How to Get Your Child to Stop Whining

I’ll just say this: there are several sounds on Earth that are more annoying than the whine of a small child. It doesn’t matter which words are used; when they hit that high tone – the goosebump tone – that’s bad.

Psychologist and parenting coach Dr. Jessica Michaelson writes for the Huffington Post that young children, especially those between the ages of 2 and 4, mostly complain for two reasons: either they really can’t keep the relationship any longer, they melt and need your help, or … this is a power play.

For better or worse, nagging is not manipulation or a call for tender loving care. It would be easier for us if it was just one of them – then we wouldn’t have to struggle so much to find the best answer.

Instead, whining is sometimes a power play and sometimes a legitimate request for emotional support. It requires us to listen to every whining and think about context.

It’s hard to listen to. In order for our ears to hear the subtleties, we must be calm, emotionally stable, and have time. We don’t always have such things.

Calmness. Emotional resilience. Time. “We don’t always have these things.” She wrote this proposal back in 2014 – ahhh, times are simpler – so chances are higher that you have much less time and peace of mind right now. However, if you can identify contextual clues to determine if the latest nagging is of an overloaded variety or a variety of power outages, it can help guide your reactions (other than clicking “Stop whining!”).

Sympathize

If there is a clear catalyst for whining — for example, they are visibly hungry, tired, or overly aroused — help them verbalize how they are feeling. Michaelson writes :

When your child seems to be expressing these emotions of over-taxation, the best approach may be to subtitle the whine, “It’s so hard to wait. Are you tired. It’s too hard to talk like a big girl now. ” Just like you might want your partner to bring you ice cream without saying, “Ask in a big girl’s voice,” your child will love it if sometimes you just help without having him or her put it together.

Empathy for them when they really struggle doesn’t make them whine anymore; it is an admission that sometimes it’s just hard to pull yourself together. We’ve all been there.

Give them a chance to try again

If we are dealing with the “hey, nagging worked last time, let’s see if it gets me what I want this time,” gambit, you can move away from empathy in favor of a try again strategy. That is, you ask them to repeat their request in a more polite, without tearfulness, manner. You can even tell them how to rephrase their question so that “I waaaannnnnt juuuuuuuuuice” can be transformed into a more socially acceptable and less annoying one: “Mommy, can I have some juice?”

The key point here, absolute push-button, is that you disagree with their whiny demands until they change their tone and language as needed. If you give in, the next time they whine harder, louder, and longer.

A popular variation on this idea is to say that you cannot physically understand them when they whine: “I hear that you need something, but I don’t understand your words when you say them that way. Can you take a deep breath and try again so I can understand? “

Praise their “polite voice”

This one is more active and requires extra dedication, but if you find yourself in the midst of a particularly brutal whining phase, be careful when they do ask for something politely, and be sure to point it out with “Sure, you can have some juice; I love how cute you asked! “

Children love positive reinforcement. If they think they’ll get that juice and a compliment, that’s additional motivation to muffle the nagging.

More tactics to try

Finally, since all children are individual and sometimes empathic, recommending to them to “try again” and complimenting their normal voice will still not be enough, I asked members of our Offspring Facebook group about their most effective rebuttal methods. Here’s what they suggested:

• “I would announce that he has exhausted the daily rate of whimpering, and he is left with one. Any subsequent will cost him a quarter. “(Christine)
• Do you know what worked in the end? I whined back. They didn’t like it. ” (Kristina)
• “Record them on video and then show them how they sound.” (Shari)
• “I speak with them in a different language. Sometimes it’s gibberish, sometimes it’s a mis-memorized passage from a language learned in school, whatever. When they stop getting confused and ask why I’m talking funny, I ask why they are talking funny. Or I’ll say that I thought they spoke French, so I did too, because I couldn’t understand their words when they spoke that way. It works at least half the time. ” (Rhiannon)
• “I break the whining cycle by making my daughter laugh. It can be a funny voice, an absurd question, or a strange dance. Making her giggle and engaging in a funny thing can take her mind off the whining and get back on track! “(Bailey)
• “I tell my kids that nagging breaks the TV.” (Katie)

The last word belongs to the band member Chris: “Wait two years.”