Your Kids May Be Saying “Mom” More Than 100 Times a Day! (Mine Are — Literally)

Your kid may be saying “mom” more than 100 times a day.

Mine are — literally.

I need to know I am not alone. My kids consistently say “mom” more than 100 times a day. This is not an exaggeration. I counted.

That’s right. Last Monday, I counted how many times my kids said “mom.” I had a notepad and pencil on the kitchen counter, and I tallied it. One hundred and five “moms” in one day. That means, on average, they say “mom” every 6.3 minutes of the time they are awake. I also tracked the length of time between each “mom.” The longest stretch was 20 minutes (screen time). The shortest was one minute.

Now, I have three kids who are all of speaking age. My oldest (9) was at school and out of the house for seven hours of this day. My middle (6) was having a remote learning day at home, and my little (3) was home as well. The only “moms” I included in this tally were the ones that interrupted me. For example, I did not include in my tally the time I was playing Barbies with my 6-year-old and she said, “Hey Mom, they should have a pool party!”

These 105 “moms” were the ones that gave me a negative feeling. The ones that made me clench my teeth or think, “What?! What do you need now?!” The “moms” that literally made me shiver. The kind of “mom!” that made me want to lock myself in the bathroom with chocolate.

These are tough moments. I sometimes feel guilty. I picture some older adult saying I’ll miss these days. Or, in my case, I think about being mom to a special needs child who did not say “mom” until he was 4 years old. I remember how special and overwhelming it was when he finally said “mommy.” That is when I think, “This is my life right now. It won’t last forever. We are in a tough and busy phase of life. I am so blessed to have these awesome kids!” Then, I hear “MOM!!! Where is the remote?!”

Nope, this is truly driving me crazy, and it’s getting ridiculous.

Parenting is such an emotional rollercoaster. Even more so when it’s tough to find our village or we feel isolated from fellow moms. Those playdates and playground meetups where moms can validate and listen to each other are hard to come by. I would love to call up a mom friend to chat, but let’s be realistic — that phone call would be brutal while our kids are yelling “mom!” the whole time. It would only cause more frustration for me and my kids.

I wish I had a solution to the constant “mom” from my kids. But I do not. I really just want to know I am not alone and that someone else’s kids are saying “mom” more than a hundred times a day, too.