[MrsHutch]

Will y'all help me flesh out this idea I had this morning?

Where to start...

So I don't really enjoy being around my kids. I am an extrovert, but having kids makes me feel like an introvert because I just want them to go away all the time. I'm reading Hands-Free Mama right now, and for as much as I deeply desire to implement her methods, I keep wondering how she tolerates so much "connection time" with her kids because honestly I'd go nuts.

In the course of a convo with a friend, I've realized that my girls are so exhausting to be around because all they do is constantly ask me questions and my brain can't deal with the never-ending task of answering them. We don't have conversations, we just have pepper mama with questions time. Random questions. Obvious questions that they either already know the answer to or could easily figure out the answer with a tiny bit of effort. Hypothetical questions. Questions I couldn't possibly know the answer to. Questions about what we're going to eat.

I know kids need to ask questions to learn, and I guess asking lots of questions is better than never asking questions, but for the love GIVE ME A BREAK.

My oldest is a hopeless extrovert and just wants to be near me and talk to me, but doesn't really know how to do that other than ask tons of questions.

My younger daughter wants to know ALL THE THINGS. Not in a curious-about-the-world kind of way, but in a want-to-have-all-possible-information kind of way. It's hard to explain. She wants to know what we're having for dinner. What did daddy eat for lunch today? What time is Daddy coming home from work? What time did I wake up this morning? Part of it is that she always needs to know what's going on because she can't just trust me to take care of things (she was 6mo old when removed from her bio parents, so I really think this is more personality than a result of previous trauma, but could also be trauma-related I guess), and part of it is that she just likes to know everything.

I talked to them about it a bit this morning, but I think my approach wasn't great.

Rather than merely forcing myself to endure their presence (and then inevitably getting tired of the questions and telling them to go away), I'd like to teach them to be better conversationalists so that they are actually enjoyable people to be around. I expect that will be easier with my oldest since she actually wants to make conversation. I don't know what to do with the younger one.

Does anybody have any tips, ideas, etc?