There is a truth that remains persistent in my household despite my best efforts to change it: When mom speaks, no one listens.
That’s not exactly true if you believe the arguments from the rest of my household members. My husband will say I must have mumbled. My kids will say that I said nothing at all. I suspect there is some built-in biological mechanism that allows family members to tune out that certain register of a mother’s voice.
Of course it wasn’t always this way. I know that there was once a time when my kids were acutely attuned to my voice. In fact, Today.com highlighted a study by the National Academy of Sciences that reinforced that not only do unborn babies hear what their moms say, but that babies recognize those same words after birth. In the study, the mothers listened to CDs with nonsense words while the babies were in utero. After the babies were born, the sounds were played again, and the babies who heard the words in utero showed increased brain activity indicating recognition of the words, whereas the babies who hadn’t heard the CDs didn’t show the same brain activity.
Because I’ve been talking to my kids since before birth, and because I use the same words repetitively, like “Start another load of laundry,” and “Take out the trash, already!” I know their brain activity at the very least must increase when they hear my voice, despite their protestations that they don’t hear me.
On the other hand, an article in the New Zealand Herald attempts to give my husband a pass. It outlines a study that shows that men, when concentrating on a visual task, become deaf to sounds they would normally hear (same goes for women). And since my husband’s primary home activity is watching TV, that makes sense. Apparently, our senses of hearing and sight share brain capacity and it’s one or the other. In the study, brain scans revealed just what my husband claims: Those people weren’t ignoring the sounds, they just couldn’t hear them.
At least I know my family’s physical capacity for hearing is fine, even if they don’t always use it. I don’t need a study to confirm this either. I simply have to crumple up a piece of paper.
It works like magic, or maybe I should say magnet, because as soon as that particular sound breaks the silence, I have an audience at full attention. My husband’s head will turn to the side (being sure to keep one eye toward the TV set, of course), in a curious attempt to investigate the sound.
My older boys will casually stroll my way and have a sudden desire to make small talk: “Hey Mom, did you see that funny viral video of the guy with the skateboard?” All the while, their senses alert to what might have created the crinkly sound.
My youngest doesn’t mess around when it comes to the crinkly noise. He’s not going to chance missing out on discovering what’s behind the sound by employing some coy plot. He’ll just abruptly pull his headphones off his ears and ask directly, “Mom, what was that?”
The crinkly sound even works on my dog Penny! She will bolt from her hiding place and suddenly sit at my feet expectantly.
What I can’t figure out is what it is she’s expecting. She barely has a reference for the crinkly sound. Her dog food bag makes a low ruffle sound, and she equates something shaking in a bag with her doggy treats. There’s no reference of something savory making the crinkly noise, so I’m not sure what gives.
The rest of them though, I suspect, equate the noise to something special. Unwrapping a candy bar creates a crinkling noise. A bag of cookies crinkles. Digging into a bag of potato chips—also crinkly.
The funniest part is that it’s rarely those things. Take for instance, the other day when on a quick trip to the grocery store I decided to gather up the random trash that had collected in the cup holder and various other crevices of the passenger seat in which I was sitting. I grabbed a paper straw wrapper and crumpled it up. It crinkled. I waited. Then, from the backseat my youngest called out, “Mom, what was that sound?”
I get this question in the car often, because of the fact that I’m in the front seat and my actions are hidden. And I wonder, do they really think I’d surreptitiously take part in a delicious snack just one seat in front of them without offering to share? Is that the kind of mom they think I am?
The bigger question is, why, with all this knowledge, haven’t I used the crinkly noise to my advantage? The facts are: 1) They don’t hear me when I ask them to do chores; 2) They can hear a crinkly sound in the kitchen, even when they are playing video games at full sound while wearing headphones. So why haven’t I used the crinkly sound to get their attention when I want them to say, clean the guest bathroom?
Maybe I’m not that kind of mom. I’m the kind of mom who knows never to sneak-eat snacks with crinkly wrappers.
Shelly Cone’s preferred treat is ice cream because it’s much quieter and equally delicious. Send her a scoop at scone@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Oct 27 – Nov 3, 2016.