How to negotiate with your young child as if your life depended on it
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Former FBI hostage negotiator Chris Voss made headlines recently when he told the media: "If you can handle a desperate kidnapper, you can handle a five-year-old who refuses to eat their broccoli."
Voss, author of , didn’t mean you have to be an expert tactician with over two decades experience dealing with gang leaders and terrorists to manage relations with a small child whose favourite word is ‘no’.
Rather, he explained, negotiation at its core is about understanding human behaviour — and this applies whether you are dealing with a bank robber or a toddler. Children, he observed, are just ‘tiny humans with big emotions’ and they need to feel ‘heard, understood and involved in the decision-making process’.
With negotiation in mind — and specifically how to do it with young children — we asked two Irish experts for their take. Is negotiation with children possible? Is it important to do? What are their top tips for being a good negotiator with your child? And what do they think of Voss’s strategies, which the former FBI agent groups under the heading ‘tactical empathy’?
Chris Place, accredited psychotherapist and counsellor with the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (iacp.ie), says parents need to tailor negotiation to their child’s developmental age. “Between two and seven, children are egocentric — they find it very hard to understand the perspective of others. From about seven, they’re beginning to develop the ability to see multiple viewpoints.”
On the morning Place and I speak, he has just been reminded of this by his two-and-a-half-year-old. “He decided, as we were having breakfast, that he wanted to play with Play-Doh. So, with negotiation in mind, I said, we can make one dinosaur — and then we’ll have breakfast. And he said ‘Yeah!’ So we made one, and I said ‘Ok, breakfast time’, and he said ‘No, Daddy’.
His toddler is not doing anything wrong. “It’s his developmental stage. He’s focused on his own view of the universe and can’t recognise my needs.”
Place believes strongly in the value of helping children learn to negotiate. “They learn to cooperate with each other. They learn compromise and respect.” But he also emphasises that not everything is up for negotiation. “We need clear boundaries within the family, especially when it comes to respecting each other and safety. These are not up for negotiation — if siblings are hitting each other, we’re not going to ‘negotiate’ and say ‘you can hit the foot’.”
Negotiation has its place however when it comes to ‘Will we tidy up the toys before or after dinner?’ or ‘What game will we play?’ With negotiation, Place explains, you give the child choice — so they have a sense of control. A golden rule for negotiating well with children is keeping language simple and clear — and being clear about the compromise and the limits, and following through on these.
“For example, if it’s bedtime we’re negotiating, we might compromise and say ‘OK, you can stay up for another 15 minutes’ — but then in 15 minutes it has to be bedtime.”
Voss, the ex-FBI negotiator, advises labelling your child’s emotions to ‘build a bridge of understanding’. He also uses a tactic he calls ‘mirrors’ — essentially repeating the last few words your child says. So if he or she screams ‘No! I hate that!’ you would say ‘Oh, you hate that?’ This, says Voss, demonstrates to your child that you are listening, and it encourages them to elaborate.
To resolve conflict, Place says we should first understand the other’s position, which he acknowledges is hard to do. “It’s not that you’re agreeing with their position but you are learning to empathise. When we’re negotiating with our children, if we can really understand their values – and if we show them we value their opinions and positions – we build trust.”
He likes Voss’s idea of re-stating those last words your child says to you. “When you show your child you’re listening, they’re more inclined to keep talking — really important for teens. And in inviting more information to be given, you’re opening up dialogue.”
Place points out that negotiation is a complex cognitive skill and it takes work, depending on your child’s developmental stage and what skills they’ve learned around impulsivity, delaying gratification and emotional regulation. He recommends explaining the rationale for everything you ask of them.
“It’s not ‘Do as you’re told’, but ‘Let me explain why I’m telling you to do this’. When children understand the reasons behind our requests, it can make them more open to compromise.
“And use positive reinforcement. Praise any willingness to negotiate and compromise. Say, ‘I’m really proud of you’.”
Ray O’Neill, assistant professor in psychotherapy at DCU, says his heart goes out to any parent who feels their child is holding them hostage. “It’s really important parents have a position of power and authority. You cannot make children the boss. But you have to lead respectfully. Don’t try only to be liked by your child — do try to be respected.”
O’Neill cites the cookie test, conducted over 50 years ago in the US on more than 600 children, as an illustration of children being involved — or not — in self-negotiation. Left alone in a room with an array of cookies, the young children were told they could have one right away — or two if they waited some minutes. Some immediately ate the cookie. “Others self-negotiated — tried to find a way to enjoy it, yet wait: ‘Maybe I can take a little nibble?’
“They were learning patience, the difference between immediate and delayed gratification, and that choices have consequences — ‘if I eat it now, I won’t get another’.”
O’Neill advises against micromanaging children – it takes away their agency. A better approach is to ask questions that focus on responsibilities and consequences. “Like, ‘How will tomorrow in school be, if you don’t prepare for your test this afternoon?’ You’re giving them agency, so they can negotiate within themselves around the consequences. Let them have the experience because experience is the wisest teacher of all.”
He recommends letting each party see where the other is coming from. “So that kids don’t see you as a killjoy or a spoilsport, but that you have their interest, or the family’s interest, or even just your own interest in mind — and own that. For example, say ‘Not bringing your coat to school will have consequences if it rains — you may get sick; and consequences for me — I’ll have to come and pick you up’.”
We need to take into account that children don’t just think only of right now — they also think only of themselves. “As we grow, our worlds and our timelines should get bigger. So we’re not just thinking about tomorrow — and we’re not just thinking of ourselves but of others, our friends, family, and community. Remind your child ‘if you’re on the football team and you grab the ball every time, it’s not going to be a great team’.”
O’Neill also recommends planning negotiations ahead with children rather than having them in the moment. “Negotiation is more difficult in the moment — it’s so live, so raw. Have that conversation about the bedtime routine on Saturday afternoon rather than at ten on Monday night.”
In families with children of multiple ages, O’Neill says negotiations must take into account a sense of equity, rather than equality. “Equity’s when everyone is treated fairly in a different manner, whereas equality is treating everyone the same, which you can’t do because everybody’s a different age.
“If negotiations can be individualised and you can be transparent about that — everyone sees the fairness then when different negotiations are made with different kids.”
O’Neill likes Voss’s use of ‘calibrated questions’, where instead of asking ‘Can you please put your toys away?’, Voss would ask: ‘How do you think we should clean up?’ Voss says these questions ‘engage [children] in the process, making them more likely to cooperate because they feel it’s their idea’.
O’Neill encourages adjusting questions to invite consideration of consequences — ‘What happens if you don’t go to bed at 9pm?’ is very different from ‘Go to bed now; it’s 9pm.’
It's not about overpowering your child, said Voss in a recent interview. "It’s about understanding them, guiding them – making them feel like they’re in control while you subtly steer the ship".