Whining

At the beginning of the school year—kindergarten for one, grade 2 for the other—my girls used to set their own alarm clocks, get into their clothes, and go down for breakfast on their own.

Sometime during the dark winter months, their enthusiasm waned. They seemed to understand something about the bleakness of routine.

“Monday again,” I could almost hear them saying, with all the cynicism of a civil servant. If they could have taken a 30-minute coffee break at school, they would have. They began sleeping through their alarms, then not setting them at all. 

“School is great!” I tried saying one morning. “You're lucky to be able to go! Do you know that just 100 years ago, many children your age had to go to work to help their families? In Victorian England, kids used to work in factories from morning to night. They used to fall asleep on the job because their shifts were so long. They were often freezing cold where they worked. Sometimes the machines they worked on were hosed down with water, and the kids got hosed down too!”

“They got sprayed with a hose?” one daughter said.

“Fun!” said the other. They looked at each other and giggled at the thought. Probably they were picturing Victorian factories as places with lots of awesome steam engines and a Wet Banana.

I had to face it. They just didn't care about school. Sure, it was fine once they were there. But it was the getting there that was the trouble.

There began a slow erosion of all the good habits I thought were firmly established.

First they got cranky over spilling breakfast cereal to the point where they declared they couldn't pour it for themselves anymore. 

No, it wasn't as clear-cut as a declaration. It wasn't simply, “I can't do this, Mum.” It was, “I caaaaan't doooo iiiiiit,” in those little high-pitched drill voices.

Whining. Times three. Arms limp and uncooperative at their sides, eyes downcast, faces long with disappointment.

Then the oldest one rebelled against oatmeal, "It's just so musheeeee." So they all wouldn't eat it.

Next thing I knew, I was dragging each one of them out of bed, choosing their clothes, pouring their cereal and milk to a morning chorus of, "I hate schoooool," and "Why do I haaaave to go?" It was a full-on regression. My low point was making pancakes on a weekday morning to cheer them up. I even gave them extra maple syrup when they asked.

I'm not sure how it happened. It was all very subversive. But somewhere along the way I lost control of mornings and became a sort of reluctant maid.

Actually, I do know how it happened. It was the power of whining. I would do anything to avoid it. Scoff all you like, but think back to the last time you called a friend who had kids whining in the background. Did you want to stay on the phone and chat?

I'm still choosing outfits for the eight-year-old daughter. The last time I did it I got something wrong.

“Why didn't you bring me socks?!” she shouted indignantly.

I threw a pair of socks at her and thought, “I reeeeally shouldn't be doing this. This is baaaad parenting.” Even my own thoughts were whining at me.

“Not those ones!” she said, deeply offended by the striped socks I'd picked out.

I went into the middle daughter's room.

“I need tiiiights,” she whined. The temperature was close to 24 C at 7 a.m. and the high was going to be 30.

“You don't need tights today,” I said.

“But I'm cooold, Mama.” I went to the basement and got her tights out of the dryer.

I thought, “So this is what it is to crack up.” I just couldn't take the whining anymore. I would do anything to stop it. Give them candy, buy bubble gum. Pay them $5 to clean up their rooms. Let them off the hook when they whined that it was their sister who had messed up their room. Somehow give them money anyway. If they asked me in that voice to get a pony for the back yard, I probably would. They had won.

“Maybe they could kill me,” was my fleeting, early morning, pre-coffee thought yesterday. With that whine, anything seemed possible.“Nah,” I said to myself. But I knew I had to regain control of mornings.

I stumbled down the stairs, and prepared a full-court press against the kids. My only defense against the whine was the angry lecture.

"You kids need to learn responsibility," I began, pious finger raised. But I stopped short.

It was a miracle.

The girls had had the wherewithal to sleep in their clothes and woke up fully dressed. The boy, at just-four, was busy putting on socks with great effort, like an old man. It was the final touch on his outfit. Every single item including underwear was either inside out or backwards. I reveled in the fact that there were no kids to dress, and thus no whining for the moment, and left him alone.