The Voices

When my kids were little, it suddenly dawned on me how many voices I use in parenting. Seven to be exact:

1. The baby voice: Your voice changes when you have a baby. You're morphed from a normal adult to one who uses baby talk. You'll engage in a high-pitched squeaky version of peek-a-boo or ask in a cutesy voice if your baby wants a baba or binky. I've even see it happen to the most masculine of men.

2. The  'boo-boo' voice: Noting breaks a parent's heart more than when your child has a boo boo. Your voices goes a few octaves higher when you see that scraped knee or their tears.

3. The 'no' voice: Sometimes this voice starts out a little softer (honey, momma said 'no.') but definitely ends up stern.

4. The 'full-name' voice: When you need your child for something, you usually use their nickname. "Peanut, get your shoes on," or "Sweetie, come and eat breakfast." But when your children are in trouble or you want their attention, you call out their entire birth name: John Andrew Smith get in here!

5. The 'climbing' voice: This is an interesting voice. It can be used in conjunction with the 'full name' voice. My children used to get into what I called 'the zone,' where whatever they are working on they are so engrossed in they couldn't hear me calling them (or chose not to). So I used my climbing voice. This is when I would, for example, count to three and get progressive louder. "One...TWO...THREE!"

6. The 'proud' voice: This is my favorite. "Peanut, I'm so proud of you, you did it. You're such a big girl!"

7. The 'combination' voice: It's the hardest voice to control. With three kids clamoring for my attention, I would sometimes have two or three situations to deal with at once. One child has a boo boo, the other is heading to a candy dish and the third is trying to tell me they scored high on the spelling test. So here's the combination:
 Boo-boo voice: "Honey, you have a boo-boo. Let Mommy take care of it."
No voice: "No! Get out of the candy dish!"
Proud voice: "That's great! I'm so proud of you!"

The hardest part is making sure you're saying the right thing to the right child. My luck, I'd tell the kid with his hand in a candy dish that I'm so proud. LOL.

Any voices I'm missing?