Last week Sean and I decided to take the children to run a quick errand and then for ice cream after school. When it was time to leave the store and head for the ice cream shop, two-year-old Bobby resisted. He became upset, even when we told him the plan was to get ice cream next. Finally, Sean picked him up and buckled him in his carseat out front, kicking and screaming. I was about to broach the subject of skipping the ice cream stop when I realized what Bobby was saying.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy cars! MY CARS! My cars!\u201d Bobby\u00a0was wailing through his tears.<\/p>\n
\u201cSean, did Bobby bring any of his matchbox cars into the store?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
Sean put his hands in his coat pockets and pulled out several cars and a dinosaur.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re right here, he put them down in the store and I picked them up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sean opened the car door and handed Bobby his cars (and dinosaur). Bobby immediately stopped crying and clasped\u00a0his cars to his chest gratefully, clearly relieved. The poor thing had been crying because he\u2019d left his cars in the store and didn\u2019t want us to leave without them! He was trying to communicate, and we weren\u2019t listening\u2014we were writing his fussing off as just what two-year-olds do, forgetting that fussing is often simply one way small children try to communicate, or to make the adults around them listen.<\/p>\n
I appreciate moments like these, because in some sense they remind me that my children operate on the same basic principles I do. I think sometimes it\u2019s easy to imagine that they must be crying, or fussing, or throwing a fit, or whatever it is, to spite <\/em>us somehow. I mean it can sure seem that way when you find yourself picking up a screaming child and carrying him out of a store! But in reality, they\u2019re generally tired, or hungry, or overwhelmed\u2014or they left something in the store and can\u2019t figure out how to communicate that to you!<\/p>\n This is one reason I try to make a point of listening<\/em> to my children\u2014whether to their words, or to their nonverbal cues. It\u2019s easy, in the moment, to just push through whatever it is, to figure the child will calm down sooner or later, and when we get to that point things can get missed.<\/p>\n Can you imagine what it must be like to be Bobby, with so much going on inside and yet such a limited ability to communicate it? Now imagine that on top of this, the adults around you aren\u2019t always all that interested in even\u00a0trying<\/em> to understand what you\u2019re saying. Can you see how frustrating that must feel? I get frustrated too, sometimes, when I\u2019m trying to understand and can\u2019t. The other day it took two full minutes to figure out that Bobby was saying \u201cbroken\u201d rather than \u201cpopcorn\u201d\u2014and even then, I only figured it out when I realized he was holding a broken matchbox car in his hands.<\/p>\n But for all that it is frustrating to me when I can\u2019t understand Bobby\u2019s attempts to communicate, it must be only more<\/em> frustrating for him! I\u2019m glad Sean and I were able to figure out why Bobby was so upset when we left the store the other day. Otherwise we probably never would have known that Bobby had left his matchbox cars (and dinosaur) in a store, and lost them\u2014but he<\/em> would have known.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" But for all that it is frustrating to me when I can’t understand Bobby’s attempts to communicate, it must be only more frustrating for him! I’m glad Sean and I were able to figure out why Bobby was so upset when we left the store the other day. Otherwise we probably never would have known that Bobby had left his matchbox cars (and dinosaur) in a store, and lost them—but he would have known. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":845,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[143],"class_list":["post-23996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-parenting","tag-positive-parenting"],"yoast_head":"\n