One of my biggest pet peeves in life is “poking”. It drives me to insanity when a child (or an adult for that matter) comes up and continues to poke me until I respond. It’s makes it worse when they do it while saying my name over and over again. “Mommy (poke, poke), mommy (poke, poke).” I just want to scream my head off and it often takes all that I have in me to not swing around and smack them.
I have even begun to realize that my kids don’t even have to physically poke me to feel like I am being poked. When they repeatedly say my name like a parrot does, it’s like poking at my brain. It brings the same type of “I want to scream” response out of me (that’s how I put the correlation together). So how does a mother survive this season of motherhood when it seems that poking is a favorite activity of children?
Well, I haven’t mastered the poking of the brain one yet, but I have trained my children to not physically poke me. Mastering one of the two makes it do-able. How have I done that? By the key word…I used it in the above sentence…”training” of course! Would you expect anything else from me?
Just like the other training issues I have tackled, I set this one up in the same way. I talked with my children about how annoying it is to be poked. Then I instructed them that when they want my attention (whether I’m busy or not), I do not want them to scream my name out across the room until I respond. Instead, I want them to walk over to me, gently (that’s an important point–there’s nothing like having your arm squeezed off by your child) squeeze my arm and then patiently and quietly wait for me to respond. Now it’s my part–when they squeeze my arm, they know that if I cannot stop what I am doing, like talking with someone, I will gently squeeze their hand. This lets them know that I am acknowledging their request for my attention and will get to them as soon as I can. After I instructed them in what I wanted, they began practicing getting my attention in an appropriate manner.
I cannot even begin to count how many times I have been grateful that I took the time to train my children to get my attention in this way. It is so much better to have my children run up to me while I’m in a conversation and to feel this little squeeze on my arm instead of hearing the piercing cries of, “Mama, mama, mama!” It allows me to finish up my conversation instead of being rudely interrupted by a child that has no patience.
I do have to say that I trained my kids pretty early at this so I don’t think it occurs to them to get my attention any other way. I feel sorry for them though (yet proud of them at the same time) when they walk up to another adult and squeeze their arm. The other adults usually try to shake them off or look at them like, “What the heck are you doing?” I just giggle and explain to them what my children are doing. Once other adults understand, they are appreciative, but in the mean time it can be quite a source of laughter for me. I’ll take laughter over wanting to scream at my children any day.
