shakran

Yeah, I know that, but her goal is not to get you to pick up the sock or put it on or any of those other things. Her goal is to get attention. And you're giving it to her by catering to her whining. Look at the difference between your actual conversation and the one Lebell posted. The same end result happens in both situations - namely, the kid puts the damn sock on and gets out the door - but in Lebell's version, the kid doesn't get catered to by getting constant attention from you as a direct result of the whining. You responded each and every time she whined, and since her goal is to get you to respond, you're playing right into her hands and teaching her that whining is a great way to get her desired result.

And no one's saying that either one of you is a bad parent. Good parents get sucked into the whine trap all the time because one of the hardest things to do is to walk away and ignore the kid when she's being a twit like that. We tend to want to explain ourselves, almost as we would to another adult -- - "well I know you don't like it but it has to be that way because. . . . "

My parents tried that all the time with me and all it ended up getting them was a kid that was very good at finding loopholes. Had they instead simply removed the stimulus that was encouraging my being a jackass, I'd have figured out that being a jackass wasn't the way to go if I wanted to get what I want.

Now, there's a flip side to this - you have to ignore her when she's being whiny, but when she's behaving properly you have to give her the attention that is her goal. Then she'll not only start supressing the behavior that doesn't get her results, but will begin to internalize the behavior that gets her the results.