Is My Child Manipulating Me? In a Word: Yes.

May 17, 2022- I hear this quite a bit from parents of teenagers who struggle. Whether the behavior is self-harming/cutting, suicidality, negotiating, debating, school refusal, complaints of anxiety attacks, and others, the experience of the parent oftentimes is they are being manipulated into:

• giving their child attention,

• raising alarms and setting crisis interventions into motion,

• letting their boundaries go squishy,

• letting their child stay home from school,

• walking on eggshells to avoid emotional blowouts,

• garnering sympathy and coddling,

• and the list goes on. 

But this is not a bad thing.  

Here’s what I tell the parents I work with—we are all manipulative. We are always manipulating our environment, partners, children, employers, and almost every aspect of our life. It’s how we’ve survived as a species. We manipulate. Manipulating gets our needs met. 

Feeling manipulated doesn’t feel good. But it doesn’t mean that’s what our teenagers set out to do. Sometimes it is. Wheedling, nagging, negotiating, sulking - these are intentional behaviors to change our minds, wear us down, and make us give in to their wants. But even then, that’s not a bad thing. It’s a poor, fumbling attempt at self-advocacy. They haven’t learned the finer arts of communication, bargaining, and delayed gratification. These interactions with our teenagers are prime opportunities for humor and conversations about meta-communication, that is, communicating about communicating.

We can enter into these debates with spirit and gusto, make it a sparring match, challenge our kids to sharpen their word and logic swords and make their case with the finer unarguable points. We can talk about how we talk to each other, and how to get our needs met in more relational, less annoying ways. We can take the time to help them bear the pressure and urgencies they feel when needs, wants, and desires aren’t getting gratified right this very moment. A short lesson on emotion regulation! 

The etymology and history of the word manipulation comes from a method of digging ore, with roots in French and Latin meaning “hand” and “to fill,” gradually coming to mean “skillful handling of objects” and then eventually to the “handling or managing of persons” mostly for our own advantage. Looking at roots of words is important because we can get down into the spirit of the word.

Look at your hands. Think about how they work all the time to manipulate your environment. In fact, my hands are typing these words right now to manipulate you, the reader, into having a different perspective of your child’s behavior. My words, through my fingers and hands manipulating the keyboard, are an attempt to handle you, to get you over to my way of thinking. Writers do this all the time. As do musicians, artists, and parents. Think about all the ways we work to handle and manage our children. We’re likely to be more skilled and subtle about it than our children are. But make no mistake, that’s what we are doing. 

A closer look

So yes, we are being manipulated by our kids. But let’s take a closer look at some of the behaviors I’ve listed above. The child who self-harms, for example. In my experience, these behaviors have been going on long before the parents discover it. So right there this should tell us that this isn’t a bid for attention in the way that we might think. Yes, it is a bid for attention. But, like suicidality, it’s a bid for help. If they have a depressive episode, an anxiety attack, and can’t bring themselves to go to school—all of these point to a need that they are trying to get met.  

Often, we feel manipulated by these behaviors because once we’ve turned our attention to our kids, they feel better, calm down, and sometimes even become happy. What was that? we wonder. Were they just playing us? No. They needed you. You responded. Their needs were met. So they feel better. They get validated. 

If you’ve read any of my other postings, you’ll know that it is my premise that validation is the basis for all of our relationships and many of our behaviors. If you pay attention, you’ll begin to notice that in any given moment, what you are attempting to do, is to have someone relate to you in such a way that you feel—all the way through and down to your core—that you have been heard, seen, accepted, valued, and loved for who you are in that moment as you are. That you matter in this moment.  

The teenager, human being that they are, comes to us in all their emotionally intense glory.

• “Can you be here with me even if I’m angry and spiteful?” they ask.  Yes, I hear, see, accept, value, and love you in your spitefulness. 

• “Devastated and at the end of my rope?” Yes, I fully accept you in this moment and you don’t have to find your way out of it for me to keep loving you. I’m not going to abandon you because you’re too much in this moment. I understand your devastation. It makes sense to me.  

• “Have I disappointed you? Failed you? Disillusioned you? If so, can you find your way back to your Ground of Being to be here with me? Because I’ve lost my way, too. I’ve disappointed myself, failed myself, and life feels like nothing but disillusionment.” Yes, I’m right here, and I’m not going to abandon you because I’m disappointed. You’re still worthy, and you still matter to me—more than you know.

Put it in perspective 

When a teenager has skipped school, been caught shoplifting, betrayed a confidence, failed a class, or anything that has us rolling our eyes, breathing deep to keep from losing our temper—and they come to us with their tail tucked between their legs, shame-faced, and want to make it up to us somehow—sure, they’re manipulating us in that moment. They want forgiveness. They want another chance. They want to be let off the hook. They don’t want to feel guilty anymore. They want to be accepted by us. They want to be assured that they still have a place in the family, the community, and the world.

Can’t you see yourself in the same situation? You’ve forgotten your partner’s birthday or your anniversary; you got fired; you got drunk when you said you wouldn’t; you lost your temper; whatever. Your tail tucked between your legs, you come forward to try and make it better.  

You’re being manipulated by your kid. Thank god! It means they care, want to figure it out, and want you to love them even so. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there?