Selective Senses

Isn't it funny that we can hear a newborn's whimper from 20 yards, but can completely block out the fracas caused by three or four 5-year-olds running through the house?

My eldest daughter's friend's mother brought my daughter home from a play date today. As we sat chatting for a minute on the sofa, our daughters and three preschoolers commenced running up and down the hallway, shouting enthusiastically. "I don't know how you do it," she said. "This would drive me completely crazy."

It does drive me a little crazy sometimes, but more often than not, I find myself just tuning it out. It's fairly easy to distinguish between a cry of pain or hurt feelings and a shout of joy and my ears are sometimes as deaf to the whoops as they are alert for the dismay.

This same sensory selectiveness occurs with vision and smells. A new mother can smell a dirty diaper across a crowded room, but might completely ignore the smell of wet dog after a summer rain. Blood is always an attention getter, but we might not even notice the disarray in the playroom. Well, maybe we notice it.

Perhaps our selective senses help to preserve us as we make our way through the terrible 2's, which I personally think should be called the terrible 3-5's. Are your senses selective? Do you find yourself just tuning out the ordinary chaos and focusing your radar on the unusual?