WifeAdvice.com

Have you ever seen the Tonight Show Morse Code vs. Text Messaging bit where the Old-Morse-Code-Guys send and receive a message more quickly the Really-Fast-Text-Messaging-College-Guys? After viewing this contest, I began to think about how I communicate with my wife; it isn’t quite as simple and straightforward as Morse code or text messaging. I have tried various ways to deliver messages to my wife, but there is one method that has proven unsuccessful time and time again.

Lesson 15: Don’t try to send your wife a message by having staged conversations with your kids–it’s not very subtle and will only get her mad.

When our first child was a baby I would talk to him in some baby-babble voice as if he understood me. As I was babbling to him one day, my wife said, “Don’t forget I need you to go to the store tonight.” For some reason I replied to the baby, still in the baby voice, “Daddy can’t go; he has plans with his brother tonight, doesn’t he?” My wife then responded, “Ok, then Daddy can just go the store tomorrow you little cutie-pie.”

I was surprised–why didn’t my wife get angry with me? Was it because she was in a good mood? Was she was excited for me to hang out with my brother? Not likely. I realized it was because we were both speaking to each other through the baby. I silently celebrated the fact that I had discovered a new technique. Unfortunately my success was short-lived. She started catching me trying to send her messages while I interacted with the kids. This got her extremely annoyed and I started hearing, “Alright, then. Leave the kids out of this; talk to me if you want to say something to me.” Here are some scenarios where I have used the speak-through-the-kids technique unsuccessfully:

• After my son tripped over some stuff left on the floor: “Are you ok? Keeping the house clean is really important, isn’t it? We should start trying to clean up every day.”
• I noticed that my kids were overdue for a bath: “Wow! You guys are dirty. Doctors recommend bathing kids consistently. Once a week just isn’t enough you guys.”
• I came home and saw that the kids having cold cereal for dinner: “Yikes, did you skip fruits and vegetables again? You should really eat a few servings of fruits and vegetables every day.”
• My brother and I wanted to go to a movie, but my wife would only let me go if I took a turn putting the kids to bed: “Come on kids, time for bed. I guess you won’t be getting stories tonight because Mommy is pretty busy watching some really important reality tv downstairs.”
• Whenever I’m getting lectured: “Don’t worry boys, Mommy isn’t mad at you. She’s just letting daddy know that she had a bad day… What? No, Daddy didn’t do anything… I know, I know; it doesn’t make sense, but sometimes that’s what daddy deals with.” (This is where she chimes in, “That’s right, boys, Mommy had a bad day today, and now it’s Daddy’s turn.”)

Perhaps I have been using this approach in the wrong situations. I guess it might work if you said something like, “My, what a beautiful mommy you have!”

My suggestion: Talk directly to your wife or avoid bringing up certain conversations altogether. There’s no sense in dragging an innocent bystander into the situation.