Pre-empt Whining
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| Photo Credit: Andrew Eick |
The bottom line about whining? As the article states, my experiences have shown me that to pre-empt and calm down whining, it's important to use empathy but not to reward whining in order to get it to stop. Punishment and shame do nothing but cause hurt and lead to more whining.
Empathy allows us to identify with the fact that our children are not out to get us or make us crazy. On the contrary - they're just trying to learn how to live. And 90% of the time for small children, that's tough!
The one thing that I did try that didn't work and can be very detrimental is to ignore whining in order to get it to stop. This makes children feel even more powerless, and will just lead to more and more whining (and even screaming!)
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How do you pre-empt the dreaded "whiney voice"?
The only success I've had is to talk to them as though they were a friend of mine who happened to be using a totally inappropriate tone of voice, like, dude, seriously? You're going to tell me something in THAT way? Try again.
ReplyDeleteNot that this approach works every time, and not that I can even remember to be this cool every time, but for the most part, when I remember, it's a good way to get them to be mindful of what's really going on, how they're feeling, what's appropriate, and to choose to make certain adjustments so that they aren't taking it out on me, who is willing to listen and help.