Q--My 8 1/2-year-old grandson is a bright, lively and very talkative little boy. Apparently he finishes his work in school before the other children and starts talking to them. His teacher considers him a behavior problem and has given him low grades in behavior and in work habits. He does 3d-grade work in the morning and 4th-grade work in the afternoon and gets extra reading and writing assignments when he finishes his work--and then he talks some more.
At home his parents talk openly and freely, and the boy makes comments, to their disapproval. What can be done to help him overcome his talkativeness, both at home and at school?
A--Very bright children often do their work so fast they then pester the rest of the class. And so do children who feel unsure of themselves.
It`s quite possible that your grandson scores on both counts.
The teacher has helped a little by putting him a year ahead of his age for the afternoon classes, but at the same time she`s obviously cross with him for being so quick and so noisy about it. That`s understandable if unwise. It`s hard to teach a class when one child is out of sync, but the teacher would find it easier if she let him go to the library or run classroom errands on the days when his behavior was better. Teachers traditionally give well-behaved children these kinds of rewards and forget that it`s the rowdy ones who need them more.
A parent-teacher conference, perhaps with the principal, might help the teacher consider techniques to modify his behavior, not fight it.
Your grandson also needs to be kept busy after school with a tiring, interesting sport like soccer or swimming once a week and perhaps a class in karate. The martial arts, like ballet, train children to use their bodies with the same precision, discipline and respect that you want your grandson to have with words.
He also should be assigned household chores; competence makes a child feel secure. If one of his parents works alongside him the first few times, he`ll learn to do these jobs well, and if he gets a good deal of praise he`ll want to do them well. Proper praise alone will cut down on his chatter. Have you noticed? A child never talks when someone is giving him a compliment.
The parents have to modify their behavior by keeping pace with their son and by including him in their discussions more and more.
The child who feels welcome to talk with his parents in the middle years will be the one who will talk with them when he`s a teenager. This is usually enough to keep rebellion at bay.
Unfortunately, camaraderie isn`t always easy now. For all a loving parent may deny it, an 8-year-old, bless his heart, can be awfully boring. At this age it takes him two hours to tell you the plot of a two-hour movie. And yet a certain amount of listening is essential.
This doesn`t mean the child should have a license for bad manners, however. He must be expected to obey the orderly stop and go of conversation and he will if his parents have good manners with each other and with him. And if he interrupts anyway (and sometimes he will), the parent holds up her hand to stop him; wraps up her thoughts with reasonable speed and then asks him what he thinks, as she would for any friend.
This is the key. Even though parents remain firmly in charge and clearly responsible, they need to see their children as friends more and more.
This won`t really happen if they routinely disapprove and admonish their children. Criticism makes a child dependent or turns him into a bully, a loner, a bossy child--or the class clown who`ll do anything to get noticed. Children who feel left out will go to great lengths to get attention.
The more a child seeks attention, the more you know he needs it, but his parents, like the teacher, shouldn`t give it when he`s behaving badly but when he`s behaving well.
There are many good ways to do it. They can have a 15-minute round-robin story reading at night--they may as well take advantage of his wordy ways;
play charades with another family, so he`ll learn other ways to talk, or play wild card games of Uno or pig. By now he can lose with some grace and even will think it`s fun, as long as he wins a little, too.
They also should give their son 10 minutes alone with each of them each night, so they can share their news. This seems like so little to give, and yet it often is neglected. Every parent should make a special effort to take a walk with the child at night, or talk to him after he has gone to bed, no matter what housework must be sacrificed. With the lights out, neither parent nor child will be distracted by television or newspapers or books. Quality time is nothing more than total attention.
Marguerite Kelly welcomes questions from readers and will answer as many as she can in this column. Write to her in care of The Chicago Tribune, P.O. Box 15310, Washington, D.C. 20003.