Do you want to know how to stop kids from whining? Well, many other people do too and that's what
this video is all about. I'm Nicholeen Peck, and I teach parenting and self-government, communications,
relationships, all over the world. Let's talk about whining and what you can do about it.
In this video, we're going to understand whining in your child just a little bit better and then I'm
going to share with you some key skills that you can use to help your child stop whining. Whining
can be really frustrating. I know, it feels like we should be able to just turn it off since it seems
like they just turned it on. But did you know that we can't actually stop another person from whining.
No, it's true, every person gets to choose their behavior they have complete say over it.
But we can create an environment where a person chooses to stop their own whining and that's
really what we're going for. Because as I teach here at the teaching self-government channel
everything relates to self-government. So what is self-government? Self-government is being able to
determine the cause and effect of any given situation and possessing a knowledge of your
own behaviors. So that you can control them and children can learn self-mastery. They learn it from
our teaching them how to do key skills and how to examine and analyze themselves and learn cause and
effect for their actions. So, let's talk about how to do that. Before we hit those key skills though
I do want to take a moment and just discuss whining. Why are they whining? That's important for us to know.
Well, they're trying to get your attention. Whining is attention-seeking. Sure, maybe they got
hurt before they wind. Maybe they didn't get their way before they whine. But really that whining is
just attention-seeking. So, we've got to keep that in perspective, they are wanting our attention but
they're going about it in the wrong way. So, what is a good way for them to go about seeking our attention?
There are better ways. We can teach them those ways by teaching them skills that will work
for them to convey their feelings and thoughts to us and by having the type of relationship where we
have good open communication about all the things they're experiencing in their lives. Now, people of
all ages whine, I know that usually we associate whining with younger children. But I have met many
children who whine when they are 17 and 18 years old. In fact, back in 2009, I was in an episode of
the world's strictest parents. That's right, I was one of the world's strictest parents. Anyway, in
this episode, there were two British teens both age 17 that came to stay in our home for eight days
and what people saw at the very beginning of the program was a lot of teenage whining especially
from Hannah. So how do we help someone choose not to whine? Well, they need skills. What skills do they need?
Some of my favorite skills are what I call, "The Four Basic Skills". There are four basic skills
that I teach in the teaching self-government parenting program that help children start to
learn self-government for themselves. Now you can find out a lot about these skills and much more
by taking the teaching self-government parenting course, reading some of my books, or attending some
of the trainings that I give all over the world and you can find out information about that
at teachingselfgovernment.com. But what are these four basic skills? They are following instructions,
accepting no answers and criticism, accepting consequences, and disagreeing appropriately.
Each one of these four basic skills has a skill set attached to it and when a child learns all
the steps to each one of these four basic skills, that actually gives them the tools that they need
not to whine. In fact, there is one step that is in every one of the four basic skills that is
directly related to whining. This is step number two of all of the four basic skills which is
have a calm face, voice, and body. When a person is whining their voice isn't very calm and
then when their voice isn't calm, then their face isn't calm, and then their whole body isn't calm.
Those things all go together. Once the whining voice starts everything becomes not calm.
So, teach your children young and old what does it look like when my face is calm? What does
it look like when my face is not calm? What does it sound like when my voice is calm and what does it
sound like when my voice is not calm? They need to know the difference. Because if they can pinpoint
the difference then they can notice it within themselves and make a change. In fact, it's good
to do some role play practice. I know role-playing behaviors seem a little artificial. But I can
promise you that that type of proactive parenting approach really does prepare the children to
analyze themselves, the situations around them, and choose not to engage in those behaviors. I remember
a time when my daughter Paige came to me and said, "Mom, I'm trying to play with my friend Susan
but Susan is just attention-seeking mom. She's just whining because she doesn't get things her way.
So, I don't know if she wants to play anymore", and I had to hold back the chuckle. I thought,
here's my little daughter who's five years old who's talking about her friend Susan
who happens to be whining and attention-seeking. How many five-year-olds can diagnose their friends
like this. Well, not very many but because our family took the time to talk about what is a
calm face, voice, and body. What is attention-seeking, and what is not attention-seeking and even more
specifically, we talked about what's positive attention-seeking and negative attention-seeking,
and whining is definitely negative attention seeking. My five-year-old daughter was able
to diagnose exactly what was happening with her friend and she didn't engage in a whining match
or a power struggle with her friend. Instead she just looked at it and said, "Oh, I know what you were
doing maybe you're not okay and you might need to go home." Anyway, I thought it was very interesting.
Of course, I helped the girls work it out and we got to teach her little friend about whining and
a calm face, voice, and body, and attention-seeking as well and I've got to say, that even though the
child still kept whining for her parent she did not whine when she came to visit my house.
Because she knew that we knew different. Now that is a key thing. Do you give in to whining? Because if whining
works whining is not going to stop. If someone whines to you about something and you actually
talk to them about it they are going to continue to whine for other things as well. That's super
important to recognize. Sometimes we think if we just answer their little question they'll stop the
whining but no, we need to get them to calm then discuss the question. So that they know the whining
is not appropriate. So, you've got to correct it. Now there are five different skills that
I teach parents and you can learn these skills at the teachingselfgovernment.com website. You can
attend one of my three-day training, or take the course, or read some of my books, and you can learn
these five parenting skills that help solve the problems that the children are having.
But one of those skills is what we call an effective correction and I would do an effective correction
for a child that's whining immediately, and that effective correction tells them, "This is what
you're doing", and I would say "Right now you don't have a calm face, voice, and body, this is whining.
What you should do is you should take a deep breath and get calm so that you can have a calm
face, voice, and body, and then we can talk about it", and I would even tell them, "Since you chose not to
have a calm face, voice, and body, then you have earned to have an extra chore." So, then
they get the opportunity to do an extra chore. We practice things the right way because there's a
practicing that we do afterward. A type of technique so that they really instill it in
them, that was the right way. What I did before was not effective. You've got to correct them
every time point them toward calmness and then take the opportunity to talk to them about what
they should have done and practice things that right way. Your children need that correction
otherwise, they think this works to get your attention. Don't talk to them about whatever it is.
In fact, if you feel like you must say something about what they're whining about then say,
"I can tell you want to tell me something right now because you're speaking about cookies or whatever
it is and I want to talk to you about that. But we can't talk about it yet until we choose to be calm.
So, I'm going to do a correction. We'll choose to be calm and then we'll talk about the cookies."
So they know you heard them, you heard cookies but you're not actually talking back to them. Instead,
you're pointing in the direction that they should go and that's what they need, they need leadership
during that time. So we can't give in. Now, there's an important part of this whole interaction.
In fact, it holds all of it together and that is the the self-government of the parent. In fact, all of the
self-government teaching that I teach really comes back to helping the parent self-govern and prepare
to calmly and consistently correct their children. How is your calmness? Could you improve maybe? If so,
I have something special for you, for watching this video today you can have the free calm parenting
toolkit. It's a mini-course that will start you on your road to self-government. Click the link
in the description below this video and get the free calm parenting toolkit today so that you can
start being more self-governed which prepares the space for your children to be self-governed too.
Click on the link below, I'll see you on that toolkit and I promise you won't regret it.