I have developed the ability to shut my ears off. Actually, to be completely correct, I have not lost the ability to hear, I have gained the ability to tune out so completely that it feels like I can turn off my ears, and I don’t even have to use my fingers.

This was first illustrated to me when my husband (purportedly) asked me a question, got incensed when I didn’t answer him, and by the time his monologue actually registered on my radar, he was livid angry and in the middle of a rant about how I never listen to him. Newly tuned in to this conversation, I was baffled and told him that I didn’t hear him. He truly couldn’t believe that I could be just a few feet from him and not hear him. But I really had no recollection of him speaking. Then I realized that he was also speaking to me while the children were chasing each other around with the vacuum attachment nozzles like swords in the other room. I realized then that he had caught me in the zone of mom-hearing.

Mother’s Have Special Ability

Another experience was in the car. I was driving and blissfully going along, when I noticed a marked discomfort in my husband. After a few more minutes of this, he turned to me and said, “I don’t know how you stand this! They are driving me crazy!” To which I replied, “Huh?” Apparently the kids were yelling and/or fighting and/or crying, but I hadn’t really noticed.

How And Why We Develop Stimulus Adaption

Mom-hearing must have been developed as a coping mechanism by our great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmothers. To be technical, it is actually called stimulus adaptation: when something is so constant to your senses that they get tired of relaying the same messages, so they just stop doing it.  I have come to realize that without the ability to tune out the near-constant cacophony of whining, tattling, yelling, and other riotous youth-noise, we would all go insane. This is why parents can do it when no one else can. They develop mom-hearing, and suddenly, it is possible to drive to the market without pulling over and letting the kids out to run free in the median.

One thing about mom-hearing is that it changes. At first, during the cozy newborn stage, mom-hearing is ultra-sensitive to every inhale-exhale-inhale…every squeak is heard, and will rouse you out of the depths of exhaustion. But by the time they are old enough to find their own fishy crackers in the pantry, the tune-out and stay-sane hearing kicks in.

We Can Hear Other Things, Too

Oh, I have other fantastic hearing abilities too. I can hear the truth when my son tries to lie to me. And I can hear what is happening when it is “too quiet,” because if there is nothing to tune out, something is going on that requires my full attention.

Remember when you were a kid, and you were trying to get your mom’s attention, and you had to say “Mom…Mom…MOM…MO-OM!” Why did it seem like she was never listening? Well, now that I am a mom I know: mom-hearing.  What about you? Do you have this super-power too?

Follow Laura’s attempts to mother and stay sane at mommy menagerie!