to think my 5 year old should be beyond this now?

[Mytetherisbackthere]

My 5yo DD (youngest of 3), whinges from dawn until dusk and it is starting to drive me to distraction.
She never gains anything from the whinging, we have never given in to any whingey requests, and yet all day everyday is a soundtrack of miserable whining. She is articulate but instead of speaking normally permanently reverts to the wailing tone of an overtired two year old. See also unnecessary quantities of crocodile tears (no physical tears but lots of noise).
She has a good routine, comfortable life, lovely school, gets consistent 1on1 time, positive attention when interacting positively, lots of love and affection. Minor whinging is ignored and/or distracted, more persistent and she’s removed from the room. It doesn’t help. She never stops. I am notoriously patient but 5 years in and it is wearing very, very thin.

Her elder sisters, now 9 and 11, parented in largely the same way, never did this. They had their toddler tantrums and challenging moments (DD9 didn’t sleep for longer than 45 minutes in one go until she was 3.5) but gave up when they realised they never got anything from tantrums, and are and were generally happy, polite children who communicate well. They’re very patient with their younger sister but this is starting to grate on the whole family.

IABU- She’s only five, you’re being unreasonable/ doing a rubbish job at parenting.

IANBU- We should be able to go through life without a constant soundtrack of ‘Errreuuughhhheeeerrwaaa’ by now.

Also, if anyone has any ideas about how to get this under control, please help!

It’s both @CantHoldMeDown , primarily asking for things (eg. chocolate at 6am which then continues for 2 hours) but with a long drawn out whingy/waily voice.
I’m not expecting the children to be the same, but I am finding this difficult as clearly what worked for the other two (also approached differently) isn’t working here. I’m more than happy to try something different but I don’t know what to do, hence asking for help.

Reward her for behaving in a way you want with attention, interest, conversation.

Walk away, just not be there when the manipulation starts? (Obviously not when you're out). Not providing an audience may work.

Making it clear that communicating with words is more likely to get results for her.

DD was the same, 5 and a half was actually horrific. Possibly one of the worst phases she had since birth, She couldn't have a normal conversation without whinging and it quickly descended into arguments and a generally terrible dynamic. It was always about something completely ridiculous like having to have a specific thing that was in the car boot instead of the front or wanting to see a certain thing on TV when we got home and not being given 100% confirmation that it could happen.

Luckily it dissipated almost overnight after turning 6. Just became a lot more agreeable and significantly more open to compromise. If something can't be fulfilled then she'll just shrug and move on instead of turning it into a whine fest. I do suspect she has ADHD and echolalia plays a role in getting "stuck" repeating a certain phrase for hours. It's improved a lot but I think will always be part of her.

Kids can be like that at this age - DH's niece had a very whiney tone for yeeeears which was quite grating. She wasn't even necessarily whining, just her voice just always came out that way.

Your 3 DDs are different people and the youngest clearly has different personality traits, so your parenting may need to adapt too. Some people are more whiny than others but she is still little and it will probably decrease with time.

What do your elder kids do when she uses this behaviour? Curious as my eldest often takes it on herself to tell her younger sister off and it's way more effective than anything I do!

My third was the same! Still more of a handful but her emotions we just bigger than anyone else. Her highs are also higher, she’s hilarious and a big character.

So she’s now 9 and the wail still occasionally makes an appearance. But we started, when she was about 5, having zero tolerance for the wail noise. She’d get a very sharp Ah Ah if she started it and a talking to. But also told to use her words and explain the problem. We got there fairly quickly but had to draw a hard line on the awful noise as a form of communication.

DD2 was a bit like this, but was a bit older and was/still is stroppy. Sadly for her, she takes after me!

We drew up a behaviour contract which we stuck on the fridge. It was about expectations so from memory was things like:
I will not huff, tut or roll my eyes if I do not get my own way.
Mummy and Daddy know best and pay for everything. If I do not like their decision, I will use my calm speaking voice to explain and I will listen to their answer without interrupting.

There were more things but they are the ones that stuck.

Everyone signed it and it did work til she grew out of it naturally. She is now 23 and in her 1st graduate job 200 miles away and I miss her very much, strops and all!

Whats the consequence she gets for carrying on the whiny voice? For eg mine would have been told if the whinging/ whiny voice continued theyd need to go to their bedroom and stay there as I didn't want to listen to it. When ready to speak and interact normally they were free to come back to the communal space.
Its a win-win. If they decide they are happy playing in their room, great, you don't have to listen to whinging.
If they are bored in their room they can come out whenever they like provided they dont whinge and whine

I still remember my mother telling me off for 'whining'. As far as I was aware I was using my normal voice! So perhaps she doesn't have a lot of control over how her words are coming out, and stopping her and telling her to take a deep breath and then say it again might iron out some of the whinge in her tone? It won't help with the unreasonable demands (I don't remember what I was wanting when my mum said I was whining...) but it might make her stop and think about how she is coming across.

Admittedly it was with a slightly older child ( 7 if I remember rightly) but it was very effective when her teacher recorded her whining & played it back. She was really shocked at how she sounded. I didn't really agree with playing the recording in front of the whole class but she stopped whining from then on.

I was the youngest of 3. There was 6 and 9 years between my DBs and me. I still remember my DM constantly telling me to talk in my normal voice and to stop whining. I’m not sure why I was so whiny but I must have been very irritating. I think there was probably an element of manipulation ( ie if I keep driving you up the wall you’ll do what I want, get me what I want). I am a very un-whiny adult. Unless you can identify any obvious unmet needs or any reason for any underlying upset (school, tiredness, jealousy of older siblings), I think you’re doing the right thing by rewarding her positive communication and not giving in to unreasonable demands ( ie 6am chocolate) and asking her each time to use her usual voice. Hopefully it’s a ‘phase’. It must be very wearing and irritating by now though.

Do you ever say ‘for goodness sake Maddie, stop whinging! You know you can’t have chocolate. There is a fruit bowl if you’re hungry now stop that silly noise’ (or words to that effect)? That’s what I would’ve done with mine. Can’t stand whingy kids.

Have you tried whinging back at her? That always makes my DC laugh.

"Miiiiiildred, why can't you clean the kitchen floor? And scrub the bathroom? Don't walk on the carpet, I've just hoovered, walk on the ceiling instead. I waaaaaant chocolate, chocolate, you hear me, go and get me some from the shop now! You're only 5 and you can't drive? Excuses, excuses, excuses, where there's a will, there's a way. Now fly on your broomstick to the shop and don't come back until you've got 100 sacks of chocolates buttons. Because I waaaaaaant them".

It always cracks my older one up. The other thing we do since watching Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is singing the Verruca Salt song at them whenever the moaning and asking for things gets too much - "I want the world. I want the whole world. I want to wrap it all up in my pocket. Give it to me now!"

My youngest is more wingy than my eldest. I have started to be very matter of fact, i just tell him I do not talk to wingers and to ask in a normal voice and I will decide yes or no. If its no its no. We are on a total winge ban right now. I wonder if its a youngest child thing where they continue to act as the baby of the family. Winging is so annoying.

'When you speak to me properly, I will listen - I'm not listening to whingeing' and then ignore, ignore, ignore! She is persistent and stubborn (not a bad thing, she won't be a pushover!) But you are the adult and you need to stick to your guns and be even more stubborn and persistent. Lots of praise and attention when she's not whingeing - what are her interests? Can you find some time for one to one activities just the two of you? Maybe what she needs is a bit more time with you or dad, youngest children often have to go along with the older children's activities and can get overlooked for individual time and attention (I know this from having 5 children - youngest two were often having to come with me while I ferried the older ones to football/music lessons etc!)

There’s a saying in our family ‘no one likes a whingebag!’ Said pretty sharply. The kids names start with an M and when they do get a bit moany we say ‘uh oh…it’s moaning Meredith (or whatever).’ It’s a very tricky age, my daughter is 7 and doesn’t whine like this but she does have a tendency to ask for impossible things (like homemade waffles on a school morning) and then get into a grump when I say no - drives me up the bloody wall!

A short sharp shut up has worked wonders ime. I know it sounds unpleasant but sometimes it's necessary.

"I can't hear when you use whingy voice" works well on DS2 when he gets into that mode.

Some kids just moan. I have two less than 15 months apart and they have very different personalities.

Not much advice, other than its quite common at her age. Particularly more in girls and I'm not sure why! I think you're doing everything you can tbh. All I came here to suggest, as teachers we use the phrase "please use your words, because I can't understand that" and it normally stops it quite sharpish.

My girls are the same they hate the word no. I use the i can't understand you when you whine like that, when your ready to talk like a big girl il listen. I was the same as a kid