The “Two-Minute Rule” grew out of my mother’s need for something that would work to manage a whiny, sick child. When I was little, in the 1950s-’60s, the tools doctors gave my mother to treat my asthma, and the tricks passed along by old women, were few and barely effective.
Few treatments
A little brandy in my soy-milk bottle would help relax the over-worked muscles inflating my lungs. Turn the bathroom into a steam room. Bowls of spicy chili or gumbo to help cut through the phlegm. And later a horrid drug, which smelled like whiskey and made me vomit up the phlegm, to temporarily clear my bronchial tubes. (To this day I cannot stand the odor of whiskey – ugh!)
Back then, doctors rarely told parents what they were doing or why – they NEVER told the child. As a result, to me, hospitals were where doctors and nurses would hold me down and hurt me.
Taking an arterial-gas blood sample to determine how much oxygen was actually in my blood, for example, was agonizing. The techs would hunt blindly for the artery close to the bone, repeatedly jabbing the needle-tip into the bone. Now it’s done with that clever little clamp on your fingertip and a red laser beam.
Determined to improve my breathing through force of will, I would beg my parents not to make me go to the hospital. But then I’d lose the ability to say anything – a danger signal of how little air is getting into and out of the lungs. My mother would grab me, race through the streets to the children’s hospital downtown, praying aloud the entire way that she hadn’t left it too late. Inevitably I would end up being admitted, for days, if not weeks.
But she would know I was finally improving when I would begin to do the one thing every child (and many adults) do that drives those around them insane.
Whine
Yes. Whine.
Now, understand that my mother is fierce, with green eyes that seem to flash emerald fire when she’s had it with you. Two things she has NEVER tolerated: Boredom, and whining. (We’ll save her techniques to combat boredom for another day.)
Her voice would drop to a slightly husky growl, and she’d exclaim, “No one likes a whining child!”
(Those flashing eyes, the low voice and the way she’d bend down to your eye level – let’s just say it was profoundly intimidating.)
So she invented “The Two-Minute Rule.” She would set the kitchen timer for precisely two minutes, and then I could whine all I wanted in that time. And she would listen (or pretend to). But at the end of the two minutes, I had to think of something I could do that would make me feel better.
Sounds kinda simplistic, doesn’t it? Bet you are thinking this might work with a child for a few minutes. But really? Something I could do?
But that’s the genius
You see, the thing about sick children – or adults, for that matter – is that they desperately need to feel more in control. And what makes them feel more in control is actually being able to control something.
Lesson learned? That it is actually hard to think of things to complain about for a solid two minutes. That’s longer than you think.
There were a few caveats: I couldn’t repeat myself. A single two-minute session per day, per person. (My younger brother, Bill, frustratingly, never seemed to need it. Unnatural child.) I needed to make mental lists of the things I wanted to complain about because she wouldn’t remember them for me, and again, I couldn’t repeat myself.
Once I’d learned to write and tried to slip written lists in, I got called on it – that was also forbidden. “If it was a valid reason to whine, you’d remember it,” she said. “If you forgot it in a few hours, then it wasn’t so important, was it?”
Try it
Come on. Make a mental list of all the things that are making you crazy today. Out of coffee. Spouse forgot to pick up or drop off something. Traffic. Or that yet another meeting has been called on a topic that never seems to get resolved.
Don’t forget that in two minutes you need to have thought of something you can do that will make you feel better.
Time yourself and see how many you can get into two minutes. As soon as the timer goes off, stop. Even in the middle of a word.
Now – what’s the one thing you can do for yourself?
My childhood favorites
I learned as a child some of the things that helped me. Cuddling up in my dad’s old terrycloth bathrobe felt like I was getting a hug, and smelled slightly of his after-shave. Starting a new book or magazine of my mom’s when I’d finished all mine before the next trip to the library. Getting to watch TV for an extra half-hour. Playing cards with my little brother. Calling my grandparents or my aunt. Being able to choose what I wanted to eat in the hospital.
As I grew older I discovered that I could rarely fill the entire two minutes with complaints – they actually had become incidental. But the “what I could do” part was now automatic, and the list had grown much longer. Fresh sheets on the bed. Soaking in a hot tub (or a cool tub on a hot day). A heating pad on my sore upper back. Making chili for supper in the crock pot – or defrosting some from the freezer. They may seem innocuous, but each really did address a real discomfort and made me feel less isolated.
Adult whiners
Have you ever noticed how much whining adults do about work and even their home lives? They whine about budgets, meetings, colleagues. About promotions, unequal distribution of resources, clients. Traffic, money, spouses, kids, debts, weight. Many whine almost continually, over and over again. It’s mind-numbing. All that whining creates toxic environments, where dissatisfaction steams, and nothing seems to make anyone happier, neither at work nor at home.
As a consultant, I began noticing that some clients would keep circling back to the same issues, without ever ONCE coming up with something they could (or would) do about the problem. I’d point out what they were doing, hoping it was just a manifestation of their concern about the underlying problem.
But when they continued, I would underscore the results of what they were doing, with specific examples. Each whining session cost them X and TOOK ME AWAY from the problem I was there to resolve!
Then I impose the “Two-Minute Rule.” Sometimes it works. I’ll set the timer on my phone, and probe for things they can do to improve the situation. At other times, I’d cut them off, saying we’d already devoted considerable time to the issue without a satisfactory resolution. Ultimately, though, their whining reminds me of how grateful I am for some of the lessons learned during my unusual childhood.
And me? Actually, I don’t whine very often, although there still are some occasions.
“Hey, Mom! Got two minutes?”
