How on earth do you have conversations with partner with a toddler about?!

[Orangepen13]

Today we had a leak in our window and just needed to have a conversation about fixing it and sorting out the mess. Our two year old just can not handle us having a conversation and spends the whole time interrupting, pulling on us, causing disruptions.

Generally we just wouldn’t have important conversations around her, but this was time sensitive and her interruptions tripled the stress. This is a recurrent pattern

we tried to say “mummy and daddy are having a conversation, can you play for a minute over there”, but it didn’t work.
Any other tips because we have not cracked this!

Asking her isn't going to work. At 2, she has zero empathy or understanding of the situation. Put a cartoon on for half an hour so you can talk, talk when she's engrossed in something else, or wait til she's in bed.

2 is very little, they have the attention span of a gnat. I asked my DD to wait for me to go downstairs and get something (for her I might add) and she was calling me asking where I was before I even hit the bottom of the stairs.

Have you seen the Bluey episode Wagon Ride? We introduced techniques like this with DS after watching it (I expect he was about 3) and he got it reasonably quickly. Now he's 5 he's a pro at saying "excuse me" and waiting his turn. Not the quick fix you may have been hoping for but definitely worth laying the foundations for future. DD already lays her hand on my arm when she needs me, but her waiting time is still sub 30 seconds.

But yeah agree with pp if you need them to be quiet whilst you have a whole chat then they either need a high value toy they haven't seen in a while, a good snack, or screen time! Or play hide and seek and forget to seek for a few minutes?!

So if I need to have an important convo with my DP with our 2 year old we’d put on a cartoon for them and then go to another room. We are lucky in that he still hasn’t worked out how to escape the baby gate though.

If it can wait I’d discuss it during nap time, bed time or in the car.

We do also try and encourage independent play when we can, but this does usually only happen when he wants to do it though!

We have very special important conversation only magic painting books for this or wait til snack time.

Mine was an eater so that. Snacks. Preferable something complicated to eat. Think one of those dog puzzle snack bowls!

Tv is the only way here but even then you have to make it snappy , it doesn't hold his attention for long

iPad or similar if I need toddler to sit still and be quiet for 5 mins

Thank you all, all excellent ideas 🙏🙏🙏

We just become very insistent that is it not their turn to talk.

Mummy and Daddy need to chat right now and we will do xyz with them afterwards. They can go somewhere else and play or they can stay with us and be quiet.

We probably have had the odd tantrum over it but now they understand that there are times when it isn’t their turn to talk.

This is not too dissimilar to if we’re at the dinner table and chatting about our days. There are times when mummy or daddy are telling a story and it isn’t their turn to talk.

If I can't wait until bedtime. Give a snack and a cartoon and make it sharpish. If not it waits until bedtime

DD was the same. I used the technique mentioned above of getting her to put her hand on mine if she needed my attention. I put my other hand over hers to show her that I've noticed she needs me, and that as soon as there is a suitable point in the conversation I'm having with the other adult, I'll give her my undivided attention.

She eventually realised that I will ignore her until I'm ready to giver her attention, but will be 100% focussed on her as soon as I can.

I'm ashamed to say that I didn't tackle this until DD was starting school. She was constantly interrupting me while I was chatting with other parents. It was embarrassing, as all the other children had better manners.

Caveat - I obviously reacted if it was clearly important or an emergency.

Screen time.