Kat Rowan, CEO & Creative Director of TiffinTalk, Inc., shares her expert advice (and vast experience) on what to do when your kids just can’t seem to absorb a single word you say.
New day. New reality: They can’t hear me.
I’ve known them all their life. Hell, I gave birth to them. Raised them. Hummed to them. Sang to them. Talked to them. Cheered them as no other parent in the bleacher / auditorium / world did.
But now suddenly … they can’t hear me.
Honestly?
Still, that’s their story and they are sticking to it.
I smile. And I pretend to I believe them. (They forget that we played “pretend” a lot when they were younger – so I’m pretty good at this one.)
Generally, my daughters’ hearing became more acute in their toddler years. So much so that they could hear monsters under their beds. AND, they could hear me dialing a phone from five rooms over and two floors up because that was the exact moment they needed their … “Moooooooommm!”
As they got older, their hearing began to fail. It’s true. As preteens, they became monosyllabic, responding only with “huh?” and a look of cluelessness as they shrugged at my third request for a simple chore to be done.
Now, my teens (wiser and older) no longer reply at all – except to my loud shouting at which moment they will sullenly use their “I didn’t hear you” or “I didn’t know you were talking to me” defenses. When there is no one else in the room (or the car … or the world), I especially love that “I didn’t know you were talking to me” response. My reply is simple: “Give me a break!”
(My unspoken reply, by the way, involves a few words not suitable for their deaf ears or this post. Apparently they are both totally clueless that I once was a teen and that, when I grew out of that age entirely, I taught teens. In their collective minds, I was, per all significant signs, born yesterday. Or maybe 100 years ago. Same diff.)
What I try to keep in mind is that the job of my children/preteens/teens is to develop, lose, and then redevelop their hearing. It’s in their job description para 83, subsection 12 under “Testing Parents”.
You can look it up.
They have to go through these stages. They have to learn how to take in all of the amazing sounds in the world and then little by little filter out that buzzing static feedback (aka parent-speak). As they reach the stage involving wing stretching and independent flight, they are testing their abilities. And my resolve.
My job description, on the other hand, reads something to the effect of “allow the child to test/push buttons, but keep consistent limits. Create consequences (together with your child when possible) that are appropriate to the infraction / button pushing.” It’s para 1, subsection 1.
It’s basically all there is to this parenting gig.
Thus, when my preteens and teens can’t hear me (and I still have any presence of mind remaining), I whisper. As in whisper softly. It shuts them up. They listen harder. They worry that I am talking about them more than they worry that I am talking to them. In terms of revengeful parenting (with zero harm done), whispering ticks them off as much as they’ve just ticked me off. And it saves my vocal cords. And often brings us back to the issue at hand more quickly.
Occasionally, we chuckle at the insanity of both our jobs.
If I can make it through these stages without losing (more of) my sanity, then it is another win-win. I’ll just whisper this post to my kids. They’ll laugh out loud. And grimace. They hate when their Mom is right. (para 1, section 1: Moms are right. Period. Exceptions are noted in the audio book which, by the way, kids cannot hear.)
In the end–for a little while anyway—you don’t need to increase the volume; just decrease it. They can hear you just fine – at any volume. The key is getting them to pay attention while they think they are ignoring you.
You are allowed to be more clever. And know that this, too, shall pass. And whatever’s next will make the audio years seem like a whisper on the wind.
If only.
Kat Rowan is a graduate of Wellesley College with Mathematics and Psychology degrees. She is the CEO and Creative Director of TiffinTalk, Inc. and has worked as an educator, administrator, and consultant, holding positions in major corporations and international schools. Kat is committed to helping parents develop children’s critical and creative thinking skills. She has two daughters.