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

[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.