I am so GUILTY of Interrupting others while they are speaking... It’s not only RUDE but it's also an Inappropriate Role Modeling Strategy. As Parents it's important to teach our kids good manners.

Now... I can tell you that I Can't Help Myself & I believe I have some pretty good valid reasons for my bad behavior.

Reason 1
My daughter manipulates conversations that much that I have learned to 'jump into the gaps' while I can... sometimes this can be as little as a 2 second break while she takes a breath, if I’m lucky! – Now if I’m honest here, I’m blame shifting my error to her… BAD MUMMY

Reason 2
My mind is racing & I don't even realize I've done the dreaded deed until it's too late. A thought just pops into my head & wants to pop straight out again… Do you hear my excuses?

Reason 3
I have a hearing problem that sometimes causes me to think the person has actually finished their part of the conversation. In fact what usually has happened is that they've only moved their head enough that their voice fades to an inaudible volume for my depleted hearing range… I should know better by now!

Reason 4
At other times I've just wanted to get a relevant point across so that I could depart a situation in a hurry to pick up one of my kids. There's nothing as frustrating as someone going 'on & on' about something that has a quick & easy solution…. I can be so impatient – WOOPs another bad habit (LOL)

Other thoughts on the subject
Some people believe they have a lot to say & only a short time to say it. I sometimes wonder if this is probably a by-product of our school days when the teacher would ask a question & all of the kids would be jumping up & down in their seats wanting to supply the right answer… Didn't you have times when you weren't chosen to give the answer & REALLY wanted to?

Good habits are hard to make, but BAD Habits are even harder to break – I’ve just completed an article entitled ‘Breaking Bad Habits’ so won’t go into this here.

Now we all know that when we interrupt someone that they can not only see us as being extremely rude, but they can be left feeling as if we think their opinion doesn't matter to us. When it happens to me I tend to 'switch off' & totally loose track of the conversation... To be honest I really feel like an inferior person, my self-esteem can hit an all time low… In short, I should know better than to keep interrupting others because of the way it makes me feel. 

Did you realize that in most conversations prior to the words coming out of our mouth we begin rehearsing them in our mind.

At  http://www.hodu.com/interrupting-conversation.shtml  I read the following...
‘Communication experts think that in a typical conversation the average person listens only a few seconds before they decide the next thing they want to say. Much like an actor practicing for delivering his or her lines on the big stage, when we rehearse a response, we go over and over again in our mind what it is that we want to say.

As we do so, we get more and more focused on the word and picture images in our mind, and less and less focused on what the other person is saying to us.

The result… Our ears turn off and if we are not fully aware of what we are doing, our mouth turns on’.

It is said that ‘Excellent Communication happens when we get “other focused” We need to stop thinking so much about ourselves & begin focusing on what others need from us. We all need to feel valued… When people listen to us we feel accepted & it is the same in reverse.

In order to establish positive relationships we need to Learn to Listen with our ears, place a guard on our mouths & open our hearts & minds to receiving fresh insight from friends whom we value…