This Mom's Hack to Get Kids to Stop Interrupting Is Flipping Genius
If you've officially hit the fun toddler stage that involves you trying to carry on a conversation while a 2-year-old shouts "Mommy!" at increasingly loud, increasingly frequent intervals, you are going to want to read this parent's clever method to get your kids to stop interrupting . . . "Hey Mom!" . . . all the . . . "Mommy!" . . . damn . . . "Mommy Mom Mommmmm!" . . . time.
Jessica Martin-Weber, an Oregon-based mom to six kids, admitted in a Facebook post that her parenting pet peeve is "persistent interrupting." It tested her patience, and she was finding no success despite trying to teach her children to say "excuse me, please" when they wanted to speak.
"They just repeated that louder and louder too," she lamented. "Cute at first but 'excuse me, mommy' 30 times isn't much better than 'mommy' 30 times."
Because she recognizes that this unpleasant behavior is "developmentally normal" and that impulse control can be just as hard for adults as for 3 year olds, she created a "breakthrough" method to kick the habit.
In order to help with this and respect our personal boundaries and limits, we have taught our children to demonstrate when they have something to share by gently laying a hand on our arm if we are speaking or listening to someone else at that moment. So they know we're aware they want to say something, we physically respond in some way, such as putting our hand over their hand or gently touching their back or holding their hand.
Sure, it might be hard to teach this technique to a toddler, but Jessica's youngest child — who is five years old — has just begun using this practice.
"Her excitement is quite compelling and it is just so hard To contain her enthusiasm and words all at the same time," she wrote. "She just hasn't been able to find that level of control within herself. Until now!"