Manipulation Mitigation

ìManipulateî is really just another word for ìmove around.î We all have a very real need to be able move the things and people around in our lives to achieve some sense of control and mastery. As children, this kind of manipulation is experimental. If I spill my Cheerios, mommy will come to me. As adults, hopefully, our manipulation has become more flexibleóweíve learned to balance our desire to control our environment with the needs of others and with the reality that not all things can or should be controlled.

For adolescents, however, their developmentally-driven quest for independence can make manipulation a disruptive and deceitful modus operandi. In these cases, their desire for control is not balanced with a mature sense of the needs of others. In their awkward but hormonally and neurologically driven quest for a new level of autonomy, they want complete control of their world, and that world includes you!

The teenagerís drive for independence is often at odds with a parentís desire to control and manage the childís behavior. This stark difference in agendas can escalate manipulation from the relatively innocent pleading or pouting of childhood to the splitting, lying, and triangulation of adolescence. In most cases, fortunately, the impact of manipulative behavior can be mitigated with some simple strategies. When a personality disorder or other mental illness is a part of the manipulative behaviors, these strategies can still help, but should be implemented with the support of mental health professionals.

Be Clear

Being an adolescent is a little like taking your driverís training course in a Ferrari. Adolescents suddenly have new, high-performance neurological and emotional equipment but no idea how to use it! When they press the emotional gas pedal, itís zero to sixty in four seconds. Turn the wheel a little and theyíre spinning. Adolescents suddenly have the equipment to think and feel in new ways, but they donít have enough practice to control it. This can make processing social information a bit erratic and confusing for all involved. Sometimes when you think your adolescent is just being difficult or intentionally misunderstanding you, she is! Other times, though, sheís just confused. Fortunately, the same strategies can help in either case, since clarity is a good antidote for both manipulation and confusion.

• Practice Makes Perfect: Practicing communication with your spouse or friendóespecially on topics of boundaries, expectations, and consequencesó before communicating with your teen can help you trim down your message to its most effective form. This kind of feedback loop can help you identify ways in which your body language or your words may complicate or confuse your message. It will also help you establish your message in your own mind so that itís consistent and your memory of what was said is reliable.
• What Did I Say?: A technique widely used by therapists and teachers is to check for understanding. Like active listening, where the therapist repeats back to the client what was previously said, you can check for understanding by asking your teen to repeat back what youíve said. This helps increase clarity and decreases the likelihood that your teen can credibly say, ìthatís not what I heard you say.î It also helps you refine your message and understand where you may not be communicating what you mean to.
• Looky Here: By writing down simple, clear bullet points, especially when communicating boundaries, expectations or consequences, you can back up what you originally verbalized in black and white. This not only helps you refine your message in the first place, it also leaves little room for misunderstandingóreal or feignedólater on.

Be Truthful

In the case of manipulation, itís best not to fight fire with fire. Good old wateróin this case honestyódoes the trick. One of the biggest mistakes parents make with children is offering empty threats in an attempt to end an argument, win a power struggle or scare a child out of misbehavior. We make irrational threats that weíre really in no position to enforce; threats we wonít or canít follow through on. This is bound to backfire quickly, teaching the child that we simply donít mean what we say.

When dishonesty is viewed broadly as the expression of anything we donít fully feel, intend or believe, most of us come to realize that weíre dishonest with some frequency. Even so-called ìmildî forms of dishonesty can powerfully undermine your effectiveness as a parent or caregiver with an adolescent. Many adolescents have a heightened, almost black and white moral sensitivityóespecially when it comes to others! While their own internal world is in profound chemical, neurological and physical chaos, they desperately look for things outside of themselves that are reliable and predictable and secure. The extent that you able to unconditionally meet those criteria is the extent that you are likely to retain some level of authority with your adolescent. Fostering trust and connection during a time of such internal disruption can go a long way with a teen.

Open communication helps make you someone your teen has to andóand wants toónavigate through rather than around. Making yourself a passageway instead of just an obstacle will encourage your adolescent to engage rather than manipulate. Good communication throughout your whole family system can also prevent triangulation, lying and splitting by ensuring that everyone is on the same page and has the same information. Strategies for encouraging communication include:

• Transparency: Parents who appropriately share their own doings and feelings, hopes and disappointments, are more likely to foster two-way conversation with their teens than those who just ask questions.
• Formal and Informal Conversation: Balancing formal opportunities for communicationósuch as a family conference, with casual opportunitiesósuch as asking relaxed questions while watching TV or walking the dog together, can encourage more and better communication with your teen.
• Everybody all the Time: Pursuing both one-on-one and whole-group communication with your family is certainly a challengeóespecially with a resistant teen in the mix. Doing so on a consistent, ongoing basis, however, can help build trust and reduce manipulation.

Follow Through

To some extent, this ties into the point about honesty. If you donít mean it, donít say itóespecially when it comes to ìif-thenî threats of consequences. A lack of follow through creates a sense of insecurity in the already chaotic world of a teen. That provides a reasonóin the mind of an adolescentóto dismiss you and work around you through manipulation. In order to follow through effectively, itís critical to articulate plans that are realistic and sensible.

During a parent/child conflict, itís tempting to construct consequences on the fly in the heat of the moment. This is usually more an attempt to end the fight by winning it than to actually articulate appropriate consequences. In these instances, we often escalate our threat of consequences in direct reaction to our childís escalating behavior during the argument. Adolescents learn to manipulate this escalation by provoking us to promise much more than we can deliveróìyouíre grounded for a year!î When this happens, teens learn that itís unlikely weíll follow through with a consequence of any kind.

Setting consequences in advance can help you avoid reaction. Another strategy is to give yourself some time and space after a conflict. Saying, ìIím not sure what to do here. I need some time to think through how to respond to this behavior,î is an honest way to buy yourself some time to create an appropriate response you can follow through with. Following through consistently with articulated plans and consequences can increase your credibility and decrease manipulation.