Here’s the scenario:
I ask Kato (recently turned four) to do something, anything. Maybe it’s to pick up his shirt off the floor. Maybe it’s to go downstairs and put on his socks. Occasionally, he’ll go along with my suggestion with a cheerful “ok.” But almost always, I’ll get a whine. A sharp, shrill sound of complaint. A performative half-cry meant to 1) connote displeasure, and 2) irritate everyone.
I’m only half joking about #2. Of course whining is irritating, but I have a sense that the irritation is part of the point. Real crying is an overwhelming reaction to emotional distress or physical pain. It sounds different. It invokes sympathy and the desire to comfort. Whining is the opposite. It invokes hostility, and I think that’s the point. It is intended to serve as a deterrent. As in, “not only will I refuse to do this thing you want me to do, but I will make this extremely unpleasant sound, over and over, thus giving you every incentive to never ask me again.”
I try to not support this logic by giving in, but I must admit that sometimes I do. Sometimes I am too weak, too tired, too depleted to bear the bracing sound of the full-fledged whine. And so I do whatever it takes to make the sound stop. Even if it’s picking up the shirt myself.
We’ve tried many tactics to combat the whine, the most popular of which is to send the offending party into the hallway until such time as whining ceases. This works to remove the primary source of irritation, but I can’t tell whether it’s curing the problem. Kind of like taking a Tylenol when I suspect we need some penicillin.
Listen to Florence and the Machine on my Ipod, very loud. Use over the ear headphones in case someone is about to fall off the roof. Otherwise, enjoy the music.
We have a sign hanging up. WHINING in big black letters with a red circle and line through it. I point to the sign. The sign makes it official.. there’s no whining.
When they want something and whine I generally ignore them, by now they now to ask nicely and if I’m ignoring them it means I can’t hear whining. This lesson clearly needs to be learned everyday… if not every hour!
eeeeeeehhhhheewwwweeeeee …I haaaaate whiiiiininnnnnng. I DON’T knooow where my kids geeeeeeet it froooooom.
Seriously, My brain shuts off when the kids whine. It is very difficult for me to be a good parent when that happens, let along function as a person. God bless all you parents that are proactive before and during the whining.
Laura: I adopt the music retreat solution from time to time. A helpful palliative for those moments when it’s clear that no amount of devoted parenting is going to make a dent.
Rebecca, alas, my children’s crippling illiteracy makes the sign approach moot for the time being. If only whining were easier to sound out…
Steve: Go stand in the hall until you’re done.
I try the Love and Logic method “I’m sorry, I can’t understand you when you talk like that.”
If she’s throwing a fit to get her way I ask if throwing a fit usually makes me change my mind (no). If the fit continues, then she has to go to her took until she is ready to calm down.
Is Love and Logic something I should have heard of? I mean, is it like a THING?
Oh, never mind – thank you google.
It doesn’t look like there’s a chapter on “Go stand in the hall.” Hmm… must look into it.
I can’t tell you how excited I am that you guys now have a parents’ roundtable!
Also (though I realize I’m late to the game since this was last week’s question), this question feels particularly appropriate since my second (who is 5) was driving me crazy with her whining this morning.
Our usual tactic is to ask her to repeat what she’s saying in a “nice voice,” and then, if that fails (which it does 98% of the time), we put her in the basement, which is basically equivalent to your putting in the hall. It sounds worse, but since our basement is a finished playroom, it’s actually only mildly dungeon-like. Then we set the time for five minutes.
Often she gets absorbed in an activity down there, and when she comes up (sometimes, by choice, after the timer has beeped), she’s in a better place.
That said, I completely agree that it is Tylenol, not penicillin, as it doesn’t seem to have cured the problem. I am sometimes tempted to see whether I could condition her out of it in a Pavlovian sense (electric shocks?) but since I work in early childhod have thus far convinced myself that would actually be detrimental to her development.
I think ultimately, as long as we don’t reinforce it, they eventually grow out of it, and we just have to bear up until they do.
I also find it is helpful to have a cheerful 7-month-old who responds to the whining with chortles of delight.
Cyd: Time outs in the basement?! I’m so glad to know there’s a parent out there who’s even meaner than I am. Yes, I’m afraid the “waiting it out” approach may be the fate to which we are all consigned. The whine might just be an inevitable byproduct of the particular combination of desire, frustration, and powerlessness in which kids of a certain age find themselves.