Sometimes I feel like nobody listens when I talk. It’s like I am invisible, talking to the air, and my voice dissipates before reaching everyone’s ears. I touch my face to see if I still exist, or if I am but a dream.
“Please clean up your plates,” I try in a gentle, cooing tone, that the parenting books all recommend in order to get your kids to obey without yelling. One child looks up briefly from her homework, locks eyes with me, gives some kind of gesture of acknowledgment, an unspoken promise that she will soon return to the table to remove her half-eaten dinner and put her plate in the sink. But 10 minutes later, the plates are all still there, and I need to wipe down the table. I’m faced with a choice. I do it myself, or I ask again.
“Clean up your plates so we can go up to take showers!” I try, using the shower as some kind of sequential reward, instead of threatening to lock them up if they don’t complete the task. But showers are not really a reward. Nobody will listen when I ask them to shower, either. The dinner plates remain, untouched, and the bathtubs are bone dry.
Why do parenting books explain that we shouldn’t yell? Perhaps that will be the only thing that will get the kids’ attention, that will jolt them out of the Lego structure they are building, the YouTube video they are sneakily watching, the book they are reading, and bring them back to the reality of their household obligations. They will fear their parents, they will run to help out, they will understand their roles in the home, not as equals, but as submissives.
But I don’t yell. It hurts my voice. It takes too much effort. I don’t like losing control. I can talk sternly, put on an angry edge, make some threats. Wag a finger. Give some attitude. Some kids make it to the table, others get halfway there before becoming distracted, and I coax them along, as one bursts into tears that he doesn’t know exactly where to put the old food he doesn’t want anymore and in which sink his dishes belong? Because, you know, we’ve never eaten a meal or anything.
The table is finally clear and as I head to wipe it down, I realize we are out of paper towels. On my way to the storage closet to get a new roll, I almost trip on the maze of backpacks and notebooks strewn down the hallway. If I don’t say anything, they will stay there until the morning. And if I do, nobody will hear me, anyway. I will have to expend energy, waste breath, for the same outcome.
“Please come clean up your backpacks,” I coax, inserting specific names, inviting each child one at time to pick up after himself. “You worked hard on your homework. I wouldn’t want it to get lost or ruined.” The recently completed work is also scattered around. Some is on the couches, the table, the bathroom floor. It’s like wherever I go, there is utter disregard for public space and private property. It is one big conglomerate of blended borders and I just crave some sense of communal responsibility.
As I ask one child to clean up her things, I position myself directly in front of her, then pause and stare, waiting for her to get up and put away her pens and pencils that are rolling across the hardwood. This, too, was a tip I had once read. Pause, wait and stare. She looks up at me, and blinks. “What?” I repeat my request, and then stand there until it gets completed. My whole evening can be doling out orders again and again. Because nobody ever hears me.
Later, two kids are fighting. One is humming while doing homework, and the other doesn’t want to listen to humming. “Mommy! Make him stop!” my daughter beseeches me, hoping I’ll get involved. Humming isn’t too bad. He is not doing something dangerous. She can get up and move elsewhere. I remain quiet, and continue to wipe down the counters that I had neglected before, because I was distracted by the backpacks. “Mommy! Do something!”
“What’s the point?” I say. “Nobody will listen to me anyway.” I shrug my shoulders, and turn back to my spray bottle, and the humming has stopped, the fighting has ceased and four children sit quietly, waiting to hear what I have to say next.
They are finally ready to listen.
And I have nothing left to say.
By Sarah Abenaim
Sarah Abenaim is a freelance writer and editor living in Teaneck. She can be reached at [email protected].
