Have you ever been in the middle of a conversation with someone and your child began to constantly interrupt you? “Mommy! I need you! Mommy! Moooommmy! Mom!” as they relentlessly tug on your shirt.” It’s not only frustrating and aggravating – it’s a little embarrassing.
What do you do? How can you teach your children to respect you and your time with others? Is it possible to teach them how not to be rude without making them feel as though they are unimportant or that you’re ignoring them?
When my children were younger I had that problem and I had no idea what do. But our church offered a class developed by Gary and Anne Marie Ezzo called Growing Kids God’s Way and it taught me how to effectively teach my children unless it was an emergency that interrupting me was not only unacceptable, but rude. Yet, at the same time, we were able to instill in them how important they were to us.
Through Growing Kids God’s Way, the Ezzos taught us a simple technique called The Interrupt Rule. It works like this:
When you are talking to another person, whether face to face or on the phone, your child reaches out, places their hand on your arm or leg (depending how tall they are) and then you acknowledge that you are aware of them by placing your hand on theirs and as soon as you can either break free from the conversation for a minute or when you’re finished, you will give them your undivided attention. (Keep in mind that little ones have a short memory and you don’t want them to have to stand there with their hand on you for an hour, so you will try to pause in the conversation as soon as possible.)
If they don’t use the interrupt rule, then you just don’t have the conversation with them. If they interrupt you and it’s not an emergency, then you tell them you are not going to talk to them about it because they interrupted you and that’s rude.
It will only take a few times before they figure out that if they want to tell or ask you something while you are talking to someone else, then they will need to place their hand on you, wait for you to place your hand on their hand and then calmly wait until you are either done with your conversation or have a second to put the person on hold.
Then give them our undivided attention and look them in the eye as they tell or ask you whatever it is they were waiting to say.
Our children need to know how much we value our conversations with them – that we deem their thoughts and their needs as highly important. But they also need to understand that life is not all about them – that they respect mom, dad and others – that they develop manners and patience and are able to distinguish between a real emergency and a desire to talk to his/her parents.
Tired of your children nagging you while you’re having a conversation with others? Try to implement The Interrupt Rule. It really works!
“Train up a child in the way he should go, And when he is old he will not depart from it.” Proverbs 22:5-7
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