’s meaningfully affecting school and social situations (routinely exhausting parents counts). Keep an eye out also for kids who really can’t seem to control their chattiness in spite of reminders, redirections, routines, and social cues.

This is a very good description of various ADHd communication styles. I see the same when tutoring students and in our own ADHD family member’s communication styles.

I would just add that a lot of these communication patterns are (mis)interpreted as “bad” - rude, insubordinate, or egoistic - in school and socially.

Some of these communication patterns ARE negative. Interrupting is rude and self-centered in a literal sense (it centers the speech of the interruptor over everyone else, regardless of whether this is intended or not). You can obtain some tolerance and forgiveness for this behavior if people understand you have ADHD and struggle to control it, but that tolerance is finite. If a kid with ADHD doesn't develop skills or solutions for addressing a negative behavior like interrupting, they will struggle in life because they are unlikely to find a way to maintain work and social environments where everyone can tolerate the interrupting. There will be negative consequences.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m an adult with an ADHD diagnosis. I have also taught a lot of ADHD kids. Talking excessively can manifest in a lot of different ways. Not every overly chatty kid will show all of the below, and this symptom can look a bit different for each child.
-A child can’t inhibit talking when an idea springs into his/her mind. The child may talk during teacher instruction, movies, or presentations. They might interrupt another speaker frequently. They may talk despite reminders that it’s not an appropriate time for talking.
- A child monopolizes casual conversation without reading social cues that the other person wants to share something, needs to wrap up the chat, disagrees with the speaker or isn’t interested in the topic. The child might talk for excessively long periods of time without a break.
-A child might interject often, ignoring that others aren’t speaking up and/or that it’s not an appropriate time for individual comments. For example, if an art teacher is showing a painting with a lot of red in it, a student might feel compelled to share something about how they like red, other paintings with red as a dominant color, etc. If a teacher is reading spelling words, the student might offer example sentences with each word.
- A child might ask a question and then interrupt the speaker more than once while receiving the answer to the question.

To a certain extent, these behaviors are normal for kids from time to time. Evaluating when talking is “too much” depends on if it’s meaningfully affecting school and social situations (routinely exhausting parents counts). Keep an eye out also for kids who really can’t seem to control their chattiness in spite of reminders, redirections, routines, and social cues.

I have a dd with anxiety, ADHD and ASD. I know some people would assume that she keeps talking without giving others a chance to say something because she can’t read social cues. She’s actually very good at reading social cues. When she wants the other person to speak, she makes good eye contact and can participate in an exchange. However, when she wants to speak at length, without interruption, she refuses to make eye contact or have any pauses. It’s her way of safeguarding control over the discussion.

[Anonymous]

It's constant noise. No regard for what's going on around him. No understanding or ability to stop when someone literally says "shut your mouth and don't talk". It's interrupting and not realizing you interrupted. Its also needing acknowledgement, like saying the same thing 5 times until I say "I heard you".

Its the disruption to others and inability to stop that are the main factors in a diagnosis i believe.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As the parent of a child with ADHD where this is one of the biggest symptoms, I can only say, if you have to ask, then they're probably fine!

I'll be trying to leave his room and he will be following me, talking, even as I am smiling wanly and slowly shutting the door behind me, nodding at him, saying "ok I'm shutting the door now... ok, goodnight.... ok, I'm going to shut this now..." We will be in the car, and his sister will start crying after half an hour and begging him to just stop talking to she can say something. I will say "you need to stop talking. Close your mouth. Close it." and his sister will chat with me for a bit, and as soon as she takes a breath or we fall silent, he will pick up right where he left off. I love him, and I'm interested in his thoughts and like to hear what he has to say, but it's utterly exhausting. We can't watch a sporting event on TV without his constant commentary. I have jokingly threatened to duct tape his mouth shut so I can actually hear what the refs are saying in a Commander's game. But like.... I'm only half joking. My husband can't even handle it, he watches the game alone in his office now.

Yup.