On Whining

Dan Kois:

The pitch of the average whine is a B above middle C, but played on an oboe that’s a quarter-step flat.

Research shows that whining peaks in children between the ages of 2 and 4, but every parent knows that it continues well into tweenhood. In adolescence the whine is sometimes replaced by the sulk or the simmer, the dissatisfaction swallowed or, more likely, tucked away for later use. This is part of becoming an adult.

Our family spent a year traveling around the world, and during that year I learned that children whine nearly everywhere. New Zealand children whine. Costa Rican children whine in Spanish. Dutch children whine, but in a country built on comity and compromise, whining is accepted as part of the endless negotiation every family decision must undergo. And our American children, ages 11 and 9, whined everywhere: hiking on the beautiful coastline of New Zealand’s South Island, swimming in a water park in Dubai, watching a homecoming parade down Main Street of a small Kansas town. (“They’re throwing more candy to the other kids!”) As we rode horses through the Costa Rican jungle, the sound of howler monkeys expressing their discontent failed to drown out the sound of our children expressing theirs. I now consider myself a keen amateur scholar of whining.