How to manipulate a parent
/Warning: The following very cool material is morally dubious.
I hold frequent video chats with classes. (If you’re an educator, find how here.) For the classes consisting of high school students, I offer to teach them to get what they want from their parents. When I bring up the subject, though, some of the students turn bashful; I imagine these are the ones who won’t get indicted as adults. Other kids seem a bit too eager.
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But there’s more than madness to this method. It reveals some of the essentials of successful argument. So here you go:
Wait until the parent is relaxed, at ease, feeling in control, and maybe slightly lubricated. (I don’t actually mention cocktails, but that’s a given.) Find the parent in the easily manipulatable state that behaviorists call cognitive ease.
Sidle up and say this:
“Hey, I just wanted to tell you—and I never get a chance to say this enough—I think you’re a great parent. Plus, I have living proof…and that’s me! I’m an AP student, I haven’t broken any laws I’ll admit to, and I’m becoming the sort of adult you can be proud of. Obviously, genetics have something to do with it. But so does great parenting. Thank you.”
What good does this do? For one thing, the kid can learn what kind of parent she has; it’s a great experiment in audience research.
One species of parents—call them the transactional type—will say:
“Okay, what do you want?”
Young person, pay heed! It’s essential that you simply look hurt. DO NOT ask for a new car or for permission to attend the parentless party on Saturday. This is not the time. The most successful arguments engage kairos, the art of timing, patience, and opportunity. (I’ll cover kairos in posts to come.)
To prepare your audience for persuasion, you need to establish your ethos, or reputation. Frankly, your average teenage ethos has work to do. Every parent, including me, looks at his kid and sees an 8-year-old. My own offspring have grown into adults with responsible jobs; one even has a child of his own. Yet when my “kids” come “home” for Christmas, they instantly become 8, dropping their stuff on the floor, raiding the refrigerator, and lusting after presents.
To me, George will always be 8 years old.
A teenager still living at home needs to create an adult ethos: educated, caring, and responsible. Especially responsible. This doesn’t have to be literally true. In rhetoric, your audience just has to believe it. (Here’s where the genuinely good kids look nervous, bless them.)
So, don’t ask for anything yet. Wait for your ethos to catch up with, and even pass, your age.
A second kind of parents—law-and-order disciplinarians—will ask:
“What did you do?”
Again, look hurt. Admit to nothing. Hey, you’re having a moment here! With any luck, you might inspire a little guilt. A false accusation is itself a crime! (Just don’t say that aloud.)
The third sort of parents, the easily entertained, will laugh.
“Nice flattery!”
This is the worst kind of parent, and I was one. My son George knew that if he could make me laugh, he could get away with murder. Never mind ethos, he would go straight for pathos, changing my mood to make me even persuasion-vulnerable. Parenting manuals should warn people like me about kids like George.
Along with a bold and daring fashion sense, 15-year-old George had a strategic sense of humor.
Is there a fourth type, parents who get all tearyeyed and gush about how proud they are? Maybe. Personally, I’ve never met them.
The moral of this technique (if you allow me to use the word “moral” for the cynical manipulation of the very loins from which one sprang): Persuasion is rarely instantaneous. It takes thought, preparation, research, and patience. Plus a willingness to treat one’s family like a scientist with a lab full of fruit flies and unstable chemicals.
It’s a dark art we’re dealing with here. My job is to teach it; your job is to use it without blowing things up.
