The Myth of the Manipulative Child
12/25/07

(John is on vacation this week. The following column first appeared in 1985.)

Of all the myths associated with children and their upbringing, one of the most prevalent and damaging is the Myth of the Manipulative Child. This was brought to mind during a conversation I had with the mother of a 5-year-old girl.

Mandy took things from her parents without permission. Most of the things she took belonged to her mother—makeup, jewelry, and other accessories. Occasionally, however, Mandy took from her father things like chewing gum and nail clippers. When something turned up missing, her parents confronted Mandy.

“Did you take it?” they would ask.

“No,” she would reply.

At this point, the game of “Scotland Yard” would commence. Her parents would follow a trail of clues straight to where Mandy had secreted the missing item. This might take anywhere from three minutes to three days. After her parents found the loot, Mandy would confess. Her explanation was always the same: “I just wanted to look at it.”

“But why did you hide it?” her parents would plead. “Why didn’t you put it back?”

“I don’t know,” Mandy would reply, tearing up.

“Why didn’t you just ask us for it in the first place?”

Once again, Mandy would say “I don’t know” and begin to cry.

Mandy’s parents didn’t know what to think, say, or do about all this. Sometimes they were angry at Mandy, and sometimes they worried that she took things from them because she felt unloved. Eventually, they went to see a therapist who came to the conclusion that Mandy was “manipulating” her parents in order to control them and be the center of their attention.

My dictionary defines manipulate as “to manage or control (someone else) shrewdly and deviously for one’s own profit or purposes.” So Mandy shrewdly conspired to control her parents, did she? Hogwash! A child Mandy’s age has no more insight into her own behavior than the moon has cheese. Insightfulness and, therefore, the ability to truly manipulate others doesn’t fully emerge until early adolescence, at best.

Mandy wasn’t plotting to take over the family. Fact is, she felt just as helpless, frustrated and guilty about the problem as did her parents. Furthermore, when she said she didn’t know why she took things, she was telling the truth. She took things “because.”

Like Mandy and her parents, the so-called manipulative child and her manipulated parents are trapped in a vicious cycle involving some aspect of the child’s behavior. The behavior itself is rarely all that abnormal. What’s abnormal is the power and persistence of the issue in the family. It’s this issue that takes control of the family, not the child. Unfortunately, the Myth of the Manipulative Child has acquired tremendous credibility with adults, both lay and professional. The consequence of this unintended scapegoating is that children suffer blame, guilt and punishment for problems they cannot, without help, solve.

When a problem such as Mandy’s has a stranglehold on a family, the parents must take the upper hand and in so doing demonstrate their authority, defuse the issue, and remove the child’s need to continue misbehaving. Although some form of punishment may, in certain instances, be appropriate, punishment alone will change nothing. In some way, the child must be given a large share of the responsibility for solving the problem. The manner in which this is done depends upon many things, but here’s how we did it with Mandy.

First, her parents stopped playing Scotland Yard. They put a small box, labeled “Mom and Dad Things” in Mandy’s room. Next, they redefined the problem, calling it “curiosity” (a positive word) instead of “stealing” or “taking” (negative words).

“Mandy,” they said, “you have our permission to be curious about our things. From now on, when you take something of ours to look at or play with, just put it in this box when you’re done.”

If something turned up missing, they went into Mandy’s room and looked in the box. Usually, it was there. If not, instead of asking questions (the first move in Scotland Yard), they made a statement to Mandy such as “Mandy, I need my earrings back, please” and lo and behold, Mandy would give them back! Ultimately, Mandy stopped going into her parents` room altogether unless she had their permission. And all returned to normal in Mandyland. For the sake of all the other Mandys in the world, the Myth of the Manipulative Child needs to be put to rest.