Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!

[rebelmama]

My 28 mo ds has started doing this a lot. I can barely have a phone conversation or any other conversation without this occurring. I usually state firmly that "I hear you. Mommy is talking, please wait and I will talk to you." Doesn't seem to do a thing. He just keeps on Mommy'ing until I have to fully respond and acknowledge him. Any gentle discipline suggestions for handling this?

[SeekingJoy]

My 5 yr old and 3 yr olds do this. No ideas.

[Redheaded_Momma]

Wish I had advice on this. DS will do this too. I've tried stopping the phone conver. and gently telling him he is being rude by interrupting me and that I will be with him in a minute. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. I try to avoid phone conversations while he's around.

[Petie1104]

For my dx who is bad about this, I say it and then gently place my one finger on her lips like I'm making her make the "shhh" noise. It seems to work because it let's her know exactly what I want. At least I think that's why it works.

[Marsupialmom]

Before I had my first child we were at a friend's farm.  His younger child came running up --- "dad, dad, dad."  

Dad ignored him.  Then got flustered.  The sharply said, "what".

His child screamed "The house is on fire." 

It was a minor fire but it taught me a lesson. Don't teach them not to interrupt but when and how.  

"Excuse me mom ---"

Your child is young enough to not understand is something broken, bleeding, or burning? If not be patent/wait.  It is a slow process.  I would ask my kids that "Is something broken, bleeding, or burning?" or state if nothing is broken burning or bleeding then you can wait.  

I think why the one persons shush works is because she most likely is making eye contact and showing him he does got her attention.  

[waiting2bemommy]

Ds does this too. It drives me crazy as well. I have had limited success with asking him to try again politely and he will then say excuse me, and i will acknowledge him. Or if he is eing obnoxious about it I ask him,"is it an emergency?"

Other than that I do a lot of yelling "would you just HUSH!" which I'm sure is not teh advice you were looking for. :lol

[amberskyfire]

DD Does this and for the longes time I tried everything I could to get her to understand that you don't interrupt someone when they are on the phone. She just doesn't get it. Sometimes, very rarely but sometimes, she will be quiet and wait and then say "was I very quiet while you were on the phone, Mommy?" so I know she totally listens and pays attention to me. That leads me to believe that it's something she might not be able to control in some way. She hears me and she knows what she shouldn't do and she displays an obvious desire to do what's right, so if she interrupts me now, I try not to get upset about it. We'll work on it and these things just come with age, I guess.

What I have been doing recently is preventing it in the first place. If I have to use the phone I will tell her that I have to make a call and I tell her that it's very important. Then I give her a drink and a snack and sit her down with something extra special that she doesn't normally get such as a video or her Dad's iPhone (he downloaded a reading game called Starfall on it for her for very long car rides). Then I'm able to make my call.

This works 95% of the time and I make sure to praise her afterward. "The video has to go off now, but thank you SO much for being so quiet while I was on the phone. I really appreciate it. That was great!" Then I make sure to play with her a bit and give her positive attention.

[Viola]

In my experience, this just gets worse the older they get until they get to a point where they don't care as much if they have your attention.  My kids would be completely occupied, but as soon as I got on the phone, they were all over me.  So I started announcing ahead of time that I needed to make a phone call and I needed them to be quiet for that duration, so if they had anything to say, let me know now.  That just made it worse.  It's kind of like as soon as I was letting them know I'd be inaccessible, they were upset at the prospect, so the ringing phone or seeing me head to the bathroom would prompt this sudden intense need for me.

I used to go to the basement and hide in a room to make my important calls, and my daughter would follow me down there and be all over me.  And just the other day, I was up in my room and my kids were off playing somewhere--they're 11 and 7 now, so not little.  At some point I realized I should return an LLL call, so I made the call, and a few minutes into it, my 7 year old was banging on my door like she was going to break it down.  I finished up the call, went to the door and she was long gone.  It's like this 6th sense of when to make noise or something.  LOL.

I agree with amberskyfire, though, so if you can find an activity and make sure to give attention after the call, maybe that will set up a good pattern for the years to come. 

[sapphire_chan]

My mom said that it really helped with us to acknowledge right away--eye contact, lift a hand so the child knows you know they want you--then after a bit ask the other person to hold for a bit and find out what the child wants. At first you'd respond almost immediately, like just the time to ask the person on the phone to wait a bit, then increase the time, i.e. get to actual good pause points, as the child gets more confident that you will be there.

Since you're responding immediately at first, make lots of phone calls to friends and relations.

The other thing she did was teach us to touch her shoulder to get attention instead of going "mom mom mom mom...mom mom" etc.

[tjlucca]

Originally Posted by Marsupialmom 

Before I had my first child we were at a friend's farm.  His younger child came running up --- "dad, dad, dad."  

Dad ignored him.  Then got flustered.  The sharply said, "what".

His child screamed "The house is on fire." 

It was a minor fire but it taught me a lesson. Don't teach them not to interrupt but when and how.  

"Excuse me mom ---"

Your child is young enough to not understand is something broken, bleeding, or burning? If not be patent/wait.  It is a slow process.  I would ask my kids that "Is something broken, bleeding, or burning?" or state if nothing is broken burning or bleeding then you can wait.  

I think why the one persons shush works is because she most likely is making eye contact and showing him he does got her attention.  

We work with DD on this too. We tell her to try not to interrupt unless it is really important. Sometimes "really important" to her is not being able to find a toy or something. We try not to judge that because it is mostly her age. We do remind her to say "excuse me, Mama", or papa respectively. I think this is an age thing. DD is old enough to state verbally what she want and what is going on for her, but hasn't fully grasped politeness yet. It's progressive, I think. But at times it is definitely frustrating!!
 

[Aletheia]

We've been trying to enforce this arrangement for interruptions with our 4 and 2 year olds.

If it is an urgent matter (like the PP said, "burning, bleeding, broken"), "Mommy Mommy" is ok.  Better is "Excuse me, Mom!"

But if it is not an urgent matter, I ask my kids to hold onto some part of me until I acknowledge them.  But they have to be quiet.  When I do acknowledge them, I get down at face level and make sure they understand that they now have my undivided attention.

I also keep a basket with a few small toys near the phone that I only get down if necessary- a pumper with the long animal-making balloons, window crayons, hopping ants from the game "ants in the pants," and a little flashlight piggie keychain that oinks and shines a light out of its mouth when you push a button.  (Right now-- the contents tend to shift.)

[marielizabeth]

I just finished reading Positive Discipline by Jane Nelson (great read), and she tells a story about a mom who hands her daughter her watch and tells her to wait until the second hand goes around three times and she will be off the phone. The little girl gets totally into it, and tells her mom that she had more time when mom hangs up!

I don't know if it would work, as my LO is 16 months and would just eat the watch, but it sounds worth a try if you have a preschooler.

[D_McG]

I state that I'll be on the phone and not to interrupt me.  If/when he interrupts me anyway I either go lock myself in a room or put him in his room.  It drives me insane.

[McGucks]

I have a 15 year old son and this was definitely an issue for us years ago; my 8 month old has already "learned" that if I am on the phone, it is time to party!  My only suggestion is to consider getting a timer (the old-fashioned kind, not a digital).  You can try to get some blocks of time (say, five minutes) when you really need it by trying to teach your child that, unless there is something scary or someone is hurt, to give you phone time until the timer goes off.  I think this is a pretty common issue, though--good luck!