The problem with trying to negotiate with kids is that they’re too good at it.
Try to get a kid to do anything they don’t want to and it becomes immediately clear that you’re in for a spirited debate. Bedtime, in particular, quickly becomes a gauntlet of increasingly outlandish add-ons and upsells, like a used car salesmen trying to talk you into artisanal wiper fluid and galvanized floor mats.
They want just one more story. Just a tuck in. Just a goodnight hug. Just a hug for their favorite stuffed animal. Just a few minutes to use the toilet again. Just another tuck in now that they’re back from the bathroom. Just a quick glass of water. Just move the nightlight across the room because it’s too bright. Just a moment to change into her green pajamas. Just one more hug. The extra hug would be sweet if it actually felt like the point was showing affection instead of setting back the bedtime clock another 8 seconds.
I’m beginning to think we’re sleeping on the idea of children as high-stakes negotiators. If you gave a 6-year-old the stipulation that for every hostage they freed they could stay up an extra 10 minutes, then every police standoff would be over in under an hour, with the lead negotiator also securing 3 stories, 2 lullabies, and an episode of “Bluey.”
It extends past bedtime into everything they do. Trips to the park? They will try to haggle out extension after extension. I’m not talking about “Dad can we stay just 10 more minutes?” either. I’ve refused that and gotten progressively shorter requests all the way down to “JUST 15 MORE SECONDS?!” Every negotiation ends with a new attempt to secure jjjuuussssttt a little more.
In fairness to her debate skill, she probably got several minutes of extra playtime while I ranted about how pointlessly trivial a 15 second extension was. Point to her.
I think kids are such hard negotiators is because they understand that they can try to manipulate every situation for their maximum gain long before they understand when they shouldn’t. I seem to remember Jeff Goldbulm giving a speech about that attitude in “Jurassic Park.”
This isn’t the scene where he makes the speech, I just refuse to pass up any opportunity to use this photo.
When our toddler was a month old and my wife and I were subsisting on a series of short naps instead of real sleep, I remember saying that if our baby had a button that would keep the two of us from sleeping for 6 months, she’d press it twice.
Not vindictively (though when you haven’t slept more than 45 minutes at a stretch for weeks, everything feels vindictive), babies just don’t understand that other people have needs. All she knows is that her life is easier when mom and dad are awake, so her tiny hands would happily hammer that magic insomnia button like this was a game of “Galaga.”
…And yeah: it’s obvious that a baby isn’t going to understand that other people are affected by them crying all night. I get that. No one expects a 2-month-old to be polite about their nighttime feeding schedule. What I didn’t realize until after I had kids, though, is that every interaction with them for YEARS still contains some element of them not understanding that 3:38 AM is an impolite time to try and recreate the sounds of a soccer riot.
Case in point: at the moment my 8-year-old is going through some eating resistance and trying to argue down the amount of dinner she’s required to eat. What she doesn’t seem to understand yet is that this is kind of insulting to the person who went to the trouble of cooking. She seems genuinely confused that trying to debate her way out of eating a single unnecessary crumb of the stir-fry I just made might be a little hurtful.
Meanwhile, I’m confused at how a dish she described as being “better than a thousand Christmas mornings” last week suddenly tastes like cat litter with soy sauce on it today.
She isn’t trying to be a jerk about the food. What she struggles with is the abstraction of people seeing their work as an extension of themselves, and insulting it is the same as insulting them. If it were something more direct, like coming up to me and stating “Dad, you smell like if a fish died twice,” she’d recognize that would be hurtful.
(She has actually come up to me and said that exact sentence, but I was too busy laughing at that line to ever follow up and find out if it was meant seriously.)
So every day we have the same argument: how much of this horrible food does she have to eat before she’s allowed to leave the table. Amounts will be negotiated, counter offers will be made, food will be redistributed around the plate in an extremely bad-faith attempt to skirt under the required dinner threshold. It feels like trying to get North Korea to eat its vegetables.
I talked about the idea of kids dealing with a lack of autonomy a couple of weeks ago and I suspect this may be a continuation of that. So I think I understand why they fight tooth and nail over every issue, so now the big question is this:
How do I encourage it?
Yeah, you heard me: how do I encourage it? Like many of you, I have gotten jerked around by people better at negotiating than I am all my life. How much have I overpaid for cars? How much have I been underpaid for labor? If I can raise a kid willing to advocate for herself and drag every cent out of a boss who wants to short her salary in 20 years, I am FINE to put up with picky eating and hard bedtimes now.
Willful child? No: future badass.
…just be a little more tactful about badmouthing my stir-fry, ok?
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