Since my youngest boy became verbal, I’ve found that I mostly use only a handful of words, phrases and sounds on a daily basis – most of them meant to either stop a fight between the two boys or get them to stop making all the sounds.
*post contains affiliate links
I really think that whatever part of your brain deals with language just gets shrunk by those traveling Y chromosomes (I’m speaking in particular to moms of boys here) they talk about in this article, leaving you no longer a woman who wants to chat endlessly but someone who could pretty much make do with nothing more than the following words and sounds until the kids move out of the house:
Put on your shoes.
Stop getting out of your chair and eat.
Stop getting out of your chair and do your homework.
Stop getting out of your chair to hit your brother.
Get back in bed.
No, you can’t watch TV.
No, you can’t play with the iPad.
Why does it smell like pee in here?
When was the last time you took a bath?
Stop looking at/touching your brother.
and the sound I make all day every day —
SHHHHHH!!!!!
I use this sound so much, it’s ridiculous. I’m usually not even out of bed the first time I say it. The boys come bounding into our room in the mornings like they’ve spent the last 30 minutes pounding Red Bull. I don’t understand why they wake up so damn early when they don’t have to. Or why they do crack while they put their school clothes on. Neither me nor my husband is getting out of bed one minute before absolutely necessary.
So I’m saying “shhhh” fairly softly as I get out of bed but by the time I’ve made it into the kitchen, the boys are side by side on their stools at the bar fighting about something involving superheroes or dinosaurs I’ve never heard of or what the dog’s favorite color is (yes, truly – an actual fight they’ve had) and the intensity of the “shhhh” goes up a bit.
“Shhhhh, boys,” I say as calmly as possible, eyes like slits, reaching blindly for a coffee cup. “It’s morning, we all just woke up, let’s have a calm breakfast. Everybody face forward. Don’t look at each other.”
But by the end of the day, my “SHHHHH” has grown to a level of intensity whereby whomever is within a 3 foot range of my mouth gets completely covered in spittle. I mean, I don’t look in the mirror when I do it because I’m not a masochist but it’s not hard to imagine what I must look like. Spit spraying out from between clenched teeth, eyeballs bulging, neck craned forward like a fucking ostrich trying to reach a leaf across a fence – the energy from every cell in my body focused on the expulsion of that one sound as if my life actually depended upon me stopping the hailstorm of chaos right. that. second. And sometimes I think it does.
In fact, I’m pretty sure that the way I’ll go out of this world eventually is by giving myself an aneurysm while saying “SHHHHHHH!” with so much force, my face explodes.
So to recap. Don’t bother with all the other words you don’t need anymore. Like
friends, movies, happy hour, gossip and tapas. Let them go, they’re useless.
Just whittle it down to the most important instructions for your kids and be extra careful that you walk that fine line between saying “shhhh” with enough force to have an impact yet don’t give yourself an aneurysm. You’re gonna be needed around here for a long, long time. After all, without a referee, all you’ve got is anarchy.
Hey stick around! Pop your name into that little subscribe box and receive new posts (1-3) per week in your inbox. And while you’re at it, join me on my Facebook page where the laughs keep coming all day long.
Speak Your Mind