Our child’s whining can be the most earsplitting sound imaginable and, unfortunately, our negative reactions to whining can tend to make matters worse. How do we make the whining stop? A parent writes to Janet that her 7-year-old is constantly whining, pouting, and repeatedly asking her mom for new stuff. “Instead of playing with the entire Toys R Us we have in our home, she whines about the things she wants, and seriously, I’m going to lose my mind.” Janet offers a perspective she hopes will help this parent and others whose kids won’t seem to stop whining.
Transcript of “Stop Whining”
Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.
Today I’m going to be talking about a subject that is everyone’s favorite thing for their child to do. Just kidding, it’s not! Whining. This most irritating sound that most kids make at some point. It’s obnoxious, it’s earsplitting. It feels like it’s demanding of us, that we fix something, that we make it stop. It’s very, very challenging. And a parent reached out to me about her daughter, who’s seven now, and she’s been whining a lot. It is driving this parent bonkers, and she’s wondering what she can do.
Here’s what she wrote to me. It was a message on, I think it was Facebook:
Hi, Janet-
I’ve emailed you a few times over the years as well. I come back to you today to see if you have any guidance for my latest parenting issue.
Before I do, some background on me is that I’m a parenting podcast junkie. I’ve listened to all of yours and other people’s. I’ve read all the books out there. Any time you suggest a book, I read it, including yours. I practically am a parenting expert myself. I say this to let you know that I know all the things about respectful parenting, and still this one keeps stumping me.
My seven-year-old daughter is a bit of a whiny kid, and it seems to be intensifying over the last few months specifically. Unfortunately for me, whining is the one thing that really triggers me, so I imagine that is why she constantly whines. She’s kicked it up a notch, with lots of pouting in recent weeks.
The other thing that really bothers me is that she’s always asking for more. Another toy, another this, another that. Last night we had a chat, when we were both calm, about practicing gratitude for what we have and how always wanting more, more, more is not going to make her happy in the long term. Trying not to fast forward with this one, but she is obsessed with stuff. She doesn’t have a tablet that she watches commercials on, our streaming services don’t have commercials, so I’m not even really sure where this is coming from. After our chat, she just kept asking, “So I’m not allowed to want things?”
I’m not sure how to deal with the constant whining, pouting, asking for stuff. Instead of playing with the entire Toys “R” Us we have in our home, she whines about the things she wants. And seriously, I’m going to lose my mind. WHY WON’T SHE STOP WHINING? 🙂
Thank you for your podcast, I love it.
P.S. Yes, I do exactly what I know I’m not supposed to do and tell her to stop whining constantly. I cannot help it, it just pops out of my mouth.
I wrote back to her:
Hi,
Thanks for reaching out and all your support. I’m going to try to reply to you in a podcast if that’s okay. I never use names, of course. Could I ask you, how long has this whining been happening? Has it always been a thing? And is it mostly about toys and stuff, or other things too?
She wrote back:
Hi,
Oh my gosh, I’m so excited. Yes, of course that’s okay.
She has always been a strong-willed and deeply-feeling child. I don’t remember her whining as a toddler, but it has been a bigger issue for the last three years but intensifying these last few months. She mostly whines about wanting stuff, but she’ll whine about anything. Her brother (he’s five), not wanting the dinner I made, not wanting to do homework, I mean anything really. I’ve always used the “put it on your birthday/Christmas wishlist” strategy for toys, and that does work, but she’ll still whine about it nonstop.
However, once during a calm moment, she asked me what whining is, so then I felt really bad. Does she just tell me what she wants in a high-pitched tone all the time, that I interpret as whining? I might be reaching there, laugh out loud. I try to just truly be okay with the whining but to be honest, I’m not okay with it. On the other hand, my son never whines, so I worry my daughter often interprets our frustration with the whining as frustration with her versus her brother, making it worse. Since I know you’ll want to know, no new babies or houses or schools or life changes going on here.
I find myself annoyed by her often, and she senses that. I feel horrible and sad, and I also just want her to stop whining. Make me okay with the whining, Janet!!!!!
Please never stop your podcast. They’re my weekly therapy sessions.
That’s so sweet, and I love her sense of humor. It feels like it should be a prerequisite to being a parent, to have a sense of humor. Because really it’s a lifesaver and a game changer, to be able to laugh at all the wildness of it and how hard it is. This parent is doing that, so that’s one big point in her favor here.
I wonder if this parent ever finds herself whining. I do. I think I’ve talked about that here before. I whine when I’m overwhelmed and I need to do things that I just feel like I don’t have the emotional energy or resources to do. It’s like I’m not sad enough to cry or mad enough to get angry, but I’m just in the middle, in this stuck place. It’s like a discomfort trap of deep annoyance, but I don’t really have the right kind of energy to even ask someone for help for that particular thing that I’m whining about. I just want to give up. And often letting myself go all the way to kind of giving up, Ugh, I can’t do this!, for a time—by the way, I feel like I’m almost whining here right now thinking about it! But going all that way to giving up, letting myself go there, and then going back to trying it again and just getting it done, that’s often the only thing that makes me feel better. The only thing that kind of changes it.
I don’t recall ever whining because I wanted certain stuff. Maybe that’s somewhere in the picture, I don’t know. I often wish I had something over-the-top ridiculous for me, I wish I had this while I’m whining sometimes, and that is a dresser. And I don’t mean a piece of furniture, but someone to dress me, so that I don’t have to face figuring out what to put on on a given day. Especially if I have to do a few different things that day and figure out something that I can wear that would work for all of them. I know, this is absolutely ridiculous and I’m embarrassed, but I just feel like this parent might find that she can relate to the feeling of whining, maybe.
I have whiny—they’re not really meltdowns, because I’m not crying—but I have whiny sessions in my closet. I sometimes have them when I’m trying to record the podcast and there’s a bunch of interruptions and there’s helicopters or things, and I have to keep stopping. I only do this when I’m doing them on my own. I don’t whine with guests, I hope not! But when I’m doing it on my own and then I have to keep finding my place, I keep losing my thought, I will get very whiny. In fact, I may even be whining in this episode at some point, but you won’t hear it because my husband edits it out. But anyway, I whine.
I share all this mortifying stuff about myself to hopefully try to normalize whining. I know it doesn’t make it any more pleasant, there’s just no way to do that. And if this parent never whines or all the parents out there never whine, then more power to her and you. It’s really not a fun feeling, I tell you.
However, I don’t like the sound either. I don’t like it when I’m doing it. I do not like it when children do it. My children have done it. And I’ve never heard of anyone liking this sound or even being remotely okay with it. And apparently children all over the world whine, it’s in every language that they whine. So what I also hope is that this parent won’t blame herself for having this reaction to whining.
We don’t need to feel alone in the misery of it as parents, but what we need to do for it to stop is to find a way to make peace with it. That doesn’t mean that we like it, but we find a place in ourselves to make peace with it. Not because then we’re a better parent or that our child is wilting every time we’re telling them to stop or they’re feeling too judged. Yes, that can happen, but I feel that almost all of the parents that reach out to me, because I can tell from their stories, they are great parents. They’re very involved. They’re very, very loving. They care enough to reach out and share all these things about themselves and try to get answers.
All of that is to say that our responses to whining or to any behavior, the whole thing isn’t, Now I feel good about what kind of parent I am, or Now I’m not a good parent because I did this, I keep doing this. No, no, no. It’s not about that. It’s about what works to help make the behavior stop and at the same time bring us closer to our child. Those two always go hand in hand, and that’s what I believe this parent wants. I mean, that’s what we all want, right? To feel closer to our child. And that’s what our children want, too. They feel better when they feel that closeness instead of that judgment, that pushing back on them, even on their behaviors. It’s really hard for them to isolate, Oh, this is just about my behavior and it’s not me.
That doesn’t mean our children are fragile and they’re going to fall apart if we do this. It just means they’re not going to give up on us. They’re going to keep repeating the behavior, keep seeking that different response that they need. And again, this doesn’t mean the parent needs to make herself feel okay about whining. But she does need to find her way to make peace with it, accepting that her child seems to be kind of stuck in this behavior now.
As this parent knows already, she knows all the answers here, it’s very likely because every time she does this, it sets her parent off. Not that she wants to set her parent off because she’s not a nice person and she doesn’t like her mother. But she’s getting this sense that she’s reaching her. She’s sharing whatever discomforts are causing her to whine very effectively. Not effective in that she’s getting the response she wants, which is a comforting response, but she’s getting a strong recognition of her feelings. And that’s why children can get stuck in what sometimes people call seeking negative attention. But it’s not that they want negative attention, it’s just that they want attention. And if the attention they’re getting is negative, they’ll take it.
What they really want is for it to be a non-judgmental, more accepting, closer feeling of attention, where they feel actually seen in what’s going on with them. And that’s what I meant by a comforting response. When I say a comforting response, I’m not talking about a big hug when our child’s whining and Oh, it’s okay, it’s going to be alright, coddling them or feeling sorry for them. What comforts them is simply that acceptance, just feeling like it’s okay to feel what I’m feeling.
So, how can we help her to share what she’s feeling in a different way? One really helpful way is to probe a little. And at age seven, that’s going to be much more possible than it would be with a toddler. Have a genuinely curious attitude. What do you think it is that makes you feel like you need all that stuff so much? Or that what your brother does is just so overwhelming, but then other times it isn’t so overwhelming, and maybe it’s the same kind of stuff? What does it feel like inside when you have that whining tone? It can’t feel good. What do you think the answer to feeling better might be? Because you know it’s not really about the stuff, I know you know that. Could there ever be enough? Probably not, right? It’s about how you feel. Those are the kinds of things I would bring up with her when she has a chat.
She had a chat about how her daughter should feel more gratitude and how the stuff is not going to give us that. That wasn’t really a chat where her child was equally able to share with her. I mean, that’s what a chat is. It sounds like it was more like a lecture. She said, “Last night we had a chat, when we were both calm, about practicing gratitude for what we have and how always wanting more, more, more is not going to make her happy in the long term.” That sounds like trying to convince someone to feel differently, that they shouldn’t act the way they’re acting or feel the way they’re feeling. And I’m not saying that’s not valid for this parent to think that way, but I can see why that chat didn’t help, because her daughter never had a chance to be a part of that, to share her side. And subtly telling her, You’re disappointing me and I want you to behave and feel differently, and here’s all the reasons why.
So have this other kind of talk where you’re curious about what that feels like, what is making her want all that and making her feel like that’s going to make something better. And she just wants it, right? It’s not about that she already has all this stuff, it’s about that feeling of wanting it. And her daughter’s not going to be able to give her, even at age seven, a bunch of congruent answers. But what this does is it opens something up for her and for us, it opens something up for both of us: a dialogue. A dialogue where her feelings are accepted and instead of her behavior being judged and pushed away, we want to understand.
At the same time, that helps us veer into more empathy. Very often, just this gesture of wanting to know, wanting to find out, wanting to connect with our child that way, that’s very often all that’s needed. Opening it up so that we’re together on this, we’re a team. We’re not following our impulse to turn on her when she’s doing this. And none of us wants to do that, including this parent, so I’m not suggesting that. But that’s what can happen when we’re just seeing the behavior in our face and we’re letting ourselves say the thing we all feel, which is, Just stop! Stop doing what you’re doing. Stop feeling what you’re feeling. Stop being who you’re being right now.
The other thing to know here is that with kids, everything is temporary and in the moment. Phases pass quickly. Unless we get ourselves stuck in them by kind of pushing back with the Stop and Don’t do this and Don’t do that, and then they have to keep seeking another response from us. We can get stuck like that. But the reason that we do that as parents is because we see the behavior as, Ugh, she’s this person that’s ungrateful and greedy and spoiled and needy and looking for happiness in stuff. Her values are material. All these things that we don’t want our children to be. But this is just a little snapshot of our child, whatever’s going on with them. And what they’re saying is just a feeling in the moment.
But as parents and as people that are trying to understand someone else—and our children are hard to understand sometimes, because we come into parenting with a lot of our own preconceived ideas and our own baggage of things that we don’t like about ourselves. We tend to, out of fear also and worry about the future—which, children are not showing signs of the future when they’re saying things like, I want more stuff. This isn’t something that’s a personality label coming through here. This isn’t a bad sign. It’s a feeling in the moment. She’s going through something, she’s feeling maybe a little insecure. But it’s not something we need to have a big worry about or something we have to blame her for, that she’s this terrible kind of person. It’s a momentary thing.
And I know it’s so easy to forget that as adults, because we aren’t changing as quickly as children do. They’re changing all the time. They’re trying on all the different things. They’re allowing themselves to explore all the different feelings and behaviors. And a lot of them are not pleasant for us to witness, but our kids need that freedom to be always evolving and not be labeled.
Even this very minor thing that this parent says about her daughter. When she mentions her she says, “my seven-year-old daughter is a bit of a whiny kid.” So when we think in terms of they’re this kind of kid, that’s us not submitting to the idea that they’re just like this in this moment, right now. They are whining, rather than they are whiny. Maybe it is a tendency that’s happening lately, but it’s not who they are as a person. Obviously this parent didn’t mean it that way, but even just thinking that way ourselves can kind of affix things that our children need to flow through and go on to the next.
When we see something as a stuck thing, then that will tend to make us get stuck worrying about the behavior, and then in turn our child gets stuck in the behavior. And then it’s like this self-fulfilling thing that keeps happening: I keep seeing it that way. I’m bummed about that, and she’s feeling that I’m bummed, and then I’m reacting that way. It just goes back and forth like that. But in itself, it’s just a passing feeling that she’s having.
The fact that it’s kicked up recently, that it seems to have intensified lately, I can’t really explain that, but we don’t need to know why. All we need to know is that she’s not getting the response that she needs from us. So we can keep working on that, if for no other reason than that we want her to stop feeling stuck there.
And there’s this feeling, that I think we can all relate to, where we’re feeling a little bit of discomfort or emptiness inside, and we just have this fantasy that we’re going to try to fill it with stuff. It doesn’t make us bad people. It’s a human response to try to fill little spaces in us that feel empty with things, which actually don’t help at all. Maybe this parent never feels like that, but I imagine she feels other human things, or I hope she does, that are just as unpleasant and that she could feel judged for, maybe judges herself for. I mean, we all have those sides to us, don’t we? I have tons of them. Let’s let ourselves be human and let our kids be human.
So here’s the big “from the mouths of babes” thing in the note this parent wrote to me. Her daughter hits the nail on the head with her response. After they had this discussion, she said all her daughter did was keep saying, “So I’m not allowed to want things?” That’s the whole thing right there! All she needs is to be allowed to want things. She clearly knows, even by saying that, that it’s not about that she needs to get things. She just needs to be able to want things, while her parent’s not going to be getting her all the things. It’s just about wanting. That’s a feeling, it’s not a demand.
This is another reason it’s easy for us to get stuck in these kinds of behaviors, because we want to please our children so much. We feel that’s part of our job, even though it’s really not. Our job is to be fair with them and take care of them and be okay with saying no when we need to say no. But it’s hard. When our child wants something, there’s implied pressure there for us to have to get it for her. Or if our child is upset about something, we feel we have to make it better. But that’s no and no, that’s not our job. Our job is to let the feelings be, which we can only do if we don’t do something to try to appease them. And we’re the ones who see ourselves as fixers. Our kids, they just want what all humans in relationships want: they just want to share what’s going on with them and be accepted for it.
So what if she wants the moon and the stars and every toy she’s ever seen anywhere or thought of? Or wants her brother to disappear and not be there sometimes and he’s so annoying. Or wants different food, doesn’t want to do her homework—well, that’s ultimately between her and her teacher, though. Or she just wants to fill herself up with all kinds of things.
Right there, with that question she asked, “So I’m not allowed to want things?”, she’s helping her mom tap into what’s going on with her on a feeling level. She’s showing there that she can share her feeling in a different way than whining, or maybe she was whining when she said that, but that’s it right there. That’s the feeling. And it’s just a passing feeling that we have. We just want, we want it. I want someone to help me get dressed in the morning and tell me what to wear. I sometimes want to be like this person or that person, or wish I had more of this or that. It’s a want thing. And that this child is tuned into herself enough to say something like that, it’s very telling, right? These kids, they can be such fantastic teachers. I don’t think we give them enough credit for that.
She’s trying to show her parent that, This is all I’m feeling, just that I want to want things. It’s a feeling that passes, but it’s harder for it to pass when we can’t share it with the people that we love and trust and need the most, the people whose acceptance we need when we’re not at our best. These people who are everything to us. And this parent can totally be that for her daughter. I know she can. She just needs some encouragement to extricate herself from this bind that she’s found herself in.
Thanks so much for listening, and I hope something I said here today might be helpful to you. We can do this.
♥
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