People, children included, learn by doing. Children are constantly learning new things about themselves and about their world. One thing they are working on all the time is learning what is okay and what is not--in other words, what they can get by with. They are constantly testing their limits, not only their own capabilities but your tolerance. They seem to have a need for boundaries, and they derive a sense of security from knowing what those boundaries are.

Children will test you to see what the limits are. They have a number of time-honored strategies they use in this testing. I'm calling them games children play. It's useful for parents and other supervising adults to recognize these and to avoid being caught up in playing the child's game. Until the child has tested you and found out if you really mean what you say, the child really has no idea of the true limits. I think it is most likely that the usual thing is for parents to say one thing and enforce another. This can always be expected to confuse the child.

One form of testing is to see if you will fall for the responsibility routine where the child makes you responsible to be sure he gets the information about the limits. For example, he may not be able to see or hear you well enough to understand that he can or cannot do something. Of course, the parent who is hooked on fairness could not expect the child to obey an order the child cannot hear. Children seem to know this and to capitalize on it regularly.

I remember when my daughter was a little girl about eight years old. She loved to go to the swimming pool during the summer. We thought this was good for her and they gave swimming lessons there so my wife took her every weekday to the pool. Since there was good supervision we felt it would be okay for my wife to go about her business for the time our daughter was to stay in the pool. When the time was up my wife would go to the pool and signal our daughter to come out so they could go home.

This all sounds reasonable and it should have worked well. However, our daughter had other ideas. The pool was fenced in and my wife could get only so close to the pool, but that was close enough to wave at our daughter. It took a long time for my wife to realize whenever she waved, our daughter would just happen to be on the other side of the pool and looking the other way. When my wife went to the other side of the pool, it would just happen that our daughter was then on the other side of the pool. It was very subtle, and it took a while for my wife to see the connection. Naturally, while this hide-and-seek game was being played our daughter was getting to stay longer in the pool. She was very good at just happening to be looking the other way at the right time.

Finally, my wife told me of her frustration in getting our daughter out of the pool. We put our heads together and decided we would make it our daughter's responsibility to see my wife's signal when it was time to go, rather than it being my wife's responsibility to attract her attention. We informed our daughter of this and told her that henceforth if she did not see my wife's signal and come out of the pool the first time, she would not be allowed to go to the pool the following day. Naturally, our daughter set up a howl about how unfair that was and that she couldn't be expected to see my wife every time when she signaled. We were aware of how she had no trouble seeing my wife well enough to be on the other side of the pool whenever my wife arrived to take her home, and we didn't fall for this little game. We stuck to our guns.

Of course, our daughter tested us to see if we meant what we said. The following day, she just happened always to be on the other side of the pool whenever my wife tried to signal. We calmly told her she couldn't go swimming the next day and stuck to it without getting emotionally involved in our daughter's complaints about how unfair we were. She also would miss a swimming lesson and she thought this would sway us to allow her to go anyway. No dice, however. She had to stay home the next day, and missed that day's lesson.

We went through this with her seeing the signal easily some days and just happening to be on the other side of the pool on other days. We were consistent with our responses to these kinds of behavior and kept telling her that it may not be fair, but nevertheless, she was going to have to see the signal or miss swimming the next day. It was not at all surprising that soon she was able to see the signal and come out of the pool whenever my wife arrived to take her home. After that, it all went very well for the rest of the summer. She couldn't believe we meant business until we proved it to her, however.

I think this is a good example of how children will work parents into being responsible for things which should really be the child's responsibility. If you think you have to give your child every benefit of every doubt, you won't be able to accomplish this. Children are very smart and very tricky about working parents into this one. You might consider what is most important when you are confronted with issues like this. You could emphasize fairness and never take the chance of treating your child unfairly. Or, you could teach your child that you are not an easy target to be manipulated through methods like this. I won't try to tell you what you should do, but I would like to add that the world in which your child will be living is seldom fair. It might be a good idea to help the child learn to deal with such a world effectively.

The game of "That's not fair" is one which children use with practically everyone they see. Children can get very indignant when they are not treated fairly. However, they will be the first to use the fairness idea to be able to get what they want. My own children used to try this on me until they learned that it wouldn't work. I had a convenient response to the child's complaint "That's not fair." I used the standard reply "I don't have to be fair. I'm Daddy." If parents insist on being fair, they can be worked into all sorts of things that may not be good for their children. If you can take the attitude that you don't have to be fair, you will be able to handle many of the tests your children give you. I think it is probably more important to make decisions concerning your child's life and behavior that are in your best judgment the best thing for your child than it is for you to be fair.

I think most of the manipulative games children play with us have the fairness component in them. Often, you may make a promise or some commitment about what you will do or agree on in the future. You might tell your child that tomorrow you will take him to the zoo, for instance. This is a sort of commitment you make and you may intend to honor it at the time you make it. You can count on your child remembering it and holding you to it when the time arrives. If it's raining or someway inconvenient or impossible to honor the commitment, your child will complain with words like "You said we would." This tells you that you are trying to go back on your word, which we all seem to think is a bad thing. If you do, you are not being fair and you are not being honorable. Abstract concepts such as fair and honorable can tie you up if you slavishly try always to follow them.

This is a good way to get yourself into agreeing to or doing something that may be bad or even harmful to your child. Remember, I advocate trying to do what is best for your child rather than doing what your child wants you to do. Often, you will find those two things incompatible. If you fall into the manipulative game your child plays, you may just find you have agreed to something you feel very uneasy about.

Social pressure is another tool children use on their parents. Most parents want their children to be popular and have friends. They want their children to develop peer relationships and develop social skills. They may even want their children to be able to do what everyone else is doing, and this is where children devise another game. There will probably be some things everyone else is doing that you may not feel is good for your child. When your child confronts you with the reason "All the other kids get to do it," you will feel the pressure to let your child do it merely because of that statement. You may reason that it must be okay and you are worrying too much if all the other kids are getting to do it.

It might be a good idea to realize that all the other kids may not be getting to do it and your child is just telling you this to work you into agreeing. Contrary to what we would like to believe, children do lie. Also, all the other kids' parents may be getting the same line and they may be thinking it must be okay for the same reason. No one thinks to check with the other kids' parents to see if they really do approve of the thing in question.

I don't think it is going to damage your child's personality for you to disagree and fail to let the pressure from the other kids influence your decisions about your child. It may be better for your child to miss out on some of those things the other kids are getting to do and possibly miss out on getting involved in some things that could have serious consequences for your child. That doesn't sound too bad to me.

Another kind of game our kids will play involves lying without seeming to lie. One that my children used to try was to get technical with me when I asked them about something. For instance, I might ask my son if he had been riding his bike today even though he had been grounded from use of his bike for a week. He would try to avoid getting into trouble by lying without seeming to lie. The way he would do this was to latch onto a word of the question and use it literally. In this case, he would say "No, I haven't been riding my bike today." This would be literally true, but the missing element was the fact that he had been riding his bike each day prior to this before I came home from work. Since this was during the grounding period, he was violating the grounding. He was never very good at this ruse, however. He tended to put a slight emphasis on the word he was using to keep from lying. In this case he would say "No, I haven't been riding my bike today," with emphasis on the word "today."

This wasn't a very hard one to spot. Our children tried this one often and we developed a description of it. We called it "getting technical." Children will get technical with you to work you into believing them or allowing them to do something. When they get technical with you, they can tell you only part of the truth about something and feel they are being honest with you. Of course, if you keep falling for this, they will learn it works and they will keep using it as a way to manipulate you.

Yet another way they have of seeing if they can get you to agree to something you might not want to agree to is to apply time pressure to get you to make a decision before you have time to think it over well. The words they use for this are "I've gotta know right now." They may vary this one by adding some social pressure in the form of the words "They're waiting on me." Most parents don't want to keep their child's friends waiting so they may agree to the child's request without considering all the implications. This could cause some bad decisions to be made.

Again, I use my own children as examples. They tried this one on me for a while until I developed my standard response to the time pressure request. I always responded to this kind of request by saying "If you must have an answer now, the answer is `No' but if I have some time to think it over the answer may be different." They soon learned I meant business on this and developed a very different approach. They would say "Daddy, I don't need an answer now, but..." and then make their request for sometime in the future. When they did this I always tried to make the answer "Yes" when the time came, whenever I felt it would not be harmful to them. However, I learned never to make a commitment in advance. They could not use "You said we could" because we all knew I never made promises in advance. They taught me so thoroughly that to this day I very rarely make commitments for the future.

Stalling is a tactic children seem to know by instinct. When it's time to get ready for bed, or quit playing and go home, there is always one more thing that has to be done first. They learn to use this tactic because they are usually rewarded by a few more minutes of play. Sometimes they can stretch it to another half hour, or even longer.

Children learn early about the power of the potty. They know the possibility of a mess on the floor is a sure way to get a parent's attention. We were amused one day, watching a little girl about four having lunch with her father in a restaurant. They had been there for some time, and she had finished eating. She chatted on for a while without getting much response from her father. Then she got down and began walking around the table, still chattering. Her father said, "Sit up in your chair, they don't like you walking around." She didn't sit in her chair, and he said nothing more, but continued to ignore her. Finally after walking around the table some more she said, "I have to go to the potty." That got his attention. She informed him he had to come along and wait for her outside the door, so he got up and went with her. I think that incident showed among other things that it's important to respond to your children when they are behaving well, rather than making it necessary for them to play games to get our attention.

My daughter taught me a good lesson when she was seven or eight years old. We had gone on a shopping trip with both children and our daughter was obviously bored. She finally said something to the effect that she was going to throw up. But we weren't quite ready to leave and she looked all right, so we finished our business before starting home. Just as we drove in the driveway she did throw up, right down my collar. She was in the back seat directly behind me. That got my attention.

Things like this are what makes "I need to go to the bathroom" such a powerful weapon. While children are young enough still to have precarious control, it may not be just a threat. I guess that is one game we pretty much have to go along with until they outgrow that stage. You always have the option of calling their bluff. However, you will find it is much more important to you they don't wet their pants in public than it is to them. When people don't have much to lose it gives them a lot of control. If you want to stop the control game of the potty, you will have to risk calling their bluff when you think it is just a manipulative behavior. Don't forget it is a good idea to give your children a lot of your attention without their having to trick you into doing it.