Don’t argue with hungry toddlers
Now there are two types of people in the world:
People who don’t think adults should argue with toddlers
People who know better
Now I’ll be clear that I believe that all arguments should be respectful, principled, and primarily be in pursuit of truth. I believe those same rules apply to all arguments with toddlers and any gloating by the victor should result in an instant timeout. I will also shamelessly confess that my win rate in arguments with toddlers is at best 33.333% .
This is because they have a superior ability to not be swayed by what I would call facts and anchor simply on what they want and tune into their feelings about it. I have lost arguments to such devastating lines as:
“Daddy you can’t control me” (when I asked my 4yr old to close the door)
“Daddy you still can’t control me” (when I asked the same child to eat her food)
“Daddy I don’t know what that word means….how can I agree if I don’t know what it means” (so many times)
“Well Mommy gives us more snacks and doesn’t ask us so much about hurrying up to take our shower” (when debating if Father’s day should get as much hype as Mother’s day)
“Noooooo”
Despite my frequent defeats I persist because the outcomes of these arguments are a resounding success for my professional life. In fact it feels like a life hack to take what I am learning from these failed arguments and applying them to my work. For example my daughter said “daddy you can’t control me” so often in a 72hr period that I ran out of counterpoints and eventually saw she was right. This set me on the path to learning ‘communicating with complete candor > control and = more possibilities’ which I think is part of a wonderful formula for leading teams (more on that another day).
So imagine my complete delight when at 730am my 3 year old broke into tears because he changed his mind about wanting milk…. and now did not want to eat wet cereal! So as I began to explain my highly considered view on the matter, only to see fact after fact fall from my mouth on deaf ears, my one calm brain cell asked him to just take a bite and then explain to me again what he wanted. Three mouthfuls later, the tears were gone, an agreement to swap out 20% of the cereal was reached and the fan was switched on to dry the remaining moist cereal, and I was so proud of myself!
I was proud of myself firstly for the 5minutes of satisfied silence that followed and later (once the caffeine kicked in) for the reminder to never ignore the feeling behind the thing. We live in a world of work where we’re told to make rational arguments and act like logic always holds sway but a hungry child is like a stressed out colleague or a frustrated contractor or a team mate that doesn’t know if they can trust you. They will interpret your words and actions through the lens of the feeling behind their thing - hunger, stress, frustration, trust- and it pays to speak to that. We’re human so we don’t often directly reveal what that thing is but if you’re on the lookout it is usually there in plain sight begging for the question to be asked.
I think we often don’t speak to it because we get lost in what we think it means about us (“I am stressing them out” “they will get frustrated with me” “”why don’t they trust me”) and we’re not sure of the words to use. But what if it meant nothing about you or you knew it would work out perfectly, or you reminded yourself that having all the information (emotional, intellectual) helps with making the best decisions….what would you do then? I think you’d do what we all do so well with those we care most about which is to acknowledge, ask, and only then make up our minds about what the ‘right’ answer is. I’d encourage you to try it with those you work with and share in some new possibilities