on the other hand, it can be very frustrating for a child, with a much shorter attention span, to wait for adults to finish speaking; and frankly, many adults ignore children completely. (Not necessarily parents, though they do it to). Constant interruptions show a lack of consideration, but I don't agree with the old style "seen and not heard" either.

Rather than imposing a "forbidden to interrupt" policy, maybe discuss ways to join a conversation, polite ways to interrupt if there is an emergency, and the importance of listening.

Good points Cloud. Your second one, finding a way to join the conversation, is really the key here.

We have found success with this method. SonofV used to interrupt just like you described, binky. Maddening! We corrected him each time he did this by responding immediately to his interruption by saying to him "Excuse me, may I interrupt, please?", just as simply and unemotionally as if we were correcting his grammar. We said this to him, expecting him to repeat it back to us, correctly. The intention was to redirect his thinking from "Hey, blah blah blah!' to, well, "May I interrupt?".

This changes everything. It is no longer an assault on our conversation. It is now an entirely legitimate *request*. One which may be answered, "Yes, go ahead", or "No, not right now", or however you see fit. It's a fair way to get into the conversation. One he now uses when he needs to, one he can use indefinitely into his adulthood. One thing I've noticed is that while he joins in the conversations just as much as he used to, he now watches the flow more carefully, and enters much more naturally. He still uses "Excuse me, may I interrupt, please?" but mostly in conversations that don't overlap at all with what he wants to say, or with people that he doesn't know as well, other adults not in our family's close circle.

It's really just a case of teaching simple manners. He wasn't bad or rude before, just ignorant of good conversational manners. This little hook was easy to remember (lord knows we repeated it to him enough) and versatile enough for almost all situations, and we rewarded him enough by honoring his request to interrupt so that he saw that it worked.

I agree that you need to be calm and act relaxed even if it winds you up.
I was going to post that you should ignore them until they stop talking and then explain that you did not listen because they were interrupting.

Luckily I lost the post and read BigV's reply. I agree with him now :)
Confidence is a precious thing in a child.
Mum intimidated us into never interrupting, to the extent that I believed talking over someone was the height of ill manners. I had to learn a new way of dealing with multi-person conversations when I left school.

Thanks, SG.

Exactly SG- my Mom would have practically smacked my face off the front of my head for interrupting, so that may well be why it bothers me SO much

Thanks everyone, I got a lot of excellent ideas, now I just need to find the time to process all of them and come up with a plan of action!

Whatever technique you use, if you ask them to wait, remember to go back to them when you're done and ask them what they wanted to say...