When Your Child with ADHD Talks Excessively

I've always had a tendency to be verbose.

Growing up, I found myself relating to Donkey, the incessantly chatty and somewhat irritating character from Shrek who simply couldn't stop talking. It's likely that my family and friends might have noticed some striking similarities between myself and this lively little sidekick, much to my embarrassment.

In school, I did particularly well in courses that required active engagement and originality. However, my zeal – which manifested itself in habitual volunteering and oversharing– wasn’t always well received. I recall being particularly traumatized when a favoured teacher gently silenced me in front of the class, telling me that I was indulging in too many peripheral comments.

Some of my classmates labelled me a blabbermouth, accusing me of seeking attention. They failed to comprehend that my excessive chatter and propensity to overshare – the by-products of a hyperactive ADHD brain – were not attention-seeking, rather they were mostly uncontrollable. Trapped in a barrage of besieging thoughts, I was often left with no option but to yield to verbal diarrhea. My mind was perpetually overflowing with an assortment of thoughts, ideas, tales, tirades, and a panoply of opinions on diverse subjects.

Nonetheless, my zest for jabbering did find one ardent fan, my mom, who always listened attentively and encouragingly as I babbled away. Of course, she too required some time-out every now and then. To help me channelize my verbosity, she gifted me a tape recorder into which I could record all my musings. The result: six tapes crammed with my aural musings. This was one present that literally changed the trajectory of my life.

Not only did the tape recorder provide an effective channel for my lively mind chatter, but it also introduced me to my next creative pursuit: writing.

The simple act of recording my thoughts helped me to sort, recall, and refine them, enabling me to document them on paper. Suddenly, the chaotic thoughts that once used to frenetically race through my mind were converting into top prizes at school writing competitions, and now contribute to an average of 300 pages of annual journaling. They've also spawned published short stories, poems, articles, and even skits and scripts for stand-up comedy.

I came to realize that there was no harm in having a whirlpool of thoughts churning inside me. I didn't have to live in fear of being labelled as annoying or pushy. With the right approach and guidance, I could turn every torrent of thought into a golden opportunity, akin to a magician's alchemy.

When my boyfriend recently posed a question –“Where on earth do you get all these ideas from? Don’t you worry about running out of them?”, I simply responded, employing a quote from Shrek, “Not at all, I’m not concerned about exhausting my thoughts at all. What's really challenging is getting them to be quiet!”

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