Communicating with a soft-spoken five-year-old can be frustrating at times. As a rule, I try to be patient and calmly ask him to repeat himself, and he rarely gets frustrated having to say the same thing 27 times. Clearly, he did not get his patience from me.
As I was cooking dinner tonight, stirring a bubbling pot of chili while standing under the jet-engine stove vent that we simply had to have, Owen began whining.
I tried, I really did. Honestly, I didn’t really care that he lost the arm of one of his Ben 10 aliens while I was trying not to burn chili and keep an eye on the baking cornbread at the same time, but I matter-of-factly told him that I couldn’t understand him when he whined and that he’d have to say it again.
After several go-rounds of that, and me remembering that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results, I tried a new tact.
“Owen, I just can’t understand you. Could you please try communicating in a different way?”
Again, I may as well have been eavesdropping on the Taliban’s secrets for all of my understanding, but I gave it one last try.
“Owen, please communicate.”
“I can’t communicate,” growled Owen, finally showing some frustration.
“Clearly!” I snapped back at him, finally losing the precious little patience I had left and letting my innate sarcasm take over.
So, my literal boy (who is rarely ever literal, which is probably why I found this so funny) raised his voice and shouted across the kitchen to me: “I CAN’T COMMUNICATE!”
Yeah, you probably saw it coming, but needless to say, I was charmed that, even though I turned nasty, Owen really did keep trying to communicate … clearly. I’m confident that someday we’ll be able to understand each other, but that probably won’t be until after his teenage years work themselves out and he becomes an actual person.
