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 Parenting 101 - What To Expect Tired of Arguing With Your Kids? By Dolores Curran  The Whys and the WhinesBecause whining was taboo in our home, I was astounded to hear one of my young ones go into a very accomplished whine at the home of one of his little friends, a professional whiner. I realized then that whining is situational, not inborn. Kids use it where it works and abandon it where it doesn’t. Whining is a manipulative technique which is effective with many parents. It becomes habitual in families where it is allowed and where it proves effective. Children who know they can hook their parents by whining will escalate their whining skills, moving ever higher on the whine scale. Early childhood teachers tell me they can sort the whiners from the non-whiners on the first day of preschool. Since most teachers do not respond to whines, these children are confused because whining has always worked for them at home. One teacher told of a four-year-old girl who was so accustomed to whining that it became her normal tone of voice. “She whined even when she was satisfied,” the teacher said. “We had to teach her how to talk normally. But it confused her because when she went home, she reverted to a whine.” Parents do not have to succumb to the whines of children. We can treat whines as we might treat the use of four-letter words: they are not acceptable in this family. “Grownups don’t whine,” we can say (not entirely true, but they won’t figure that out for awhile), “and we want to help you grow up.” One way of handling the whining child is to ignore him or her completely when the whine begins, coming to attention when it ceases. Since whining is most often invoked to get parents’ attention, services, or treats, kids figure out quickly that it’s counterproductive to their goal if they continue whining. One dad who, like me, couldn’t endure whining, set up a Whine Corner in the home. When children whined, they were “permitted” (sentenced) to sit in the corner and practice a different tone of voice for a certain number of minutes, then emerge and say the same words in a non-whine tone. “It really worked,” the dad said. “Our Whine Corner collects dust now.” Sometimes children learn that behaviors that are unacceptable or ignored at home—temper tantrums, whines, endless “whys”—are effective outside the home. Parents who can ignore a tantrum in the kitchen will cave into it at the supermarket. Whining, absent at home, may suddenly emerge at Grandma’s. Children who practice this dual behavior have learned that parents are afraid of public scenes and will not confront manipulation and misbehavior outside their front door. Thus, the public sees these children at their worst because kids take advantage of their parents’ discomfort in sticking to rules and boundaries when others are around. How does a parent deal with this out-of-home misbehavior? By sticking to the consequences when they return home. Few of us will ignore a temper tantrum in the supermarket and most of us will cave in to children who see an opportunity to manipulate us and get what they want by embarrassing us in public. But if that child faces the same or stiffer consequences when she returns home, she will reconsider her behavior the next time she has an opportunity to go public. One mother who struggled with this private/public dichotomy with her children said, “My children were not allowed to argue endlessly, to whine, or to say nasty things to each other at home so I was dismayed at how they behaved when we were at the homes of others. It was almost as if they were challenging us.” When she realized they were testing her rules and boundaries in public, she quickly terminated their public misbehavior by doubling the consequences once they returned home. If, for example, the consequence of whining at home was automatic denial of the request, the consequence for whining elsewhere was automatic denial of the next two requests. If kids continued to argue beyond acceptable boundaries in public, a double privilege was taken away as soon as they reached home. So successful was her technique that she laughingly reported her children’s reaction later on at witnessing another child’s misbehavior at a restaurant. “Boy, is he going to get it when he gets home,” they said. Older children often utilize a more refined technique, that of making a snide or embarrassing comment about their parents in front of friends or relatives. “You should hear Mom when she gets mad. The other day, she . . . .” Or, “Yeah, Dad, tell ‘em about how brave you were when . . . .” This is simply a more refined form of supermarket manipulation. An effective parent response is to ignore it at the time and then let the child know that the next time he or she indulges in embarrassing the parent, the parent will respond by embarrassing the child in front of his friends. If parents follow through on their promise, it will happen only twice. Stick to the rule, apply the stated consequence and detach, detach, detach. From Tired of Arguing With Your Kids? by Dolores Curran. Copyright (c) 1999 by SORIN BOOKS, an imprint of Ave Maria Press, Notre Dame, IN, 1-800-282-1865. Used by permission.
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