Mummy, I want...

For those of you with children, this is a sentence opener that you'll probably here about a million times a day and in our house is usually followed by something food related or something they've seen on the TV.

I try to ignore it as much as possible otherwise my initial response to it is usually "I want never gets!" and that just makes me sound like my mum.

Take this morning, for example. Corey was watching kids TV while I sorted some laundry when the adverts came on. Usually, if they want the TV on I try to encourage them to watch CBeebies to avoid adverts but they'd seen the program that was on so we switched channels.

For a whole 3 minutes I was subjected to "Mum, I want (insert whatever crap they were advertising that he's never in a million years going to get because I know he'll spend longer actually getting it out of the box than he will playing with it). This morning's wants included a Scooby Doo toy, a Transformers dinosaur/gun and a game called Og on the Bog (which is never entering our house as I have a rule that no toilet/gross game is allowed and the person responsible will be banned for life).

I try to response to this kind of request with  "Just add it to the list" which means not in a million years, although every now and again there is something I think they might play with so that does in fact get added to MY list. I must point out that at the minute there isn't any such list, although I'm sure as he gets older he will probably start one of his own (like mother, like son lol).

Anya on the other hand was all about the food this morning and our conversation went something along the lines of 

A: Mummy, I want chocolate.
Me: You can't have chocolate for breakfast
A: I want ice pop
Me: You can't have an ice pop for breakfast, plus we don't have any in the freezer
A: I check
Me: Anya, don't open the freezer. There aren't any in there
A: [crying] Me sad
About 1 minute later she came back
A: Me OK now. I want crackles (Rice Krispies)

Both kids are now happily munching breakfast while watching some random cartoon, but at least the constant drone of 'I want' had ceased for the time being, although I don't see it lasting too long.

I have often wondered how many times I hear 'I want' during the course of the day but have no chance of counting them as I'd either lose count after the first 50 or, my usual reaction, just ignore them.

I'd love to know if this something you hear often? If so, how do you respond?

Debbie x