“Caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar!” I yelled at my six-year-old as she whizzed down my parents’ newly paved one-lane private road.
“Get off the road and onto the grass!” I demanded as a white convertible edged dangerously close to her.
“STOP!”
It was the last word I uttered before the car eventually slowed to a stop and I grabbed my defiant little scooter off the road and placed her squarely in a time-out.
“But, Mommy, I didn’t see that car,” my teary-eyed daughter blubbered as I set the timer for six minutes.
“And you didn’t hear me screaming at you?” I asked, defying Supernanny’s cardinal time-out rule: Set the timer and walk away.
I know my daughter heard every word I shouted. Heck, the entire neighborhood heard me. She just refuses to listen. And not just this time; since the Sassy Sixes hit, the kid thinks she’s Queen Nefertiti and the rest of us are her chosen handmaids.
At six, she has selective hearing down to a science.
I’ve heard the phenomenon referred to as the “path to freedom,” but not in my house. I’ll let the ignoring slide for a bit. I realize that kids don’t like to be nagged about putting away their toys, brushing their teeth and hanging up their jacket, but when selective hearing becomes habitual, that’s where I draw the line.
But here’s the kicker: My daughter is fully capable of listening and following instructions. The kid’s a champ when responding to Dora the Explorer imploring her to “Say map! Say map!” You’ve never seen a child say map so quickly and with so much enthusiasm.
And it’s not just animated explorer girls with high-pitched voices that my daughter tunes into. Apparently, she is also partial to Haitian-American rappers.
No matter where we are or who we are with, if my daughter catches even a note of Flo Rida’s smash hit “Club Can’t Handle Me,” her arms become human windshield wipers.
At first I thought the kid was choking and her flailing arms were code for “SAVE ME!”, but then I realized that she was simply following Flo Rida’s request to “Put yo hands up! Put yo hands up! Put yo hands up!”
And yes, she also waves them in the air like she just don’t care.
You know you are in trouble when your six-year-old listens more intently to rich rappers than her poor mother.
Related Articles:
Can Parents Ever Get It Right?