When silence isn’t golden.
There’s a saying that reads “Silence is golden, unless you have toddlers. Then silence is very, very suspicious.” Parents might chuckle and internally cringe, thinking of the time their toddler was chewing on books in a hallway or drawing on the walls.
This saying doesn’t end with toddlerhood. I don’t know when it ends, I haven’t experienced that point yet. As a widowed mom of two daughters, aged 3 and 5, and an 8 year old lab, my house is not quiet when the kids are home. When the kids are not home the dog is asleep and I am doing whatever needs to be done in the calm hours before the bus or pickup. Blissful inauspicious silence.
My oldest has always been good with independent play. When she was a toddler she would dig into the bookshelves, looking at page after page. We lived in a different house and it was easy to contain the dog and toddler with a single gated doorway to the kitchen. All of her toys were in a central area. The dining room table provided endless entertainment as she “hid” after climbing through the chairs.
My second daughter has never had a time when she didn’t have another child playmate, so she wants to play with her sister 90% of the time. And as my oldest puts into words that she “wants alone time,” that’s just the start of a yelling match about who’s in charge and who is deciding what to play. And in our current house there is no good way to keep them in a single room, so the upstairs areas of kitchen, dining room, family room, and bedrooms are all accessible.
I have a younger sister, and we did the same as children. We fought constantly (sorry mom and dad), and I see the dynamic in my own daughters. The cajoling of the rules, the little one offering anything to her sister to entice her to play with her, the older one setting the tone of play and the little one rolling with it.
As I write this they are making some concoction in their play kitchen while the little one puts her baby “in the dungeon for a jazillion tantrums.” But even now, as they are older and I’m fairly certain I won’t come in to marker on the walls (although I have found it on the floor), I still get suspicious when I don’t hear them.
For Christmas they received light up spinning wands from their grandparents. The saving grace of these toys is that they didn’t make noise, otherwise they would have “mysteriously disappeared” after Christmas. After the girls realized how they worked and what they did, the girls disappeared. I looked up from my own activity and they were gone. Not in the family room, the dining room, or their own rooms. Once I caught them in the linen closet, wands spinning like a disco rave. Another time they were in my bed, under the covers and giggling in muffled tones.
It doesn’t stay silent for long. I’m actually surprised there haven’t been any fights for me to break up while I wrote this. There are levels of loud, and I’m just happy it was a little warmer today (a balmy 30 degrees Fahrenheit) and sunny so we could all be outside for about 20 minutes. That makes me feel better about the hours of TV time that will be had today as we watch the NFL playoffs. That and not having any TV time this morning… everyone has their TV rituals, I can’t knock anyone’s.
It’s great when your kids are quiet and not up your backside in the house, but once you notice comes the next part of the silence quote- Where the hell are my kids and what are they doing?
