Sometimes children have so much to say they just can’t contain their enthusiasm and shout out, interrupting other people when they are speaking. It can appear rude, inconsiderate, and disrespectful, which is not how parents want to bring their children up. Parents want children to learn that, when someone is speaking, they need to listen (and vice versa). Interrupting tells the other person that what they are saying is not as important or interesting as what your child wants to say. We don’t want to raise children who do this, so we need to get them to think about what they are doing. They really need to learn how to let the other person finish their sentence and then wait their turn to speak.
STOPPING CHILDREN INTERRUPTING OTHER PEOPLE
Parents can help their children by teaching them how to hold polite conversations. Some skills to consider are:
- Can they tell when someone has finished talking?
- Can they keep what they want to say in their head until its time for them to speak?
- Once there is a pause, they can start to talk.
- To get them into this good habit, perhaps you can remind them by using language like ‘please stop interrupting me’, ‘can you hold on a minute’ or ‘please let me finish’ when they interrupt you.
- They should also show they are paying attention by not looking bored and distracted.
It’s great that children have so much to say but they need to be mindful that when talking over people no one can really hear what each other is saying, and that’s not how conversations work. If they continually talk over others, friends may avoid them or get fed up with never feeling listened to, so they should get out of the habit of talking over people and learn valuable conversational skills.
Interrupting children can also be impulsive children. To read more about impulsive check out this other article.
For more on listening, talking and teaching our children to have great conversations have a look at The Parent’s Toolkit.
