There are lots of running jokes about kids listening to their parents. My personal favorite is the one where Mom asks quietly and politely for something 500 times, until she runs out of patience, and finally screams her request, and is then asked “why are you always screaming?” I’ve lived out that conversation so many times.

I’ve tried various things to combat it. I worked with one coach who swore by the “speak softly at all times and never repeat yourself” method.

In theory, our kids would know to listen carefully and quietly as soon as the coach started to talk, so as not to miss a word. In my experience, they carried on as usual, counting on the one quiet kid to hear what was going on and then just copied them.

Another method, employed by many teachers and Scout masters over the years, is to put a hand up, or a “signal,” or just to stand quietly, until the kids around you realized you were ready to begin. Sometimes this method has the kids copying your signal or hand up as they get quiet.

I think this is officially called, “When the hand goes up, the mouth goes shut.” I’ve used it semi-effectively with other people’s kids.

Mine are most likely to just walk on by, giving me a high five as they pass.

I don’t mean to say that my kids are disrespectful, or downright ignorant, in any way. This is a universal phenomenon where familiarity breeds contempt. They’re so used to hearing my voice, and they recognize the tone, so it just sort of starts to become background noise.

I get it. Honestly, a decent part of the time, I think I tune them out, too. I must because I clearly don’t remember giving them permission for half of the adventures they get up to.

I have been told over the years that I use too many words, and my message gets lost in them. I had started to send the kids their “to do” lists in writing, via text, mainly so I had proof that I did, in fact, tell them the garbage needed to be taken out. I noticed I did have a tendency to use a lot of words, because I was giving them every detail of how I expected a task to be completed.

For example, what I send: G, make sure you feed your chickens early this morning, and make sure that they have enough water to last all day, and also take out the waste food bin and dump it in the yard for them. What G read: blah blah blah blah blah. So, I tried to keep things shorter and to the point: “Feed Chickens.” Even that proved too much, but “Chickens.”

But, it was over the course of this exercise that I think I found out the real reason that my kids never listen to me. I started using the voice to text option on my phone during my eye injury era last year. Well, it turns out, now that I can see what I’ve been saying, I speak in absolute garbage! For example, the other night, after arriving home, I texted our family chat. What I thought I said: We’re back! What the phone decided it heard: weirbach. Since the kids had no idea what that meant, they ignored it. Five minutes later, I got the message, “Are you home yet?”

What made me laugh about this, is that for years, Steve accused me of being a “mumbler” or a “low talker.” In fact, at one time, he accused my entire family of being a “bunch of low talkers.”

Now, if you are among the population that remembers my dad, particularly during his years as a township supervisor, or the part of the population that has known me as a swim coach, you are surely laughing right now. But, as I stopped to think about it, maybe Steve was on to something. We had to be so high volume in our extracurricular activities, the last thing we want to do when we get home is continue shouting.

So, if my phone, which I was holding in my hand, less than three feet away from my mouth couldn’t make out what I was trying to say, I guess I can understand why my kids three rooms over can’t either. This explains everything.

How do we fix this problem? Honestly, I have no idea. I’ve tried enunciating at my phone, and at my kids. I’ve tried speaking more slowly. I’ve tried speaking louder.

My text still comes out with made up words, words that make no sense, and even worse, will use the wrong to, two, too, or they’re, there, their. Oddly enough, my kids do seem to pick up on those mistakes quite quickly and love to point them out.

I have hope, though. I was finally able to train my phone to know that I most definitely didn’t mean to use the word duck. Just maybe, in another few years, it will learn how to speak “Liz.”

Liz Pinkey’s column appears weekly in the Times News