How to Get Kids to Do What You Want
In an ideal world, parents will always be patient and caring, and children will always be willing to cooperate and make smart choices. This is not a perfect world, so we parents need some clever strategies to keep our sanity when the days are too long and our patience is too thin.
This post, originally published in 2013, is part of our Evil Week series on Lifehacker where we take a look at the dark side of goal achievement. Sometimes evil is justified, and sometimes knowing evil means knowing how to defeat it. I want more? Visit our wicked week tags page .
To be clear, we do not recommend truly manipulative parenting or passive-aggressive strategies that permanently scar children. We say “manipulation” in the sense of shortcuts that can help us overcome all the “but I don’t want” and “but why?” complaints on the most difficult days. Of course, it would be better if the parenting approaches were more deliberate and direct , but if absolutely necessary, you can try one of these tactics.
Offer bad choices
My mom, a retired pediatrician when we were younger, asked her patients, my siblings and me if we wanted “one shot or two?” This is a classic psychological trick for creating false choices. While this trick wears out quickly and is easy to understand for older (or simply wiser) children, it can be a way to make an uncomfortable need (like a shot or bad medicine) the lesser of two evils.
An alternative option is to offer two options, either of which will be acceptable to you. For example: “We need to do this work before the party. Do you want to clean your room or do the dishes? »Both strategies give children a sense of control, but give them a narrow range of options.
Another final trick you could use is the “but you’re free” method : strongly suggest the option you like best, but emphasize that the child has a choice. (However, as with other tactics, you will have to accept the choices they make or refuse to play.)
Disguise the good they mind in the things they like
Parents of picky eaters sometimes resort to smuggling wholesome ingredients to make sweets and other tasteless foods that children love. Does your child refuse to eat spinach? Just bake it in a brownie! ( Jessica Seinfeld has “deceptively delicious” cookbooks that focus on this trick.) You can also try letting your kids add the secret ingredients themselves to stimulate more variety, but be more open about the ingredients.
Either way, sometimes you have to hide the fact that they are good at something in order to encourage the children to cooperate. It might just be a (not evil) part of parenting in general. It’s funny how inventive we have to get up to communication tricks like making everything play and boring work environments (grocery shopping) with recreational opportunities (scavenger hunts) just to avoid frustration – and have fun.
Take their technology hostage
No matter how much screen time your kids get , using the Internet and tech devices is a privilege that you can control. First chores, then Wi-Fi. Likewise, just telling the kids that you are watching them can be enough to keep them in line.
Praise strongly and let them prevail
Praising may not seem like a manipulative move, but being a cheerleader or encouraging healthy family competition (where your child wins by doing what you want him to do) can motivate even the most rebellious child. For example, the daily tradition of the first person to dress in the morning to choose breakfast for the whole family from a list of healthy options is somewhat manipulative, but also fun for everyone. (Well, apart from Mom and Dad who have to eat plain English muffins every morning when the kids are winning.)
Like other people, kids love to feel successful and special, and you can use that to your advantage. Merely reminding them of how well they have behaved in the past can prompt them to do so later.
Take advantage of their weaknesses and fears
Manipulation is knowing what drives people and using it to your advantage. Education is similar, only you use it for the benefit of yourself and your child. For example, if you know your child likes a TV show, you can make him or her jump right out of bed in the morning by simply saying that if they want to watch it, they need to get up early. It still amazes me how much I can get my daughter to do (brush her teeth, do extra book reports, go to hell to sleep ) when I get her to teach her stuffed animals to do what I want.
For more complex manipulations, the gimmicks that work with adults work with children as well. Things like reverse psychology , make a person feel guilty, or scare the hell out of them . Use them with care, though, because, well, these are kids (who have their own tactics for hitting back on overbearing parents ) and overall it’s best to just relax rather than worry too much about how your kids are growing up. However, it’s nice when you don’t have to resort to the words “because I said so,” and your children just do what is good for them.
Photos by PSDGraphics , Style Photography (Shutterstock), Nikki L , JoshClephan and k0a1a.net .