A Day Without Speaking

I had been wanting for awhile to experience a day without speaking. I would like to go even longer, but I have three small children and they wouldn’t appreciate it. I did decide to try it for one day. I decided the night before, and only my eldest son (7 years old) was awake. I told him what I had planned for the next day. He didn’t have any questions for me. After he went to sleep, I wrote a little note for him to read to his younger sisters (5 and 3 years old) in the morning to explain what I was doing.

My 5 year old is really good at sign language, so I knew I would be able to communicate fine with her, and she could translate for the others if necessary. My three year old has this thing about her...when she says, “Mama?”, I am required to say, “What?” If I just look at her, straight into her eyes, giving her my complete attention, that isn’t enough for her. She will stand there and wait for my “What?” If I just look imploringly at her, asking her with my eyes what she wants, she will say, “Say ‘What?’”. And I must speak the word before she will continue. So this was my concern. What would she do, all the thousands of times she would ask, “Mama?” that day, and I wouldn’t respond verbally?

I didn’t let this stop me from my little experiment. I can’t say exactly why I wanted to do this, other than that it was something that sounded intriguing to me, and that it would be an interesting challenge to mother full-time silently. In fact, when I emailed one of my friends telling him what I was doing, he responded with, “You have got to be the silliest person I know. How are you going to go for a whole day without talking? Why would you even want to? Oh goodness you are silly.”

So my “silly” silence began at 10 p.m. It was easy being silent with my kids asleep. I went to sleep shortly thereafter. The next morning when I woke up, I heard my son reading the note aloud to the girls. The day of silence had really begun then.

One of the first things I noticed was how much louder my other sounds seemed to me. Normally when I cough or blow my nose, I’m so preoccupied that I don’t even hear myself. But these sounds were amplified in my silence.

As I expected, I used quite a bit of sign language throughout the day, mixed in with some ridiculous charades moves. I also got creative and wrote or typed up things I needed to tell or ask the kids. Finally, there was a last resort that I fell back on when my signing and flailing about failed and I was too lazy to get a pen or keyboard. Giving up. I found myself eventually just giving up things I wanted to say, from lack of quick-enough understanding.

When I heard the first “Mama?” come from my little girl’s mouth, I was ready for some drama. I simply looked at her and raised my eyebrows in question. She looked at me, and said, “Say-” and then she mouthed the word “what”. It was incredibly cool that she was able to keep her little nuance about her, while adapting to the circumstance. I was so tickled by that.

There was a challenge that arose later on in the day, when she locked herself in the bedroom alone and couldn’t figure how to unlock the door. From the other side of the door I wrote to my son on a notepad: Explain to her how to unlock the top lock. And he did.

By the afternoon, my 5 year old had expressed her wish that I could talk again. My son had said a few times “I can’t wait until tomorrow when you can talk.” That was nice to hear.

The first time I instinctively felt myself about to utter something was when I was on the computer, typing, and my daughter called me. My gut reaction was to keep typing, eyes on the screen, and offer her a quick “Hmm?” as a way of asking her what she needed. I realized that I couldn’t make a noise like that, so I had to stop what I was doing and give her my full attention. It felt good to do that for her, and it made me realize how often I don’t answer the kids with my full attention when I’m at the computer. I’m glad this experiment made me mindful of that.

I somehow ended up with more time than usual that day, and was able to start a new book and relax a little which I appreciated.

My downfall came at 3 p.m. We were in the backyard and my son shouts, “Look, Mama! An iguana!” And sure enough, walking past the backyard was a gigantic iguana! Now, this is normal for this area, I have now learned, but we were visiting the state and I have never seen monster sized lizards just walking around anneighborhood before. So before I knew what I was doing, words flew out of my mouth: “Go get my camera! By my computer!” My son went running into the house, and I realized what I had done. When he came back out, I wrote to him on my notebook the words, Intalked! And he started laughing.

I took pictures of the iguana, cursing it for making me speak, and thanking it at the same time for providing me with the perfect photos to accompany what would be my article. Photos of the one reaso
I wasn’t able to do what I had set out to.

I didn’t consider the possibility of ending my experiment there, however. I would continue the rest of the day in silence, and try again another day forcomplete silence.

That night, my 5 year old asked to have a “special night” with me. When the kids request this, it means hanging out with me for a little bit while the other kids are asleep. I signed to her, "But I can’t talk". And she said, “That’s okay. I can talk to you and you can sign.” I signed "OK".

She pulled up a chair and said, “I love you very much.” I signed to her that I loved her too. She said, “Do you feel how much love is going through the air to you? I love you with all my heart.” And here it was, the hardest part about not being able to talk. Not being able to tell my kids out loud that I loved them. I had signed it many times during the day, but wasn’t able to speak it, and it stung my heart a bit, especially as I was listening to my daughter’s beautiful proclamations of love that night.

She continued, “Here’s how much I love you: 67 hundred percent! How about five kisses on your hand?” and proceeded to follow through sweetly. I ended up typing little love notes to her as she read them aloud from the screen with delight. That was fun for her, so I felt better about not being able to speak aloud to her.

At 10 p.m., after 24 hours of silence (minus two sentences) I said aloud to myself, “I can speak!” I went immediately to my sleeping children and whispered “I love you” to each of them.

The next day, my kids woke me up, excited about the fact that I would be able to talk to them again. The experiment had a strange effect on me...I noticed for days afterward, I would frequently stop myself from verbally responding to someone immediately, as though still “catching myself” as I did so frequently that day. This little quirk was unexpected, but interesting and appreciated, as it prolonged my awareness.

The day of (almost) silence definitely made me more aware of when I’m speaking and what I’m saying, rather than words unconsciously coming out of my mouth willy-nilly. I have also found that I am more mindful to replace a lot of my previous multi-tasking with more respectful eye-to-eye contact with my children, and can now more easily break away from tasks to give them undivided attention.

My day of silence wasn’t one of quiet, as my kids opted not to lower their volume for the day. Regardless, it proved very reflective and meditative with the absence of my own voice filling up so much of the space. I found that without speaking, my mind was also quieted as well, and there was a very peaceful aspect to the day.

Though brief, the experiment proved enlightening and is something I intend to do again (next time without the distracting reptilian wildlife to throw me off course).