Thursday, February 5, 2015

Working with Whiners

In Could I Have Cheese With That Whine? From Sioux's Page, Sioux asks,

“What do you do when you're stuck with a whiner or you encounter one? Impatient minds want to know...”

I have been a whiner and I’ve been around many whiners. It is much easier when I am the whiner and I can try to snap myself out of it. As it is said, I can control my own behavior but I can’t control others.

I can’t count the number of times I have entered the teacher’s lounge and encountered the whiners. I learned that hanging around whiners can bring me down and I don’t want to do that. If I am not close to the people, I tend to remove myself from the situation. I think about something else that needs to be done and leave politely. Usually if there is a group of people, no one really notices when I leave.

Sometimes I’m with a friend who is whining about a situation that is happening. As a good friend, I will listen and try to be supportive. Sometimes we all need to whine about something and just need someone to listen. I hope I’m as good a friend to others by listening, as I want them to be towards me.

If this friend is constantly whining and it becomes irritating, I tend to distance myself from the friendship. I try to do it nicely and come up with reasons why I’m busy but if cornered by this person about my distance, I will usually be honest. I explain that the negativity brings me down and I need to distance myself from that at this time. Keeping this in mind, I try to be more positive in my encounters than negative because I don’t want to be “that person.”

I also like to talk about this with my students. By discussing this in advance, they can reflect on their own behaviors. Hopefully if they are whiners, they will watch the frequency of whining and how it affects others. Many students are self centered at this age so this would be a good social skill to learn.

How do you act when you encounter whiners? Please share.

Image: 'no_whining' 
http://www.flickr.com/photos/38525065@N00/84982525
Found on flickrcc.net


1 comment:

Sioux Roslawski said...

Pat--Thanks for the link earlier (this week?) as well as for this one.

I'm glad you admit you sometimes whine. So do I. Perhaps we can form a club--the Occasional Whiners?