I have a very inquisitive 7yr old, what am I supposed to do?
Today was a snow day and she's been up for about 20 minutes. This is a sample of some of the questions she's asked me in the last 20 minutes.
"What if school is closed Monday too? What if they pass out valentines at daycare tomorrow and I don't have any? What do you mean my teacher told you there's no party? How does she talk to you? Did she call you? What is my valentines box for then? Are we getting 6 or 8 feet of snow today? Oh, how many is 8 inches? How do they clear the roads? What if daycare is closed tomorrow and you have to work? What if your boss is mad that you had to call in? How do you even call in? Oh, you call her? Can the dogs go outside in the snow? But won't they be cold? What if they freeze to death?! What if we can't get them in the house and they freeze anyways? What if we don't have ANY water? But what if we can't drive to the store cause there's 8 feet of snow? Oh, 8 inches, how big is that? What's for breakfast? Can I have a cookie? Why not? Can I have candy? Why not? Can we go to the gas station? WHY NOT?!"
This is an all day every day thing. I am EXHAUSTED from answering so many gosh darn questions. She asks questions that she knows the answer to, like "how old am I?" And I say, "you know how old you are," and she's like, "I know!" Like why did you ask me then?!
It never stops. Never. All her reports from her preschool, kindergarten, and now 1st grade teacher say that she frequently interrupts lessons with questions and talks over the teacher or her friends and we just don't know what to do!
She interrupts me and her dad when we're talking about something and we tell her all the time that she needs to wait until we're done unless it's an emergency and that almost always results in her pouting and stomping away...for about 10 seconds before she's back to interrupt again.
We've taken things away. We say "if you interrupt again, you don't get your tablet the rest of the night." She doesn't care, she keeps doing it. She's lost recess at school because she interrupts and talks over her teacher and then comes home and says she lost recess cause her teacher hates her. When we say, "no it's because you kept interrupting her," she says "NO! SHE HATES ME! SHE NEVER WANTS ME TO TALK!"
We've tried telling her like, "you have 10 minutes to ask me all the questions you want and tell me everything you want and then after that, no more questions unless it's really important." But unfortunately she thinks the question of, "what did I have for lunch yesterday?" is of the utmost importance.
Her dad and I are at our wits end with this. It's been like this for years and it's affecting everything. We can't talk to each other at all if she's around, we can't talk to her sisters if she's around, she just never. stops. asking. questions.
And yes, she gets plenty of 1 on 1 time with both me and her dad because she seems to need it more than her sisters do (we give them each as much 1 on 1 time as possible). She has plenty of friends as well. I don't think it's an issue where she's not getting enough attention. At this point, I'm starting to think we've given her TOO much attention and now she expects our undivided attention at the drop of a hat. She was the baby of the family for 3 years before we had the youngest kid so we may have taken it too far when trying to make her not feel left out.