I'm Bilingual!

This only occurred to me the other day, to be honest. I'm sure when it happened, or how, but I'm guessing it had something to do with the birth of my first child.

See, this whole time, I had myself convinced that 90% of the time, my children were just ignoring me. "Could you hang up your jacket please? Your jacket. It's on the floor here. Why are you walking into the . . . hey! Your jacket! PICK UP YOUR JACKET!!!"

The other day, though, it hit me - somewhere between my mouth and their ears, my words morph into another language that they simply do not understand. I'm thinking it must be something like Harry Potter speaking to snakes - I sound just fine to me, but those around me (who refer to me as Mom) either stare blankly, or continue on their way as if they'd heard nothing.

I have to say, this makes me feel so much better. They aren't ignoring me, we're just having an issue with a language barrier! And all this time I'd been worried - I mean, before I ever had children, I KNEW they would listen to me. I would say do this, they would do it (and like it), and nobody in the stores would stare at me and wonder why I was allowing my child to behave like an angry drunken person.

Now that I've gotten that one figured out, I can move on to my next parenting dilemma - how to disable the ejection device that launches my six-year-old out of his bed and into the hallway twenty or thirty times every night before he goes to sleep . . .