So my sister Lindy, who lives in Texas, is a great mom of two and has tons of baby experience; she does respiratory care in a NICU.  Being that she’s a veteran she has a ton of advice.  Because we’re first timers and often try things by the book we hear a lot of “I told you so” before actually following her advice.

Noah whines.  He does.  It’s so annoying, but asking him to stop only makes it worse.  Not giving in results in tears.  Every time.  Lindy has told me how to stop whining a hundred times.  When they start, bring them into their room and tell them not to come out until their done.  It worked like a charm for the kid she did this with and the one who she didn’t is still a whiner (at 12).  I tried it once when Noah was one-ish and you would have thought I slammed his foot in the door on the way out.  Oh was he mad!  And I think he stayed in there for maybe 1.3 seconds before running out and throwing himself on the tile floor.  She told me to keep trying but I thought – this will never work.  Well Saturday it did (and this was the only other time we tried this).  Twice Noah broke out in a completely unreasonable whining marathon, the second was filled with tears and screams.  Both times we told him he needed to go to his room until he could be nice.  Both times he stayed in there and threw his fit (the first time was a minute or two, the second probably five) and when he stopped he came out.  Granted, his shirt was wet with tears and his nose a little snotty but he was completely composed.  Very carefully I asked “are you ready to be nice?” and both times he said “YES!” and went on like nothing had ever happened.  I guess sometimes they just need to get it all out, but now it doesn’t have to be in front of me.  I can’t stand whining and while that may not win me the Mother Of The Year Award I’m no longer frustrated trying to figure out how to stop the whining and he can do it for as long as he wants. 

Thanks, Lindy!  As usual, you were right!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008 at 7:49 am and is filed under Noah. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.