I remember fondly spending time as a child at Long Beach Island and going to Fantasy Island for rides and arcade games. One of the games we played, aside from skee-ball, was *whack-a-mole. It was a test of my agility and coordination.
Fast forward 20+ years, when I was pregnant with our second child a friend shared with me this advice: If both kids are crying at the same time, pay attention the child who has the more pressing/urgent issue. Obviously the most pressing or urgent issue is debatable. Taking that advice, I felt I would address the child who's crying I could curtail faster.
In the past 16 months I noticed early on that, thankful, I did not have to practice this advice so frequently which has led me to the development of my "One Child Crying at a Time Policy" (OCCTP). This policy has taken a life on of it's own in our home. Our daughter was colic for the first 16 weeks of her life. Thankfully our son thought it was cute and did not cry much when she was crying (shocking behavior for a 3 year old, I know). When things leveled out with the colic I noticed that one kid would cry, we'd calm down and the other would start they would not often be crying at the same time. At first I felt like I was playing whack-a-mole, get one kid down before the other one pops up. For some reason continuous crying didn't seem has hard than both kids crying at the same time.
OCCTP has been self imposed on my kids, for the most part. The other day both kids were standing at the screen door, crying together with their hands against the screen calling my name as I was taking the garbage to the curb. In my head I was thinking keep walking but in my heart I knew I could calm them down, eventually, and thank god they don't cry at the same time often.
*In case you are unfamiliar with the game: an arcade game in which players use a mallet to hit toy moles, which appear at random, back into their holes.
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