Almighty Dad | A stay at home dad blog

It’s a tall order.  My oldest boy, Neil, is not much of a whiner, but his brother has just about mastered the art of verbal manipulation.  He’s done it ever since I can remember, but I only determined to stop it recently.  I should have taken care of it much sooner.  My unprofessional opinion is that he does it because it works.  That sounds pretty reasonable, doesn’t it.  His brother is bigger and more athletic.  Alan has figured out that a good weapon is to use my urge to protect him against his brother.  It’s one thing to get whacked with a plastic sword and plop down crying because it hurts.  It’s entirely different to plop down and start crying before the hit even comes.  It used to be that I accepted his complaining at face value.  I believed without question that he was being abused somehow by his brother.  I would swoop in and fix it by punishing Neil.  Ah, but there was a flaw in his cunning plan.

Don’t Get Caught

I think that if one is going to do something wrong that they shouldn’t get caught doing it.  Alan got so bold in his feigning insult and injury that he started doing it at the drop of a hat.  It was only a matter of time before I caught him in the act, thus vindicating my older boy (which must have been quite a relief to him).  He got caught big time several weeks ago.  The plastic sword example is the truth.  I saw him flop down on the ground and start bawling before Neil even raised the sword to whack him (I have no doubt Neil would have whacked him, but that isn’t the point).  God, I felt bad for Neil.  It really hit home that Alan has been playing me for a fool all this time.  Of course, I can’t blame him if that’s what has been working for him.  He just got too greedy and got caught.  Now I’m dealing with whining weaning (couldn’t resist the funny word combination).

Didn’t Notice

I hadn’t noticed until all of this happened that a side effect to this manipulation was that he had taken to whining.  Oh, It’s obvious now.  How do I put into words the sound of pathetic whining for stupid things?  I guess I can’t.  Just imagine a caricature of a boy asking his mom for a toy or for desert or for something equally unimportant.  It’s a lot like Eric Cartman, that’s how it sounds.  Sure, it’s obvious – But, I wore blinders for a long time.  Every parent has a blind spot for their youngest.  My dad was one of 8 kids.  We recently had a family reunion where one of the older brothers explained to me all the crap my dad used to get away with just because he was his moms “sweet little kid”.  Maybe there has been some embellishment of the facts 60 years removed from the events, but I believe it in principal.  Younger brothers get away with more – usually.  It’s a parenting blind spot.  We should take classes on that.

Ignore

Deep down I always knew Alan was probably not the sweet innocent child that he made himself out to be.  But, for some reason, maybe my parental instincts, I rushed to his side at the mere whiff of injustice.  No more.  I tried to reason with him about the whining and crying.  That didn’t work. Now I’m just ignoring it; I read somewhere that that’s the thing to do.  It’s working, and I get to relax a little.  The whining and the crying seem to go hand in hand.  He’s started to realize that I’m not very quick on the draw anymore when he starts crying.  I can tell the difference between a real and fake cry now.  That’s good.  It’s good as long as he doesn’t become a better actor.  I’ve noticed that the whining has started to subside along with the crying.  It’s a tough love approach because I’m sure Neil has figured it out and stepped up the abuse.  Well, what can I say – the kid cried wolf one too many times.  He’s just going to have to man up and defend himself from now on.

We can’t help being protective of our littler children.  We want to level the playing field for them.  Most kids, at some point, begin to recognize that they can wield that sympathy like a weapon.  If we don’t catch it quickly our kids can end up being whiners and crybabies.  It might be tough to tell a cute little 5 year old that it’s time to suck it up when that 5 year old has mastered the cute helpless look, and we still want them to be under our wings.  It is in our children’s long term best interest for us to force them to start taking care of their own problems.  The consequence of continuing protectionism is having a whiny teenager.  Nobody likes to see an un-cute teenager whining like a 5 year old.  Better to take care of it when we still have some influence and the child is still receptive to learning.

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