Parents who allow whining are guaranteed to have much worse problems as their children get older: victimhood, defiance, entitlement, addictions, and more. Do the work. Love and teach your younger children not to whine.
Timestamps:
00:00 Much easier to teach a child while they are young not to whine.
02:34 First, be calm and watch the training.
03:49 Use sign language and pictures for pre-verbal kids.
Transcript:
Infants have no language, so naturally they cry and whine to get what they want. They quickly discover that it works for them, so of course they continue it.
Teach Younger Children Not to Whine
But the moment children become capable of communicating in another way, whining is not to be tolerated. If whining is not stopped, it tends to continue for a lifetime. I wish I were kidding.
Look at how many adults whine, and that’s accompanied by words. Adults complain, rage, criticize, beg, manipulate, and more, all of which involve whining. That pattern began in infancy, and there was nobody there to teach them otherwise.
It’s MUCH easier to teach children while they’re young not to whine than to wait until they’re older. Have you ever tried to teach a teenager or adult not to whine? Then you understand my point.
First, understand that you cannot teach a child not to whine if you’re irritated.
With any form or degree of anger, your child will hear the “I don’t love you message,” and then they WILL be wounded, and usually they’ll respond with (1) more whining or (2) silence, often beginning a process of withdrawal that quickly separates the child from you and everyone else.
Second, when you begin to teach a child not to whine, you must understand that you will meet resistance.
That’s to be expected because up to that point the child has successfully gotten whatever they want by simply crying or whining, and now you’re telling them that their one effective tool will no longer be acceptable.
They’ll be thinking—unconsciously—”What?!! Are you kidding me? Are you stupid? I’ve ALWAYS gotten what I wanted when I whined, and now you’re changing the rules? Why would you change what has always worked? No way am I going along with this!”
How to Teach Younger Children Not to Whine
Now, how can you teach a young child how to stop whining, as young as 8-12 months?
First, be calm. Watch the entire parenting training. Remember that you can do this, and you WILL do this. You will be loving and persistent. You will love and teach, as you do with any child, because that’s the job you accepted when you brought a child into the world.
Children as young as 8-12 months can learn a kind of sign language designed specifically for children. And it applies across languages. There are several books on the subject.
Between Google and Amazon, you can find them. Young children learn to SIGN for what they want, and you teach them that no longer will you give them something until they sign for it. Whining will be ignored by you.
You can also teach them to POINT to things they want, things they don’t know the sign language for.
You can take pictures of everything in the house that they have ever wanted, and they can point to the pictures. The list is not that extensive.
But there is NO whining. Parents who allow whining are guaranteed to have much worse problems as their children get older: victimhood, defiance, entitlement, addictions, and more. Do the work. Love and teach your child.
