How to shut up a small child

At the age of approximately 5, I was the typical rabbity kid, who would never shut up, which got on my dads nerves to some extent (he's a great dad really, always was and still is). So he told me that people were born with only a certain number of words to use, and that if I wasn't careful, I'd run out of them. I was somewhat sceptical until he mentioned that that was the reason why old people were so quiet.... the sod.

(He also tried to screw up my vocabulary when I was learning to talk by pointing at, say, a table, and saying 'that's a greenhouse' etc)
(Chevron71 is oscillating wildly...., Thu 17 Apr 2008, 22:52, closed)