Here’s the affirmation of the month: It’s hard to listen to whining! No one will argue with you on that. In moments of frustration, tell your toddler that, and don’t take the whining personally.
Sometimes we feel like we can’t complain about motherhood. But we can describe it. If someone asks how it’s going, you shouldn’t feel guilty about making a truthful statement like “It’s hard to listen to whining” or “I wish he could tell me what he wants.”
So when your baby is screaming her head off and you want to say, “Would you please shut up?!” instead try giving her a more thorough explanation. “I’m trying to watch Jon Stewart on the DVR, and I cannot hear what he is saying over your shrieks!”
I just wrote a letter of complaint to the Little Man last week (link included above). He is really getting on my nerves these days. When can I expect my rationalizations to make any sense to him???
my baby waits right until Oprah starts to begin her fussing for the day! Always! So annoying!
I have an almost 4 year old and a one month old, and I do this all the time! “listen, kid, I’ll feed you in a minute; Mommy needs to pee first. Oh, and try learning to talk, it’ll be way less frustrating for both of us. My baby-to-English translation device is on the fritz again.”
I love this, because it reminds me of the advice of a mentor, infant specialist Magda Gerber, who said, “Just tell a baby how you feel and what you think, don’t censor your feelings or thoughts”. (Well, maybe censor the expletives.
The beauty of sharing feelings and thoughts with our child is that we get to develop an honest relationship with him or her from the beginning. It frees us to be ourselves, (allows us to think out loud when we are puzzling over our infant’s cries) and breeds trust. When we’re authentic, our babies can be, too.
And anyway, our babies are so intuitive they are already reading our thoughts, so we might as well spill them… I just posted about that: The Secret Language of Babies. http://www.janetlansbury.com/2010/08/the-secret-language-of-babies/
I’ve been doing this with my son from day one. It really helps me to relax. “Dude, no matter how long you scream in my face I won’t be able to nurse you. Please take this bottle instead.”
This is so funny because I find myself saying things like this to my son. Glad to see that there are others who do this and it doesn’t make me a bad mother!