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!

I 100% sympathise, my DS used to whine for Britain and it was horrendous. I tend to say if you're not old enough to understand that a certain thing can only be had in moderation/has to be stopped at a certain point, then you're not old enough to have/do the thing. DS (5) is allowed occasionally to play computer games with DH, but stopping or being told no when he wanted to game became a massive issue quickly.

I said something along the lines of 'gaming is fun, but it's not good for anyone to do it for too long or too often. Children have to be able to stop when they're asked and take no for an answer before they're allowed to use the console/computer. If you're can't do that, I don't think you're old enough for gaming yet.'

And then he assured me that he was indeed old enough, but then of course the whinging started again. So we didn't let him do it at all for quite a while and then reminded him that we won't let him game if we see signs that he's not old enough to handle it. That did the trick quite nicely.

If it's just general whining, I think I'd deal with it like any other behaviour with a warning and then a consequence (ideally one where they don't lots of attention for it). My rule is that if I say no, it's ok to ask ONE more time, calmly and in a pleasant tone, and put forward your argument for me allowing it. I will consider your reasoning, but if the answer is still no, I will broach no whining. Don't mind him expressing disappointment etc, but the whine voice is unbearable 😆

The most important thing in my experience is to never, ever give in to the whining. Even giving in very occasionally makes whinging motivating, because they don't know if today is the day that it will work- so from their point of view, it's worth a go every time. Someone once described it to me like playing a slot machine- even if most of the time you lose your money, winning even occasionally is enough for many people to keep spinning!

I never could bear whining. Dds very soon learned that it made me go completely deaf. Hearing was miraculously restored if they spoke normally. Funny, wasn’t it?