Dear Prudence: My Daughter Says "I love you" Too Often

[cereta]

Q. I love you, OK? Now let me hang up: I love my daughter. I swear I do. But she has gotten into the habit of turning “bye” into “I love you—bye” every damn time she calls me at work, which is several times a day for mundane reasons. In the past she’s gotten upset because I leveled with her and tried to kindly tell her that I generally don’t like to kiss on the lips (hugs and cheek kisses are great). I’m not a horrible mother, I swear. Is there some way I can tell my daughter, “Yes, you can have a cookie, bye” instead of “Yes, you can have a cookie, love you, bye”? I feel like being forced to continually say it takes away from the meaningfulness.

A: I’m not sure how old your daughter is, which seems like it would have a great deal of bearing on the issue, but my guess is that if she’s calling you multiple times a day at work to ask if she can have a cookie, she’s fairly young—probably too young to understand the type of conversation you want to have with her. Sure, if she were an adult and you wanted to have casual conversations that don’t always turn into an “I love you” fest, that would be reasonable, but if a little child wants to say “I love you” at the end of every phone call, I don’t think that’s too much for her to ask. That said, if she’s calling you repeatedly during work hours, it may be that you need to ask whoever’s looking after her while you’re away to restrict those phone calls to “only in case of emergency.”

Comments

[moem]

Wow, this reads so very US-American to me...

[misbegotten]

I am honestly quite befuddled by this letter. Leaving aside the problem of how old the daughter is, I'm astounded that the problem isn't "while I'm at work..." but "repetition makes it less meaningful." Which I personally disagree with, but I'm not emotionally constipated when it comes to saying I love you. I think that Prudence answered the letter as best she could given no meaningful context to parse it.

[mommy]

How many jobs let workers take multiple non-emergency personal calls a day? The daughter might be causing issues with the mother's employment.

[cereta]

I would have expected the LW to say something if that were the case. I remember when my mother went back to work; I was always surprised at how often my younger siblings called her over fairly minor issues.

[the_rck]

I'm confused by this one. If the daughter is young enough to call to ask for a cookie, then why isn't there some adult (or older child) there to supervise? I know the cookie thing was just an example, but it reads very off to me, and I have questions.

Is there upheaval in the family or a recent change in the LW's work status/schedule? The multiple calls a day thing suggests a pretty high degree of anxiety about maternal abandonment. I'd be really worried about that part, quite apart from whatever effects it might have on keeping my job (though the keeping my job part would loom large). I'd take the desire for an 'I love you' as a request for reassurance. It's something my anxious daughter says when she feels lost but can't articulate what she needs from me. Me saying it back tells her that I'm there and that I consider her important.

[cereta]

+1

[xenacryst]

Wait, what kind of +1 is that? Can I bring it to the wedding?

[jadelennox]

*hands you an internet*

[tielan]

Yes, this.

The 'I love you' thing does seem like an articulation for reassurance which the child needs at this point. I'm guessing the cookie is not an actual physical cookie so much as 'a minor thing which the parent doesn't need to supervise but which the child calls to check in' which does read to me as 'a desire to hear parental voice and be reassured'.

[minoanmiss]

Dear LW: if you think you kid tells you "I love you" too much, JUST WAIT. You just might miss this in a decade.

[conuly]

If she says "Don't pull your brother's hair" multiple times a day, does she stop meaning that too?

[fairestcat]

This baffles me so much. My birth family is an “I love you” all the time family and my spouses and I are similar. I get on an intellectual level that some people think this dilutes the meaning or cheapens the feeling, but emotionally I’ve never been able to wrap my head around that way of thinking.

[rosefox]

LW can take a leaf from my grandfather's book and reply "Thank you, darling". You can accept an "I love you" without saying it back. We all knew my grandfather loved us, so his preference for expressing it nonverbally was perfectly fine.

That said, it sounds like her daughter is feeling a little anxious and lost, so it would be good to address that root issue rather than just this particular symptom.