No Longer Quivering
For well over a year we’ve been running a second Answering ‘Preparing To Be A Help Meet’ on Sundays, filled with questions by young ladies trying to get ready for marriage. Since we’ve run through many of the questions on their site it’s time to shift Sundays to something else, like perhaps examining the cornucopia of probably fake emails and questions that Michael and Debi Pearl of No Greater Joy post on their website and the possibly poisonous answers they give.
Question and answer can be found here.
First the question.
I read To Train Up a Child when my oldest daughter was one. Now she is three. To most (who haven’t read the book) she is a well-trained darling, but my husband and I are struggling with her tendency to whine.
So many have advised us to just ignore it and that it’s simply because she is a girl and she just turned three and that’s what three-year-old girls do. Arrgh! It’s easy enough to deny her whatever she is whining for, like a toy or a treat. But just a second ago she looked at me and said, “My baby is crying. I have to go get him,” in a loud, high-pitched whiny voice. How can I train her to talk with a “normal” voice? My husband loves to be with her, but finds that frequency unbearable. And a side note, I do not whine. : ) Thanks for any advice!
Michael replies.
Read the article “The Five-Year-Old Whine Baby” in the No Greater Joy Volume One book. It is also posted online along with three other articles on whining. Go to Topics, then Child Training, then scroll down to Whining.
So let’s look at this “The Five-Year-Old Whine Baby”. This was actually written by Shalom but is apparently what Michael Pearl thinks is the correct response to whining. Notice that nowhere in this answer or the previous one did Pearl address the main concern of a ‘high-pitched whiny voice.’ Surprised he missed the opportunity to say spank for incorrect tone of voice.
My friend and I returned from the store with ice-cream. When we meet her little brother and sister and gave them some ice-cream, he just whined as usual. He always wants something different from what you give him. But his older sister usually just says, “No, eat that one,” or sometimes she gives him hers. This little boy whines about a lot of stuff to get his way.
Later that afternoon my friend was giving coffee to her daddy and the little boy whined for some as well. But after several times of whining and her saying “No” he finally gave up and started whining for hot-chocolate. When the sister said “No,” again he continued to whine. She kept saying, “You can have water but no coffee or chocolate.” By this time I could see that they were training him into a whine-baby, so I said, “No, he can’t have water either, if he is going to whine for it. He went into the corner and pouted at me for not giving in to his whining.
I explained to the sister that when he whined for a different ice-cream bar, I would not give him any ice-cream at all. After three times he would be happy with what he got.
When whining for coffee or hot-chocolate instead of rewarding him with water, I would say, “No water for an hour or until we eat dinner.” Do not reward whining, no matter what happens.
One might think that a five year old that is asking for something different than what was offered every time is likely dealing with some inner problem, like perhaps feeling insignificant or feeling that no one understands him or his needs. It’s not always selfishness.
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