Little tyrants: they always get away with it

Children learn early.

They are not born knowing, but almost. Children learn very quickly to get what they want with manipulative behaviors. Whether they go to more or less will depend on how we deal with them.

Children learn early how to draw attention to and control their environment. In principle, these are normal behaviors that help them adapt to the environment. But the problem is served when, when analyzing these behaviors, they are associated with an accentuated degree of craving, caprice, getting away with it, wear and tear on the parents or grandparents to get what they want. The great perseverance and tenacity characteristic of childhood do the rest.

The mechanism that explains the operation of the manipulations is the same five-year-old child as for the adolescent: the difference lies in the elaboration of the responses. The child who begins by refusing to eat a bite to eat until he gets his favorite food is potentially the child who says that he does not study if they do not let him the computer or that if they do not buy such a thing they will find out.

How to recognize them.

They can be subtle, such as manipulation through affectivity - crocodile tears are a good example - or very obvious, such as disproportionate behaviors: the famous tantrums or manifest anger against the adult in question. And, although the younger the children, the more they use this type of blackmail, at two and three years they achieve a handling of non-verbal communication that some adults would already like.

The objective? Be guided by their own will and function in an environment that they consider inhospitable, where they are forced to eat what they do not want or to sleep when they want to play.

The environment is the one that guides them in the use, maintenance, and disposal of certain strategies: if the child knows that the people they are with are not going to achieve their goal, they are not going to try or they are going to be less insistent.

Harmless and unimportant behaviors, but that hide a great deal of manipulation.

The child who is still in the crib does not fall asleep if it is not by holding the hand of his parents or even sleeping with one of them. Sleep and fear give them the perfect excuse to retain their parents.

The selective child with food. The child who to eat has to have a display of means, such as the television on, all his stories on the table and the toys around, because if not, he will not even open his mouth.

The child who always decides. Where are we going, and who are we going with. He feels the master.

The oppositional child by system. He discovers that it does not work for him often and is undermining the parents.

How to tackle them.

It is not easy, but it helps to follow these guidelines:

Many parents go into a spiral of frequent anger almost without realizing it, for example to make them comply with the rules, or to sleep or eat, etc. and they do not know that it is one of the great ways that children have to manipulate them with some ease. And it is that adults are more inflexible in handling emotions, while children show us that they can cry and feel very bad and, in a matter of seconds, laugh and be great.

Are you raising a little tyrant? So they are:

• Banish exceptions. When they behave in a manipulative way, we do not allow them to achieve anything that they set out to do.
• Do not show weakness, because if not, they will grow. It will be necessary to be calm and sure, and this will make them give up the attempt soon.
• Don't wait for them to magically disappear on their own. Precisely the opposite will happen, it will become chronic.
• Try as soon as possible for them to learn to ask for and get what they want appropriately: when they are younger by creating predictable routines for them and when they are older, always explaining how they should do it and giving them clear clues to do so.
• Try to control yourself to prevent negative emotions from mediating the interaction and above all, do not make it easy for the child to handle them.
• Any excuse is good, even certain early experiences, such as being hospitalized for an intervention or illness, to learn to have the environment sensitized in a special way, and therefore, surrendered to their care and attention. This makes them more likely to manipulate the environment from then on.
• They start from a young age, when they discover the strength of what they say or do or do not do, and how the environment is mobilized.
• They are great observers.
• They experience a high level of frustration when they don't get what they want.
• They can be aggressive or, on the contrary, very affectionate if they are interested, very distant or very close.
• The snowball effect is produced, that is, they progressively increase their degree of tyranny for the simple reason that they work almost immediately.