Your patience please, it's the 4 year old's fault, she confused me!?

Long story, please read and let me know who you think was at fault:





Last night, girl really wanted to go to the park at the school behind our house. so when girl asked during dinner, it took me a minute to decide what to do. She of course began berating me about it, so I told her, ';Maybe we can go to the park after dinner. I'll think about it.'; It was shortly thereafter that I realized my daughter is a manipulative genius.





The dinner conversation after that,went from talk about the daily grind at work, to who was doing baths and who was doing dishes, to what the kids needed for day-care tomorrow. This week is recycleables week at day-care, so each day the kids need to bring in a different item to recycle by turning it into some art project. Today, they needed to bring in a newspaper. We don't generally read newspapers, so we didn't have any. Wife and I were discussing who/when we would go get a newspaper. Would I run to the store while wife gave the kids baths? Maybe wife would take the kids to the park, and while they were there, I could go get the paper?





There 4 year old girl began her silver-tongued control of the conversation. She started with misdirection. She started asking a million questions, initially rehashing what had already been discussed. ';Daddy, are you going to get the paper?'; ';When are you going?'; ';Miss Colleen has extra stuff so when kids forget, she has stuff for them.'; ';The other day, Marissa didn't have a milk jug, so Miss Colleen gave her one.'; Then, after a brief pause, when our minds were already reeling from the information overload, she blurted out, ';When Mommy takes us to the park, could you just go to the store and get a newspaper then?';





It's subtle, but notice how she took the ';maybe'; that I gave her in the beginning, and matter-of-factly turned it into a definite, when she said ';when';. She also ended the statement with a yes or no question. She was like a lawyer at trial, asking a presumably innocent question, but partnering it with an assumption that she was trying to make everyone else believe. If I had answered ';yes'; that I could do that, I would also have been answering ';yes'; to going to the park. Amazed, I carefully answered, ';We'll see.';





Unfazed, she smoothly, flawlessly shifted her offensive to wife, again relying heavily on the misdirection.





';Mommy took us to the park last time, right Mommy.';





';Uh-huh,'; Wife replied pushing around some food on her plate.





';Remember we played on the swings?';





';Yup,'; Wife replied not looking up from her plate.





';So can we do that again tonight?'





';Uh-huh.';





I was AMAZED. Girl had just pulled the old trick/joke:


';What do you put on your pillow?';


';Head.';


';What do you sleep on at night?';


';Bed.';


';What do you take out of a toaster?';


';Bread.';


';No, toast, silly!';





On hearing Wife's last ';uh-uh';, daughter lit up. She started babbling, all excited. Wife still wasn't quite listening. I called to her, ';woman鈥oman!'; to kind of snap her out of it. She did, and I had to explain to her that she just agreed to take the kids to the park. She quickly corrected daughter, and informed her that she had not realized what she had said.





This is what I think: Adults can get away with giving ambiguous answers like ';maybe'; then follow up with conversation as to what that maybe would be, gettingthe kid's hopes high (it's a 4 year old we are talking about) then turn around and blame the kid for assuming you would do what you said you MAY do. Which I think it's pretty cruel





Not only that the mom did say yes and then wen't back on her word saying ';she wasn't paying attention'; if you crashed your car and you excuse was that ';you weren't paying attention'; how would that fly?





I think the kid did learn a lesson here and it was not to get her hopes high and not to trust adults.Your patience please, it's the 4 year old's fault, she confused me!?
If you want my honest opinion, knowing that your 4yo is the manipulative genius you describe her as being, it's not her fault. Knowing that she does what she does, you need to keep your mind on the conversation at hand, and pull some misdirection yourselves.





If it comes to a conversation like that, it's hard to do, but don't immediately give her a straight answer, use 'maybe', 'we'll see', etc and avoid any form of positive action, such as nodding or the 'uh-huh' which kids take as a positive response.





You can't blame your daughter for your wife not keeping her mind on the conversation. That's your doing, not hers.Your patience please, it's the 4 year old's fault, she confused me!?
i have four kids and they can be manipulating but the most important thing in this whole situation is that YOU and YOUR WIFE are a team. If you want to raise a well rounded young girl then you need to back up your wife and your wife back you up.


Of course saying maybe does not fly with kids, its either yes or yes with kids- lol. My advice to you is set a schedule on when to take them to the park so there is no more battles of please, please, manipulate, begging etc. That works for us!
Kids learn manipulation very early and they can get very very good at it. Luckily, if we understand this, it's not difficult to see what they're going for and 'head it off at the pass', so to speak.





The problems come when parents assume that little Jimmy or Bessie are innocent angels with no guile in them. Some parents stick to this fantasy even after years of being manipulated into giving kids everything they want. Sadly there's no class teaching parents to see kids as they are and there's no course teaching anti-manipulation methods.





When a kid does what yours did to you, all you can do is cut it off right away. Responding ';Probably not'; or ';I don't think so'; is better than ';we'll see'; when the question first comes up. Then it's important to remember and ask your partner about it before the kid has chance to manipulate the conversation. No one in your scenario was at fault. This stuff just happens when parents don't team up to prevent a potential 'threat' and don't pay close attention to what a kid is saying while he/she is laying the minefield.
How cute! I agree adults can get away with the obscured responses. My mother would just give a simple ';Yes,'; or ';No'; when I tried asking questions and then when I wanted validation, she wouldn't explain anything. My nephew is also very manipulative. Everything to him is negotiable because my sister and brother-in-law think they can always bargain and work out some kind of deal rather than being firm and setting rules.