Whining--It's Such A Productive Sound

Our much loved family, visiting, have some major whiners among them. The kids--one in particular, has their father perfectly trained. Loud whining always gets what this young adult wants. 

Now, whining is a tremendously productive sound. It must be instinct, both to make it, and to give in when you hear it. Nobody wants to hear a whine, ever. Certainly not over and over. Especially not when you're sleep deprived. In fact, most children know that whine-training works best when the adults are tired, everybody is hungry. That's when that needle-sharp voice shoots up in the middle of a sentence and parents give in. Trained! 

Some parents--lucky ones, smart ones--do get the hang of un-training themselves. In our house, we've gotten pretty good at saying, "Whining gets you nothing. Try something else." 

(Of course, the next request still uses whining's potent melody, so we also have to say, "Try again, and calm your voice down this time." Then, and only then, does the kid get rewarded. 

The much-loved father of this family seemed completely oblivious. And we do not feel we are in a situation where we could either step in or offer unasked for parenting advice. (Offering unasked for parenting advice is a little like offering to walk a mine-field blind-folded.) 

So we can only hope that the world will teach this lesson to this otherwise terrific child before said kid loses more friends than already reported. Sigh.