You Have to Get Weird to Stop Your Kid’s Tantrums
A little imagination goes a long way
Last winter, I took my daughter skiing for the first time. I am the kind of skier whose stopping method is a fancy maneuver I like to call Falling Over on Purpose. Still, it seemed like a fun way to spend a Sunday. The thing is we hadn’t realized that the day before Martin Luther King Jr. Day is the busiest day of the entire ski season. We wound up waiting hours for skis.
The weather was not on our side, and I didn’t blame Sasha for complaining about it. She was cold. I was cold. Everyone in line was cold. But after a while, her whining started grating on me, and I worried that it was getting on other people’s nerves, too. At first I told her that I heard her — I knew it was freezing. But all we could do was hop around, wiggle our limbs, hug each other. Anything to stay as warm as possible. She quickly cycled through those things and ended with a prolonged “I’m booored.” Well, so was I.
I started thinking, “How can I make whining more fun?”
“If you’re gonna whine,” I told Sasha, “you’ve gotta sing the blues.”
She grabbed my arm and hung from it with all her weight, groaning at my suggestion.
“Duh-nuh-nuh-nuh,” I sang, determined to make this work. She dragged me around in a…
