It is Friday night and that only means one thing. It’s laundry day. My sister has gone off to a friend’s house and that leaves my brother and me. My father recalls that it is my turn to take the clothing from the dryer and sort and fold them. As boring this task is, I know there is no way to get out of this chore, so I start to whine and act out to protest my duty.
The next thing I know, my mother comes into the room and throws a towel over my head. Patronizingly, she claims, “You can only whine, if this towel remains on your head!” This short story is an example of the type of discipline my mother would apply to my siblings and me when we were younger.
Her method of punishment was called “The Whine Towel.”
There is no question that kids of all ages want to have their way, and the most common method they use to receive it, is whining. How do you deal with the constant outbursts, “It’s mine” and “I don’t want to”? Some parents deal with these outbursts by sending their child to timeout or by taking away a prized possession.
In my childhood, my mother chose humor: She chose “The Whine Towel.” Whenever my siblings or I threw a tantrum, my mother would throw a whine towel over our heads. Whether a washcloth, bath towel, or dishrag, the nearest towel to my mother would end up draped atop our heads the minute she heard a high-pitched complaining cry.
“You can whine all you want, if you have the whine towel over your head,” she would say.
Even in public, should my siblings or I start grumbling, my mother would unashamedly, and quite resourcefully, pluck a tissue from her purse and flick it toward our faces. This odd public discipline instantly made my siblings and I feel foolish. Did that stop us from ever whining in public?
No. But it would halt our grumbling in the moment; none of us wanted to walk around with a tissue on our heads.
I have to admit I was the child whom my mother most frequently crowned with the whine towel. As the youngest child, I was constantly jealous of my siblings. I whined when I couldn’t participate in their pool parties or go to a movie with them. But I also just enjoyed the silliness of the whine towel.
After all, whoever received the whine towel immediately stopped grumbling and started laughing. The comedy of this discipline made it more effective than timeout. As soon as my siblings and I received the whine towel, we could not help but laugh at how ridiculous we looked with a rag atop our heads.
Wearing the whine towel was a perfect metaphor for how silly we looked and sounded while whining in the first place. So next time your friend, little nephew, or even your dog starts acting out, throw a towel on their head and tell them, "whining is only allowed if you wear the whine towel on your head!"
*Snapchat screen shot of my sister's dog receiving the whine towel punishment* Photo Credit: Farrah Madanay
