whining toddler

Not my little boy–whine? Never. (oh, yeah, she does too but a 2 year old has nothing on a 4 year old.) Lies. Total lies. He’s almost 4 and has discovered whining a-new. It’s like the cloud burst open, the sun shone down, it’s baseball season, and whining is freshly on his palate. It’s killing me. The tone. The looks. The crocodile tears. The insistence of it. The solemn assurance that this one instance is the worst in his life. ABSOLUTE WORST THING THAT COULD EVER HAPPEN to him. She touched his book? I can’t take it. Besides the fact that it’s a terrible unappealing habit for a little boy, I’m wearing our newborn BabyLoves in the carrier and chasing down the big kids. It’s (duh) exhausting. Thusly, I’m sharing with you my tried & true {in the last month, so take & leave with those handfuls of salt} methods of cutting down on the whining. 1) Ignore. When you can. Simply pretend you cannot understand the language of a whiner. I may actually hum to myself, bustling around the room, saying something like “gosh, I wish he wasn’t whining. I don’t understand him when he whines.” I might even lean over to his sister and say “can you understand him? I just can’t.” That really drive him insane. Maybe even insane enough to cut the tone down. 2) Immediate consequence without talk talk talking. Remember what my great & wise friend Jamie {Behave Your Best} said about not talking your…