I am glad to see it is a common enough reaction with Dads. I think I will do the strict go to your room if there is whinning and no coming out until you can ask in a reasonable voice. I know they are only 4 but I cannot help how crazy I go.

I hate whinning, whimpering and loud screaming sounds so much I cannot watch horrors and some UK soaps like Eastenders… I just cannot take it at all in my life. My young girl does not whine or whinge (very very rarely at least) and I must say she is easier to love. Is that a bad thing to say. I know it is but all the same it’s true.

I have a soon to be 3 year old daughter that whines and throws a fit non stop for almost any reason daily… She does not do it to anyone but Mommy and Daddy. Not at daycare, not with grandma, etc. It may be over wanting a popsickle, wanting to watch a certain cartoon that happens to not be on at the time, going outside to play, you name it. It is fake and sometimes real-ish crying and whining with repeated yelling demands of whatever the issue is at the time(ie: “wahhhh, wahhhh, POP-SICK-LE!!….POP-SICK-LE!!”…..then a quicker “popsickle!!, wahhhh, wahhhhh” etc).

I am now simply taking her to her room and explaining that she can come out when she is done throwing the fit and shutting the door, sometimes it takes 30 minutes or longer but she is slowly beginning to understand that I am serious and that she cannot come out until she is calm and reasonable. It has been blood-boiling at times dealing with the constant fits. I feel your pain and I hope that I am seeing the dim light at the end of the whining, fit throwing tunnel…

Sometimes, I can sternly raise my voice and say NO. and he will stop doing it… but other times, nothing gets him to quit. He’s not hurt, he’s not really got any reason to cry, he just does it. Forget rabbits… let’s ban the whiners/cryers!? This behavior has got to stop.

In the past, I’d lose my cookie whenever she started up the sirens. The screams would make me think horrible things, but thankfully, my wife’s got loads more patience for her crap than I do (which sometimes I agree with and sometimes I don’t) so she handles the kid when I can’t take any more. There’s been times that I’ve just set her in her crib for several minutes because I couldn’t deal with the screaming and fussing.

I guess I must have gotten used to the whining over time, as before I didn’t know WHY she was whining, but I’ve found that once I can figure out the cause of the whine, it doesn’t bother me as much. For example, crying out of the blue can be infuriating, but once you realize that the klutz smashed her toe on the coffee table, or she’s sleepy or hungry, you go into “need fulfillment mode” and try to fix the problem. For example, sometimes she gets into “whine for attention” mode, so I just pick her up and try to make her laugh. Once she feels better, I can set her back down again and she’ll run off to get into more trouble.

I found that it helps to think of the happy times you’ve had together to kind of pacify your anger when they go nuts.