Picture this scene. Your kid just stuck his hand in the cookie jar and you, the mother, scolds him for doing it. He then runs to daddy and tells him that mommy won't let me have a cookie, she's being mean. The kid then looks in his father's eyes with that puppy dog look and finally the father, when the mother isn't looking, sneaks into the cookie jar and gives his son a cookie. The son smiles and runs off to his room with his victory snack. Sound familiar? It should. It happens all the time. Maybe not with cookies, but ultimately something is going to come up where either mommy or daddy say no and the kid runs off to the other parent for the yes that he's looking for. Many times it will probably be something like wanting to go out and play with this friends. Mom says it's too close to dinner and dad says it's okay as long as he's not out too long. That's when the stare from mom could burn a hole right through dad's head. And even though we know that it's going to lead to nothing but trouble, we still let our kids get away with this manipulation. Why? Well, you'd need a team of psychiatrists to figure that out. Having said that, we're going to take a crack at some answers. But please check with your local head shrinker for some definitive answers, if he even has them. One reason we allow our kids to do this is simply for our kids love and approval. The worst thing we, as a parent, can hear from our children are the words "I hate you". We know in our hearts that they don't really mean it, but we don't like hearing it just the same. We're afraid that if we say no enough times we will indeed lose our children's love. So when our spouse says no and we're given the chance to say "yes", this makes it so that we can score some points with our children. Hopefully, if we get enough points over time, we'll have our child's love forever. Another reason we do this, unfortunately, is to get back at our spouse for something they did. This is very common during a time when you and your spouse are having an argument. Often this results in us doing what we can to strike back. What better way to do this than to say yes to our child after they've just been given a firm no from our partner? Not only do we score points with our child but we also take a shot at the person we're not getting along with at the moment. And then there's always the possibility that we're just not as strong as our spouse. We know that our spouse is right, that the "no" answer is the appropriate one at the time, but we just love our kid so much and hate so much for him or her to be disappointed, not even thinking of our own feelings, that we give in, just to bring a smile to their face. After all, there is so much pain and suffering in the world. Why add to it? The above may or may not be reasons we let our kids manipulate us. But the fact still remains, they do. |
