How do even the tiniest babies know that your attention is not 100% on them? Telephones are fascinating to little children. The phone rings, mom drops everything to go and talk to it. Kids are curious, what is it about this little plastic object with the buttons on that has so much power over mom?

And babies and toddlers also don’t like something that mom obeys without question. After all, when a toddler has been whining for another cup of juice for twenty minutes and isn’t getting any, it seems highly unfair that the phone gets responded to immediately after it rings.

So the strategy adopted by many babies is to not take it lying down. Oh no. Baby is not going to let the phone win.

Take the last time I tried to call my bank to attempt to sort out a complicated and boring mess with my account, I’ll spare you the details. Toddler and Daycare Baby collectively object to me not looking at them.

Toddler starts a pterodactly impression, skrark skrark skrark. Daycare Baby copies Toddler, peep peep peep. Toddler starts jumping off the couch and landing with a bang on the floor. Daycare Baby eggs him on by banging blocks on the floor. Toddler starts pulling out all the bloody annoying electronic toys that play music and animal sounds and encouraging phrases. Daycare Baby loves annoying electronic toys. Daycare Baby starts trying to climb up my leg and Toddler copies her. I’m sitting on the couch and I have Toddler sitting on one foot and Daycare Baby sitting on the other foot, both chirruping away.

So I didn’t get the bank account mess cleared up and I say goodbye and hang up. Daycare Baby and Toddler instantly fall silent and look up at me with big wide innocent eyes.

Then they crawl and scamper off to play with cotton balls and socks and fluff from under the bed and other zero decibel items.

Saving important phone calls for naptime or other baby-free times is a good strategy, but that’s not always possible. And no matter how clever or engaging a distraction we can think up, it’s really hard to distract a baby or toddler that has decided that he/she needs attention from mommy NOW.

Do you have any tips or tricks for talking on the phone with babies around?