Trying to eliminate constant whining

Post Reply New Topic

ME TOO- I mean the way whining affects me. Once it starts, the out of control feelings start welling up... I have very sensitive hearing- it's one of my sensory things, so yeah whining is torture for me. The tone of voice, the constant drone of it.... it makes me want to pick my son up and toss him out the window. I have a hard time responding sensibly to it... I need a strategy and so far nothing is working.

Good tips here...I've tried some of this to no avail. Well- he can now correct his tone and how to ask for things nicely and politely but only AFTER the whining. It hasn't stopped the whining- I'm just constantly telling him to correct the way he is asking for something.
As for content- it's stuff that I suspect a lot of kids whine about: wanting something, NOT wanting something, being hungry, being bored etc. And I do my best to pre-empt things like hunger and boredom.

My boy definitely has sensory issues and I can see what you are talking about. He does whine about sensory issues- and often the whining about other things is due to sensory issues. We do our best to deal with this too. We're trying more and more to get a handle on how to help him feel more comfortable when it seems his sensitivities are overwhelming- he has sensitivities to light and heat and textures. We are always aware of environmental factors. And I get it because I have sensitivities too. But he knows how to tell us he is too hot or that it's too bright out... why does it have to come out in a hideous WHINE?

The difficult thing with ASD is the constant adjustments necessary for the parent. Impossible to be consistent because the child is not consistent. So he can develop some bad habits where there was no other option, and then you have to correct the bad habits.

For my son, when he was younger and constantly irritable, we had to turn our lives around and seek to anticipate his every need. Once we learned how to help him avoid getting irritated, we found he was used to getting his way etc. So we are now constantly working against bad habits.

So, like you said, start with figuring out if he needs anything. Then make sure he is mature enough to handle learning not to whine. Then I do something similar but different from the poster who says, "I can't understand you when you are whining." The premise is, I can only control myself. I can't actually force my son not to whine. So I can say, "I only serve dinner to those who stop whining and hang up their clothing." Or, "I can only work in quiet right now, so should I work in the other room or will you?" Or, "I only take you to the baseball game if you stop whining and do your homework." This way you are not lying, but you have to have the courage to hold your ground and not give in to him, and he has to be up to it.

I get this kind of idea from books called Love and Logic. I had wanted to parent this way when my kids were little. Then I found my son couldn't handle it, and later found he is an Aspie. Now I find he is mature enough to handle this type of parenting.

Yep.

When you have a child deep enough on the spectrum, there are too many things to work on at once. You have to pick your battles, knowing that you may create problems for yourself in the future. Then they've made habits and it becomes more difficult to handle than if you could have tackled it earlier.

Ellemenope, does your son understand the difference between whining and regular speech? Can he regulate it? If he can, does other behavior get worse if he tries to control it? If he understands it, and can regulate it without turning to worse behaviors, the key is going to be to catch him before he gets to an emotional state where he can't comply. If he only does it when he is in that state (which is what is sounds like) it is going to be hard to tackle b/c it will probably come down to preventing the emotional state, itself. Even with total scaffolding, that is impossible to accomplish b/c there always will be random, uncontrollable issues that crop up.

You can continue to explain it when he is calm, but if he can't control it when it is happening, the root cause is really his emotional state. If he can't control it, you can still let him know it is a suboptimal form of communication that is unpersuasive and counter-productive, but if he has no accessible alternative that he can use to switch his response, it will be really tough. If he can control it, the tips given by those who gave them will help.

The list of steps sounds great and is pretty much what I've been TRYING to do. It makes a lot of sense to me. I try so hard to have a lot of empathy and extend understanding towards my son while also making my responses to his undesirable behaviours sensible, predictable and following clear logic so hopefully he can GET IT. Maybe my son is too young/immature to be able to respond to this approach? I'm really floundering lately- I went back on some notes I've made in the past 8 months or so about issues I've tried to address. It was depressing to see how miserably I'm failing. Nothing I do seems to make a differences- any changes for better or worse in my son's behaviour appear to be completely random or just because he decided to do things a different way.

The last part about pulling yourself out of the moment is something I definitely need to work on. It's hard. I'm a little immature myself when it comes down to it. I can admit that and I'm really not proud of it.

I think he understands the difference- at least he knows what I mean when I say "Can you ask me that again in a NICE/POLITE voice?" He can repeat his request in normal voice and add please etc. I have not seen evidence yet that he can regulate it though. Like I said, he only ever changes to not whining AFTER being reminded to. If he is really in a whiny frenzy, asking him to change his tone, ask again nicely, etc. just ramps him up. When I try to address the subject when he is calm either a few minutes after a whining episode or even more out of the blue, it often sets him off into cascade of whiny scripts and demands.

[quote="aann"

For my son, when he was younger and constantly irritable, we had to turn our lives around and seek to anticipate his every need. Once we learned how to help him avoid getting irritated, we found he was used to getting his way etc. So we are now constantly working against bad habits.

[/quote]

We are here. I hate it. I am constantly seeing the seeds we have sown sprouting into more horrible weeds that we have to somehow deal with. Is there no other way?

Lately a part of me feels like a strict disciplinary approach is the only way around this vicious cycle. It feels like that would be easier and more consistent and a clearer path for everyone. Now that we are where we are, I don't even think it would end up being any more unpleasant that what we've got now. I have read posts here about Aspies who grew up undiagnosed and faced strict parents with little understanding of what the real causes of the issues and behaviours were. Some of them say it was hard but it worked to get them to where they are. Some of them hate their parents and are scarred. It's sometimes hard not to feel like my boy is turning into a "spoiled brat" and worse that I'm the cause.

You can avoid both situations: explain very clearly what constitutes whining. Get down to voice specifics like tempo, pitch, register, and timbre. Demonstrate with your own voice or YouTube videos. There is nothing worse than having every word out of your mouth being dismissed as "whining", and being able to do nothing about it, and having no way to learn how not to "whine".

Both of these quotes are interesting to me in regards to my son in that I too am becoming a strict disciplinarian with little in the way of results. 1) I do feel like I am correcting behavior ALL the time. Like just yesterday he screamed a high pitch banshee war cry as he ran into the playground and EVERY head popped up to see what the hell was going on. I think people thought he got ran over by a car or something. 2) I like the answer about explaining very clearly. But I can't do that for everything and every situation. Basically I would have to make a 500 place list of places and times it is ok to yell and where when it isn't. Or, find something (what?) to replace the behavior. The whine, the war cry, the whatever...changing these things feels like an out of the fire pan and into the fire situation.

Not sure, either he is seriously that uncomfortable, can't figure out how to regulate his voice or concentrate that when dealing with something like that...or maybe he thinks he'll get a quicker response that way...it's hard to say. I guess my main concern is if its not something he's doing 'on purpose' I'd be concerned about treating it like a 'bad' behavior. But yeah I can really only speak from my experience of being on the spectrum as a child.

Ok, to me that means he can regulate it when prompted. That is a good thing.

It is hard to tell just how annoying it is unless someone does it to you. I have also demonstrated what it sounds like when things are going well. I've jokingly (obviously a joke---like I asked him if we could have a panda) asked him for stuff in a whiny voice during role plays where he is the parent. It was a joke, and he was not offended and it gave him an idea of how it sounds.

You can't correct everything all the time, trying to fix everything all at once. It will stress your kid out, harm your relationship, and as you said above, you'll see little in the way of results. It's important to prioritize, choose 2-3 high priority behaviors to target, and let the rest go for now.

Increase his autonomy so that he doesn't have to rely on you to meet all of his needs. That would involve making more things accessible to him, but also showing him how to use them.

If he can get his own snack, he doesn't need to whine for it.


Obviously, that won't work for everything, but it might help.



Correcting all the time stresses both of you out. Take time when you are both happy and relaxed to practice the way you want him to ask for things. You can make it a game and have fun with it.


You said he is able to control the whining voice, I believe? Some of those, "I can only hear a polite voice" tactics may work then. Have you tried? How does he respond?

If he has trouble figuring out how to not whine, I'd avoid correcting at all and put teaching the proper way in overdrive. (You may still want to expect polite words which are easier to control.) I remember being very frustrated at my mother's insistence of me not whining, I did not know which voice constituted whining and which didn't. I didn't know how to stop. It made me increasingly upset. Upset and frustrated kids tend to whine even more.


If you are clever and lucky, you can find a space between allowing him to become a "brat" as you say and becoming a dictator that you don't want to be.

I am always searching for that space myself and tend to think it is a "coach" type response -- one in which I notice the skills my children lack and then I seek to teach them the missing skills. I never let blatantly rude behavior slide, but minor things I do (at least, in the moment). I can just make a note that kid x needs more practice using a polite voice in circumstance y and, if I think it's worth it, we can work on it when we both feel well.

When we teach our children an academic subject, we spend time teaching them each step. We don't punish them until they can do Algebra properly. Just like learning any skill, just being told once doesn't mean we should expect total mastery.

It's really true: whining is more distorted than the "polite voice."

Frequently, phraseology in whining is really garbled. One really doesn't understand the whiner as much as one who speaks politely.

The whiner would say "I wananananana bararana now!"; whereas the "polite speaker" would say, "Please, may I have a banana?"

O_o My parents taught me very early to never mention to them that I am bored. "I am bored." - "Oh great, there is a huge pile of cloth that needs to be ironed. - The garden bushes needs to be weeded... - Learn some vocabulary for your english test next week, I´ll test you for it in two hours... "

Nononono...you never mention to your parents, that you are bored. ^^