Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: On Whining

I went to Target the other day to purchase a gift for a birthday party that my granddaughter was going to attend. A mother and her young son were on a similar mission in the toy section. Unhappy with the focus of their outing, the boy began to whine, asking his mother to purchase him a toy. I made several attempts to escape the conflict, but whenever I moved to another aisle, the boy and his exasperated mother soon reappeared. This went on for what seemed to be a long time until an unseen person from another aisle shouted out, “Enough already!”

For a moment, the whole department fell silent. Then quickly the mortified mother asked the boy, “Which toy do you want?” Not wanting to press his luck, the boy grabbed something off the shelf and the two fled the area. It was “mission accomplished” for the boy, who was persistent enough to keep up his whining until he won the battle.

As I watched the two hurry away, I was overwhelmed with sympathy for the beleaguered mother. Most likely without realizing it, she had doomed herself. Why? Because she had reinforced the notion that in order to get what he wanted, the boy simply had to do was whine for it. This would be a message that would take a lot of hard work for the mother and son to undo.

Whining is a pay-me-now-or-pay-me-later situation. If one doesn’t deal with it now, it is certain that one will be forced to deal with it later. Once a child learns that whining will produce the desired result, that child is hooked. And the only thing that will unhook the child is a major intervention.

The good news is that, when it comes to raising children, it’s never too late to undo a wrong. Even after the mother and boy left the store, it wasn’t too late for her to make things right. All she had to do was to wrap up the toy and insist that it be given as the gift that they went to the store to purchase.

Of course more whining—and maybe even a tantrum—would be inevitable. But maybe this time, the mother would stand her ground and win the battle.

At least I can always hope, can’t I?