As a working mom with two young kids, my social life is usually on life support. It’s barely breathing because every other aspect of my life is working in overdrive. My days are busy and it takes a lot of effort to meet up with friends and have a cup of coffee. This is especially true when I’m trying to hang out without the kids. So having the kids with me is sometimes necessary.
When the quarantine was lifted, my sister came over and I finally had a chance to chat with her in person. But before we could even start a conversation, my daughter whined, “I’m bored.”
I roll my eyes and tell her to go play with her toys. A minute later, she comes back and asks me to play with her. My temper is getting aggravated so my tone is short. “I’m in the middle of talking to your aunt. Please give me 5 minutes.”
As I was about to go into detail about something with my sister, she came back and crawled onto my lap. Then it becomes that scene from Family Guy where Stewie goes into Lois’ room and proceeds to repeat the word “Mommy” and its variations a bazillion times. My level of annoyance has reached its peak.
I know she wants me to pay attention to her. She’s bored and not old enough to understand social etiquette.
However, getting interrupted is my biggest pet peeve, especially when I haven’t had an adult conversation in a very long time. So I yelled at her, “Omg you’re so annoying. You’re making mommy stressed out. Stop interrupting me and leave me alone! Go away!”
After that outburst, both our faces crumpled and both our hearts sank. I hated myself. I just took my frustrations out on a 4-year-old. I did exactly what those positive parenting experts say not to do. I yelled, shamed, and blamed. And to confess, I didn’t stop just that one time.
There have been multiple occasions where she would interrupt me while I was talking to another grown-up. I would be rehashing my day with my husband and she would yell, “Stop talking. I don’t want you to talk to dad. I don’t like it when you talk to each other.”
After yelling at her several times, nothing worked so I decided to turn to ye old Google for help.
Here are some of the tactics I’ve tried with the most effective one at the end.
First, I talked to her about the reason why interrupting is disrespectful. We discussed that there are appropriate circumstances to interrupt, such as if she sees her baby brother about to do something unsafe or if the pot is boiling over on the stove.
Then we discussed the times when she needs to wait her turn to speak. Talking over people isn’t just rude, it makes it difficult to actively listen to others. As part of this discussion, I also asked her to call me out if I ever interrupt her when she’s talking. It keeps me accountable to model the right behavior so that these ‘rules’ apply to everyone of all ages.
Next, every time I noticed she waited for me to finish talking to someone else, I made sure I praised her behavior and thanked her for her patience.
Lastly, the most effective thing that I did was to create a simple communication system with her. We came up with an agreement to use whenever she wants to talk to me but I’m talking to someone else.
When I notice she’s about to interrupt or if she’s already interrupted once, it cues me to take a pause from my conversation and ask her, “What do you want to say to me? You have my undivided attention for one minute. After that, I’m going to continue talking to my friend.”
Then I’ll set the stopwatch on my phone and start the countdown.
I found that giving her that one minute to say whatever she wants helps prevent further interruptions.
Most of the time, she doesn’t say anything. But I look her in the eye and my body is completely turned toward her for the entire minute. And when that minute is over, I will ignore any attempts of her interrupting me. Of course, unless it’s a fire or something.
Ultimately, I want to be present with my kids as much as I can. And I know I won’t hear those “Mommy, mom, mom, Mama …” pleas and their variations forever; however, I’d rather keep my social life on life support than pull the plug. And fortunately, it only takes a minute to do.
