Stopping the Madness!

Growing up in an Irish American family I was very familiar with the word "whinging". It rhymes with "singeing" and what it means is to whine or fret. In a very annoying way.

As an adult I remember reading Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt and being astounded to see him write the word "whinge."  I'd never seen it written before which was sort of a shock.

Fast forward many years and here we are today. And we've got a whinger. His name is Daniel, and we have gotten a tad bit sick of the whining. (Our neighbor is from Ireland so his family uses the word quite a lot to describe their kids' high pitched complaining too.)

Anyway, a few days ago Susanne read some great advice on Baby Center or somewhere that a good way to stop the incessant whinging is to create a jar with say five whinge cards for the day in it, the last one attached to a treat. Every time the kid whinges you take a card out. The last one to come out if the one with the treat attached. However, if the kid can control him or herself enough, they get the treat. Each night you put your five whinge tickets back in and start over (always with a treat attached to one as the reward).

Bottom line--if we have to pull all 5 cards out each day before supper ends because he's been caught whinging 5 times he does not get his gummy bears. If we pull out 4 or fewer, he gets the bears.

We have been using this with pretty good success this past week as Danny is very keen on getting his Gummy Bear treat (we got the kind with Vitamin C so we feel like this is an okay thing.) He did not get his treat the first night we tried it, but has every other night (except one) and we are thrilled that the whinging has dropped off considerably.

Now if only we could figure out how to solve for the problem of Benji becoming apoplectic when Danny gets a treat and he does not.  And also how to help Danny understand that whinging "BUT I'M NOT WHINGING" loses him a card. ;-)

Anyone else used this method, or think you'll try it? We give it a thumbs up! -Monica