Manipulation

Taken from a book I'm reading:

There is one social skill we parents teach without ever mentioning it. We would never ever give it name. It must be done subtly. Still, even though we don't define it, we teach it more certainly than we teach gardening techniques. We model it daily, sometimes even constantly.
By the time the child is five he's almost as good at it as his parents. He understands it, can do it himself, knows when other people are doing it and how he should respond, but he hasn't the foggiest idea of its name.

This is manpulation.

This set me thinking - how do we as parents manipulate our children to do things? Each time we threaten to leave them and never see them again. Each time we say bad things will happen to them. Each time we pretend to be sad and cry. They know it's a game and they might play along.

And our children will pick up on it for sure. Each time they cry fake tears - like Shannon pretending to cry her eyes out when she doesn't get something. When she comes up to you and gives you a cheeky smile. Someone boys aren't as good as doing this - I can't think of Nigel doing any emotional blackmail in recent times - but he's pretty good at bargaining and can get quite technical. He's also got a good memory and you cannot really make false promises anymore - not that it should be done in the first place!