Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Attention

When Haley wants me I want her to say "Mom."  I really do.

I ask her to do that.  I talk to her about it.  I even ask her to repeat after me "Mom."

She won't do it.

In her entire life I only remember her doing it once.

She does know how to get my Attention though.

She does it by making sounds.  Sounds that annoy me.  I have to answer those sounds.  Occasionally my husband, in his most helpful way, tells me to ignore them, but I can't. 

I just can't.

The sounds that she makes are sometimes whiny, sometimes frustrated, sometimes pathetic, sometimes insistent, almost always incessant.  I just can tell that she needs something.  That she needs help.  That she needs me.

I know that because if she were to ask for help, she wouldn't ask her Dad or her Big Sis.  She would ask me.  But, she doesn't ask me.  She just knows that I am the one that will respond.  It is kind of a vicious cycle.

There are other ways she gets my Attention.

She sometimes brings me things.  Things that she wants that she can't quite do for herself.  She is trying to be helpful.

I have been making her cocoa using Nestle's Quik and Rice Milk.  The other day we ran out of Quik.  She knew that.  She went to the cupboard and brought me a box of Keurig coffee cups.  I just smiled at her.  She said "I want coffee please."  

Well, that is one solution.

Sometimes she just wants my Attention, just because.  She likes to show me the things she finds on the computer.  Sometimes it is something on the internet, sometimes it is a picture from our own files.

The other morning we were sitting at the kitchen table.  We had both finished our breakfast.  I was reading the paper and drinking my coffee and she was on her laptop.  I must have been engrossed in what I was reading because she was getting impatient with me. 

It would seem that she had been trying to get my Attention to know avail. 

She snapped her fingers at me. 

I immediately looked right at her.  She then pointed at the screen. 

That is her go to gesture now.  If I don't respond right away she snaps her fingers at me. 

Today she did it every time she wanted to show me something.

Again I asked her to just say "Mom."

I wonder if she ever will.

2 comments:

  1. Hi Haley's Mom!

    I do hope she'll call out "MOM" for you some day.

    That advice of your husband's sounds useful to me, however. If you could ignore all of her incessant noises and her finger snipping - and perhaps repeat what you want to hear from her each time - perhaps she'd get it then?
    Because - if she continues to be successful like she always has - what would be her point for stopping that behavior?

    BTW, it's me, Britta. At last I figured out how to write comments here. I got my hubby to show me. You know what the problem was?

    When I want to publish something, I'd have to open that window where it says "Comment as:"

    It then says "Google Account, Word Press ... and lots of others". There is also an option where you can fill in a chosen name, and with that it works like I wanted it to.

    Only I am not able to see that whole box on my cell phone. (I am often on my cell phone when wanting to post something.)

    So, on my cell phone I have to scroll down. And it didn't look like that to me. It looked as if there were only a few options ... and that's why I had no idea I had to scroll down and thus it didn't work out the way I wanted.

    Wish you all the best for that "Mom" thing with Haley!

    Britta

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I am glad you figured it out. I sometimes reinforce good behavior with Haley. Sometimes it is just easier to go with the flow. I am not as disciplined as I should be.

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