Maternal Deafness....it saved my son's life today

 Dear Nixon,
         I promise, I am not ignoring you because I can not hear you. Believe me my love, I can hear you whine just fine. I'm ignoring you because of the whining. I am currently refusing to acknowledge your whining ways.
        I'm calling it "maternal deafness" and it is currently saving your life. When you stop speaking in a whining tone, I start lavishing you with attention once again.

Sincerely,
your maternally deaf mother

*In all seriousness, if my son does not stop whining I'm going on vacation without him. Ignoring him right now is the only thing keeping me from yelling at him. I've sent him to his room, he whines louder. I've taken things away, he whines about what I've taken away. Finally, I've decided to fight noise with silence. My silence is the strongest and scariest weapon in my mommy arsenal. When Nixon knows he's done something wrong and I'm not saying a word to him, he is deathly afraid of me at that moment. Not because I've ever done anything horrible to him without saying a word to him, but because it's such an uncharacteristic behavior for me. I'm always talking or singing or making some kind of noise, so pure silence is odd.
I hope this is just a phase, because I'm going nuts with all the voices in my head plotting against my son while I ignore him!