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Saturday, May 06, 2006

Dealing with whining ones


NOTE: If you have an very young child and are having trouble calming your baby, see the video at the end of this post -- it's excellent advice.


Ok. You’ve got a hangover that goes on and on like a bad dream, the house is a mess and you’re depressed. “Why do I put myself in these situations,” you’re asking yourself. “How is it that my life keeps hitting the same lows?” To make matters worse, your beautiful child seems to be whining about every little thing that happens. Every thing she can’t have her way on becomes the height of histrionics, her face long as a horse’s, tears erupting with every “no”, “time to clean up” and “time to get dressed”. She can’t find a pair of tights and becomes hysterical because it’s a cold day out and she’ll have to wear a pair of pants if there are no tights.

Sometimes being a parent just feels too much, like a job that we’d gladly walk away from in favor of hitting the bar with a couple buddies or checking out a show or spending the night in a hotel room with someone we hardly know. Ok, maybe the last one is a fantasy, but it’s one we all have in common.

Whiny kids are a fact of parenthood. In fact, the X and I had a conversation about this recently – I was dismayed to hear her pronounce that we in fact have a whiny child.

“She’s the least whiny kid I know,” I argued. “She’s the opposite of whiny.”

“Well, not when she’s with me or Iris (the nanny). She can be really whiny.”

“About what?”

“Whatever. What she can’t have. What she has to have. You know.”

“I just don’t understand. She’s not like that with me.”

The truth is, however, that Maia is like that with me, but I’ve got a selective memory. This morning she was like that, and I’ve still got a headache.

It’s hard when you’re in the middle of that sort of behaviour and have to deal with it on the fly. When a happy kids falls and scrapes his knee, it’s relatively easy to deal with: You wipe the tears, put a bandage on the cut and apply a kiss on top. A little hug and a pat on the cute butt and they’re off and having fun again. But children in a state of whinyhood are generally prone to meltdowns repeated throughout the day. Tough to deal with because we take it on personally that our children cry – it they’re crying all the time we must be doing something wrong. But are we? Not necessarily.

Children are whiny for one of several reasons:

1. They’re hungry
2. They’re tired
3. They need something (a break, affection, disciplining, etc.)
4. They need some structure
5. They’re growing and feeling discomfort

Each of these can be dealt with in some way, to minimize the fallout that results from it. 1 and 2 are pretty easy to discern, but other needs may be harder. Here’s a useful tip to get into the habit of with a whiny child (and obvious, too).

Ask your child what they need.

Sounds obvious, but it can take a while to learn. And kids are usually able to tell you what they want. The trouble is, they may not know exactly what they want, so the answer might come out incorrectly: “I want that candy. Whah. Whah. Whah.” But if we pry a little further, the child can tell us more. “I know you’d like that candy, but we’ll be eating dinner soon, so let’s have dinner and then some dessert afterward. You’ve been crying a lot today though and I want to find out how we can make you happy now without candy. Do you think you need some time alone? Or a hug?”

With my daughter, when I’m patient, I can usually ascertain the problem with this line of questioning. It’s important to do because the secret to their mood lies in the subtleties. Getting to know the subtle shifts in her behaviour can tell me a lot about when something is coming up, or even when it already has. Knowing that allows me to address the issues and have few meltdowns.

Number 4 is interesting. Structure. I’m not the biggest proponent of the golden rule of parenting that says all children need structure all the time. Up at 7am. Breakfast by 730. In bed at night precisely at 8pm, etc. All the better for you if you follow this pattern, because then your children know what’s going on and can predict their day accurately. And later in life they may be a little anal about some things, but at least they’ll be in control. But if you’re not using this model, you might want to try it out with a whiny kid, letting them know what’s coming up in their day and keeping each day of the week a little more structured, including bedtimes, mealtimes, bathtimes, etc. But this will take some commitment on your part.

The fifth cause of whininess is pain, which is brought on by growing and is very common. And if you imagine your joints bulging and slowly erupting, teeth growing, intestines lengthening… it hurts. I remember those nebulous, mysterious pains, and the pain and concern they caused me as a kid. So, this is a conversation we need to have with our kids from time to time, to remind them they are growing and that it’s normal to feel uncomfortable. When your kid is in pain, but them some slack. A little extra love will go a long way.

Check out this video from Alpha Mom about calming fussy babies. (Yes, I know, what about Alpha Dad!?!#$!@)

24 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I really appreciated your insights into whiny kids. For the most part my eldest daughter was not whiny. She a teenager now and that's got its own problems. The issue is my son who is 8 years old and I love him very much but he tends to whine and complain about everything. This has become an issue at school too. Sometimes it...no wait...much of the time, it does my head in because I can't stand whiners. I always think of kids like that as being spoiled brats but we're pretty strict and fair (well you know, we're learning parenting skills at the time) but if I discipline him by grounding him, he just protests even louder. I'm going to give some thought to your input here and see what we can do to minimize it. Thanks so much!

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