If your child drives you nuts with their i-pod

[McGucks]

We have a rule that DS1 can listen to his i-pod while doing a variety of things as long as he only has one earbud in.  It drives me insane to have him not be able to hear me.  It's not that I talk his head off, but if I want to say something, I shouldn't have to tap his shoulder or holler to get his attention.

Today has been kind of an awful day with him, so I thought I'd share one positive thing.  That's all I've got, let me tell you.

Good luck, i-pod tolerant mamas.

[Tigerchild]

Why is it a problem to tap a shoulder, if it results in immediate attention?

If you get irritated by yelling, then don't.  I guess I don't see why a touch on the arm is a problem, to get their attention (now if they're refusing to take off the headphones after they're aware you need to talk to them, different story).  I hate yelling in general, so even if I need to talk to my kids about something I've gotten used to walking into whatever room they're in and being almost within touching range anyway so I can talk in my normal voice.  I have a child that gets so engrossed in reading that they might as well be wearing earphones--so I have to touch them to get their attention and then wait for a moment for them to snap back to the real world.  :)

I also have found that my DD loves having times to zone out (easy for me to understand, I use my ipod for that too).  Sometimes I need my space;  I don't think that my kids should immediately have access to me whenever and wherever they desire to;  I deserve some "time off" (except for real urgent things of course!).  I didn't really respect my kids' need for that until fairly recently, but boy has that helped my irritation level AND their irritation level!

I often listen to ebooks and talking podcasts with one headphone off--but having to do that with music would really make me sad!