Text from Mary: "Cora could teach pigs to squeal."Our daughter has a talent for the agonizingly intolerable upper register of the human auditory experience. Aside from the tantrums, she also favors singing and squeaking in bird-like fashion.
What age do you teach kids to whistle?
I remember showing Cole the difference between whistling and singing right around the time our house was obsessed with Mary Poppins. I don't know if the same thing triggered it with Cora, or if she heard me whistling. Either way the following exchange happens a few times a week:
Cora: "Dad, this is a whistle. 0000000000000" (imagine wine glasses shattering)
joe: "no. that is not a whistle. this is a whistle. whooooooooooooo" (I wasted three minutes of my life trying to figure out how to put a whistle into text and that is the best I could come up with.)
That goes on for a little while until I try to show her the different placement of my tongue for singing a note versus whistling. I try to describe what areas in my mouth and throat the tone originates. I take one of her fingers and put it in front of my lips to show her that more air comes out when I whistle.
Despite my efforts, she will smile, nodding her head in agreement, and continue singing and insisting that she is indeed whistling.
My current diversion tactic to get off the subject is to start winking at her and she will then accurately imitate my winking which is both cute and quiet. I win.
2 comments:
this must be a little girl thing because we, too, might not have any glass ware left in our house by the time madelyn eventually grows out of this squealing/screeching phase. given that cora is a solid year older than madelyn, this post does not give me hope :( good idea to try a diversion. i typically just smack her across her mouth. (ok, that's not at all true, but in my more exhausted moments i do wonder what she would do if i did that...)
Kim,
This has gone on for a long time, so I think you can count on partial hearing loss before it ends.
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