Help me out Dads. My 4 year old boy has an annoying habit of repeating something indefinitely until someone acknowledges what he said. For instance, we’re watching Groot videos and I called him “little guy” and my kid said “he gets big though” like 20 times before I ended it by saying “yep totally”. I usually don’t let him go so long but I wanted to see if he’d give it up.
Is this a thing with kids? Do they grow out of it?
Yes it’s a thing, and kids should and most likely will grow out of it, so long as there isn’t a mental impairment or neurodiverse reason for it. They are looking for your approval and acknowledgment of their opinion, it is extremely important to them, no matter how trivial it is to us grown ups. Their narrow view of the world means you are their world.
@nerdflower My 4yo does the same thing. I feel she’s an excellent example of how TCP works. She keeps sending SYN until I ACK.
It’s totally normal behaviour. All kids do it.
Don’t ignore your kid. It’s such a simple situation.
Just respond to them. A little yes or no is enough. They don’t need your full attention. They just need confirmation you are listening to them. It doesn’t matter if you actually did or not. Just pretend to and answer with generic answers: “really?” “did you now?” “that’s awesome”
If you don’t, they’ll either keep going, or eventually you’ll strain your relationship with them. Pretty basic stuff really.
My son tells me what is happening a good three times on several occasions per week. He just wants me to acknowledge it, but sometimes he doesn’t even give me a chance to respond before he starts his second iteration.
Yep, mine did the same thing. And I also tried ignoring it once to see how long it went 😄
Mine graduated from doing that to just ignoring me, so now I find myself saying the samething 20 times in a row.
The shift is so swift, isn’t it?
My 4yr old does the same thing lol, it can be annoying. A lot of the time I find myself wondering why I didn’t respond sooner.
Maybe acknowledge what he’s said before it gets to that point. 4 year olds aren’t quite at the stage yet where they think to jump gears to “hey, a-hole, quit ignoring me—I’m trying to have a conversation with you here.”
I’ve found that, generally speaking, the way we talk to our 4 year olds is the best preview to how our 14 year olds will talk to us.
