Lately Ryan has been playing a lot of pretend. He pretends to be lots of things and even pretends to work like us! According to the babysitter, he would get hold of a calculator, pen and paper and then punch rigorously on the calculator and say to them “Don’t disturb me ah, I’m doing work”. When I heard this, I then realised that it sounds like what we would’ve said to him and obviously he picked it up.
I have to admit that when we are engrossed doing our jobs, it comes naturally to ask him not to disturb us. I feel bad realising what I had done. So nowadays I make a conscious effort not to use the word “disturb” on him.
What about you? Have you ever said that to your kids? How have you changed or dealt with it differently? Don’t you feel awfully guilty saying that?
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well, Hayley did the same thing to me. I always ask her to ‘go away’ when she’s disturbing me and sometimes she will say ‘go away’ to me when I approach her. Sad sad