Kids are programmed to whine
How Children Evolved To Whine And how to stop them from driving you bonkers. By Jessica Grose Oct. 9, 2019, 8:34 a.m. ET Little kids are diabolically engineered to make their parents do what they want. That’s the overwhelming impression I got when I talked to a bunch of academics about the origins of whining. “Children are good at co-opting whatever arsenal of behaviors they have” to get parental attention, said James A. Green, Ph.D., a University of Connecticut psychology professor who studies early social development. The scholars I spoke to agreed that whining was both an under-researched area in developmental psychology, and such common kid behavior that it was likely a cultural universal. Even certain types of monkeys whine, said Rose Sokol-Chang, Ph.D., who studied whining at Clark University, and now works at the American Psychological Association. Monkey and human children alike use “whining to bridge a gap with an adult,” said Dr. Sokol-Chang — which is to say, th