Interrupting Cow

My children used to love the knock-knock joke about the interrupting cow.   You, in response to hearing that "Interrupting Cow" was at the door, would respond, "Interrupting Cow—" and my son or daughter would yell out "MOOO!" as loud as they could before you could finish the line.

We seem to be a family of Interrupting Cows lately.   I'd like to think my husband and I don't interrupt that much, but I am fairly certain we do so more than we realize.   What we're working against is the children not only interrupting but doing so to interrupt with a comment, ask for something, or just ignore what you're talking about to interrupt and start an entirely different topic as though you weren't even talking. 

I've been talking to my daughter about it more than my son because she seems to have the worse case of it.   Tonight she did a good job of resetting, apologizing, and starting over with her hand raised when we brought it to her attention.  

Later, when I went up to bring her some things she'd left around the house and to see if she needed any help getting ready for bed, I mentioned how nicely she'd been doing lately as we all worked at being better at interrupting each other.   She said, "after all that you've told me, I'm sort of getting into it now."  I'm proud of her for trying to work on it. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son has gotten to the age where he will actually give me an answer to the question, "did anything interesting happen to you at school today?"  Or a variant of that question asking about this favorite day or was there any new work, or what game did he play at recess, etc.   For years he didn't have anything at all to say about his day.  

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter continues to want to "snuggle puppy" meaning climb on top of the dog and pin her down, hugging her.  The dog tolerates this, but sometimes she doesn't want to be held down and my daughter isn't getting off of her.  I've explained it's going to damage the trust relationship the dog has with her, and my daughter doesn't want that.   She loves the dog, but I wonder too if she needs to feel like something else is under her control, since so many things are out of her control.   Thankfully, the dog is extremely understanding when my daughter does this.