How to win an argument with a toddler

>Personally speaking, I've never cared whether someone "validates" my emotions (and I often view such attempts as a bit patronizing or insincere). There's a problem to be solved, so let's attempt to solve it or at least compromise in good faith. The resolution to the problem is the most likely way to elicit positive emotions from me anyway.

I assume ads don't work on you either, right? You buy purely based on a logical calculus of requirements and whether a product is fit-for-purpose. I assume the obverse must also be true; if they invalidate your emotions it doesn't affect you either?

Imagine you lose your parking receipt and have to pay for the whole day. An attendant that says: "You were stupid for losing your ticket. It says in 1-ft letters at the entrance 'lost tickets pay full day.' We don't make exceptions for people that can't keep track of their stuff."

vs

"Damn dude, that sucks. You're not the only one today -- previous woman had her wallet stolen as well. Sorry I can't help, boss doesn't let me make exceptions"

Of course people validate other's emotions. You are affected by it. You only notice when someone does it poorly. Your perception of whether an exchange in which you had to compromise went well or not is highly colored by the attitude and "fluff" that the other person presented.

> and I often view such attempts as a bit patronizing or insincere

It shows up as well in modern parenting guidance, including long term studies claiming that parents who prioritize validation over correction produce children who end up not just more mature, confident, and self-assured, but also with much better adult relationships to those parents.

That said, as a parent myself, I can't help feeling some skepticism that there's a little reporting bias going on with this type of thing— that happy and successful adults report their parents affirmed and loved them unconditionally, and bitter and frustrated adults report resentment and dissatisfaction with how they were raised.

There's no question that kids need emotional safety at home, but it's also clear even in the relatively short term that allowing them the freedom to do whatever they want and then telling them afterward that none of the consequences are actually their fault and they can at any time walk away from anything that makes them feel sad or scared or overwhelmed is not the way either. Even things that should be non-negotiables like going to school have become subject to the whims of a child's day to day emotional state— are the teens who now take a "mental health day" for "self care" every time they oversleep going to eventually turn that around and be able to commit to a desk job? Or are they carrying those expectations into adulthood with them?

> I've never cared whether someone "validates" my emotions

I doubt you recall being 2yrs old vividly. Or even 3. Around this age feelings get really really big. There is no concept of emotional regulation yet. That's on the parents to teach. I don't know you, but you did say that solving problems feels good for you. Eventually, just working through problems would have taught you emotional regulation.

From my own experience with my toddler, validation doesn't always work. Sometimes feelings are just big, and we just need to be in them for a moment. That's also a nice lesson for them. It teaches them that big feelings come and go, which teaches them not to be afraid of big feelings.

I'm on a tangent now - the hardest part isn't necessarily helping them calm down. It's getting them to hear you and see you in the hard moments. If you can't get them to hear you (in a calm way) none of this works.

> I've never cared whether someone "validates" my emotions

I feel you! It's so nice to be independent and not subject to one's own emotions.

But have you considered that it's possible that you're just not observing yourself well enough?

After all: "Advertisement works on everyone... except for me!"

The problem can't always be resolved or even compromised on satisfactorily, however. So you have a game theoretic 2x2 matrix of options:

* Validate emotions + solve the problem: Most people consider this excellent service, and some people consider it at least adequate. Very few people will complain about this.

* Do not validate + solve the problem: Some consider this excellent, most consider this adequate, some consider this a slight even though the problem is solved.

* Validate + not solve: Most people will be annoyed, but at least be civil about it because you've been civil to them. A few will lash out, but they were going to anyway.

* Not validate + not solve: Virtually nobody likes this.

The game theoretic optimal solution for a service provider is to always validate, and hopefully solve the problem as well.

>There's a problem to be solved, so let's attempt to solve it or at least compromise in good faith

Of course saying "I validate that you are feeling upset" is going to come across as patronizing and insincere. But I don't think that's because they validated your feelings. It's because of the way the validation is said.

Part of what makes a conversation good faith is hearing out what the other person is saying and agreeing where there is common ground to build from. That necessarily includes confirming the pain points each person is feeling.

You, as an adult in a society, have presumably been able to make yourself understood (including to yourself) for a long time, so "we understand what each-other are saying and can imagine one another's feelings" is a basic subtext of essentially every conversation you have.

Toddlers, on the other hand, are still working on gaining enough linguistic capability to make themselves understood and understand what others are saying, and are still gaining self-awareness of their feelings, needs, and the way the world around them works. Remember that within very recent memory they could only make their needs known by screaming. Validating their emotions and needs confirms that you actually, mechanically understand what they want, and in some cases helps them recognize in fact what they want, both of which can undermine the frustration at the root of the tantrum.

The best explanation I have seen comes from the book "Supercommunicators." The author says that it's not so much about the type of personality, but the type of conversation that's occurring. He says there are three main types of conversations, and problems happen when the people are having two different conversations. Here, you're talking about a "practical/problem-solving" conversation, and the other person might be having a "what are we feeling?" conversation.

I'm like you (and maybe a lot of other HNers) who tend to think they're in a problem-solving conversation when I'm talking about a problem. But I've found that the great majority of the time, other people actually are in the "what are we feeling" conversation.

The author then makes the distinction of when conflict occurs and talks about "looping back" what the other person said. It's basically acknowledging their emotions but also repeating back what you heard, asking if that's right, and then asking more questions. The idea is that when there's conflict, you have to take an additional step to prove that you're actually listening and understanding what they've said. When you do that, then it's more likely they'll listen in turn and have a more productive conversation.

Looping back sounds kind of ridiculous, but I have actually found that when people are in an emotional state and on the defensive, they don't perceive this as ridiculous. It can actually speed things along because once you've shown you understand, then they're less likely to keep going over the same material again.

As an aside, this worked for 2/3 of our children. For one of them if we gave them choices like that they would just scream back "NONE". We never really found what worked for her, usually we just let her cry it out a bit then offer a metaphorical olive branch (oftentimes our oldest would let her play with one of her toys, which tended to make her happy, but only if you let her be upset for a long enough period of time first... otherwise she would just reject/throw it).

Anyways, kids are people. Try different things.

^ This is the real advice. Approach a conflict as a choice the child needs to make, and the options the parents need to give. Be flexible but hard where it counts.

Children need grounding. "I need to win arguments with my own kids" is a vanity, that gives up a lot of the ground kids need for growing up.

That’s a good short term solution but long term you just screw your kid up.

There’s some things you simply cannot do, and nothing else can be done about it. You have to learn the lesson that sometimes you lose a conflict and that’s it. You don’t get anything else. Sucks? Yea welcome to life.

Yeah very often it’s about feeling like they have some control. Consider their day to day they are constantly being told where to go and what to do. They’re still people and do want to feel like they have some agency. Of course we can’t let them choose to do whatever they want. But by giving them options they now feel like they’re included in the decision making process.

Not always appropriate but very useful in many situations. And if used proactively, possibly limit episode occurrence when not under your control.

We might be saying the same thing, but one reason toddlers act so ridiculously is because they are emotionally responding just as an adult might, if they were treated like a toddler. Ie, “because I don’t think you have a valid internal POV, I’m going to just decide for you with no explanation”

This perspective comes from the book “how to talk so kids will listen and listen so kids will talk,” which is one of my favorite parenting books of all time.

It's a different approach for us (am parent of a 5 and 3 year-old). Every type of food is equal, nothing gets put on a pedestal. Candies, snacks, ice creams, vegetables, fruits, legumes, meats, seafood - it's just "food". We highlight that you shouldn't eat too much of one thing all the time because your body likes a good variety, but that's about all the pressure we put on them. They're learning about sugar, for instance, in their preschool and we've talked about it in that context.

If they don't like something, fine. Totally cool, we don't care. The second you pressure a kid to eat a vegetable or a fruit, it becomes a fight and they will dig their heels in. Just keep serving whatever you cook, and either they'll come around or they won't. After all, they're human just like we are - we all have foods we like and dislike, and that's OK. No point in striking a deal, just keep exposing them to a wide variety of stuff and eventually they'll try it all - if they like it, great, if they don't, oh well, at least they like other stuff.

I can't speak for any other parents but myself, but this approach has worked wonders for us. Our kids definitely do shun certain foods or look away, but they eat a very wide variety of food. We don't have to bring a PBJ with us to a restaurant, or chicken nuggets to a friend's house, because they'll usually eat most of what is served. We've had grandparents bring "treats" over - we'll put them on their dinner plate with the rest of their food and, hand to god, last night my 5yo ate half her candy bar and left it there while asking for multiple helpings of peas and devouring her entire turkey burger. Only thing left on the plate was the candy.

Everyone's mileage may vary, obviously.

/shrug

> When two incompatible views exist on a subject, at least one of them must be wrong

This isn't strictly correct if the source of incompatibility is differing assumptions / axioms. Both views can be correct in their own context and incorrect in the other context.

> divorce your identity from your beliefs about the world

I understand not totally subjugating your personal identity to ideology, but I'm struggling to see how someone could practically completely separate these two things. To use a somewhat trite but personal example, I'm gay, so that aspect of my identity will necessarily affect my perspective on certain issues. Conversely if someone were to convince me rationally that homosexuality was wrong, it would necessitate a pretty dramatic change of my identity no?

Not every issue exists on that clear a spectrum, but you can imagine the views necessitated by different pieces of personal identity adding up over a lifetime.

One thing that helped me was reading a book on good political discourse. It basically said what the GP said, that good discourse is about exploring the world. It also pointed out that vilification in its many forms is counterproductive. It undermines trust.

One of the examples used was of a party that I did not agree with - that most people didn't agree with. You'd see mainstream politicians declaring them to be bad people.

But the book pointed out that before this party existed, nobody was representing the people who were now voting for it. If you believe in democracy, how can you be disrespectful of representation?

Suppressing my value judgement also later helped me see that when the party got into a coalition and managed to get some of their politics put into law, some of those laws actually did help the rest of us, because they addressed issues that the other parties were not willing to address.

Out of curiosity, why do you think being as rational as you possibly can is a goal in and of itself. Mark Manson has a whole bit on this, in The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck if I recall correctly, that lobotomized people would fit that description pretty well, purely rational. Except it turns out that once you take the emotional side out of the person, what's left is merely a hull that doesn't care about anything, because rationally, why would you. I don't think being more right is a noble goal. We all know the type, people who pick at every little thing to be technically right, but mostly they're just asshats who miss the forest for the trees.

I have changed my mind on things in online discussions. Usually in the form of them saying something I disagree with, me trying to articulate why they're wrong or searching for evidence that they're wrong, and then coming up short or finding information I wasn't previously aware of. I find this is more likely to happen online than IRL since you don't really interrupt IRL conversations to go spend 3 hours looking for sources, though I do also get what you mean about a lot of online comments being so blatantly hostile that you just don't engage.

I had a customer once who would just absolutely berate people over email for the tiniest thing. Totally unbearable and unreasonable. So, whenever he would go off, I'd tell him 'look, I'll be in the area [this afternoon|later|whenever]. You going to be around if I stop by?' Any conversation with him that could be deflected to an in-person discussion could be peacefully resolved in short order. Trying to convince him of anything over phone or email was an exercise in frustration control.

I heard somebody say at a conference one time, talking about how much more productive in-person meetings are in reaching agreement, "there's a lot of bandwidth in a room". I think there's a lot of truth to that.

0 - ironically, this was at a ISP network engineering conference

I think you can have two people who, both acting in good faith, can completely lose it over textual communication. Even a phone call can make the same discussion ten times easier.

Are you saying your comment here is in bad faith? ;)

And everyone is strangers, so there's no tit-for-tat and no long-term strategies, just hit and run

You might be surprised to find that, in person, people are quite amenable to good faith discussions. It's the internet where slam dunks reign.

Every argument is premised on good faith though. If there isnt good faith you should disengage.

I argue that having opinions that progressively become more extreme is in fact changing one's mind. That might not be the kind of mind changing we immediately imagine when we think about changing one's mind, but it is mind changing nonetheless.

I'm not trying to be clever; the fact that this flies under the radar just means we might be looking for "changing minds" in one form when it's mostly occurring in another.

People who feel ostracised or underappreciated tend to make good marks for cults and extremist groups in general. Another commenter pointed out that changing an opinion is a more emotional process than we'd like to assume.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pQGFeKvjydztpgnsY/occupation...

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MnFqyPLqbiKL8nSR7/my-experie...

https://medium.com/@zoecurzi/my-experience-with-leverage-res...

https://maxread.substack.com/p/the-zizians-and-the-rationali...

The last link and especially the second half expands from examining the latest example into the broader landscape of Rationalist cultism.

Rationalism is essentially a tech-flavored self-help movement, and the people who tend to gravitate towards self-help in general tend to be emotionally vulnerable people who are strongly susceptible to cult techniques (there's a reason so many cults start out as self-help movements).

On top of that, given the tech-flavored nature of Rationalism, its adherents seem to gravitate towards strongly utilitarian ethics (evil can be justified if done for a greater good) and an almost messianic relationship towards artificial superintelligence (a good so great it can justify a lot of evil).

Finally, it seems to me that Rationalism is especially prone to producing tedious writers which create insularity (by making it impenetrable to non-insiders) and lots of schisms over minor disputes that, due to insularity, end up festering into something rather more cult-like that demands more immediate and drastic action... like the Zizians.

Probably referring to the Ziz cult which was born out of the rationalist community, which recently murdered bunch of innocent people.

Shockingly, in a world where both eating too much food and too little will kill you, as will too much or too little water, heat or oxygen, the solutions are rarely found at the extremes of any continuum.

Creative, but no.

> And this question led me to a search for information everywhere, not just lesswrong. And then I've found a new "sport": find Yudkoswki's ideas in writings of thinkers from XIX century or earlier. Had he conceived at least one truly original idea? This activity was much more fun for me than lesswrong and after that I had no chance whatsoever to become a part of a cult centered on Rationality.

Do you have any interesting references? :)

> Very little is known with absolute certainty outside of mathematics.

Absolutely. As you've read in other comments, mathematics is of the few areas where I have found room to make up my mind. For everything else, straight up: I don't know. The only way to change my mind from "I don't know" is to make it "I do know", but, as you say, outside of mathematics that realistically isn't going to happen. We collectively don't know and it is unlikely that we will ever know.

> This is quite a close minded position that leaves you vulnerable in changing circumstances.

Okay, but what in the mathematics that I have made my mind up on do you believe is prone to change? Do you anticipate that we will eventually determine that 1+1 actually equals 4 or something?

I will change my mind if in the unlikely event that incontrovertible proof does somehow come to be. I accepted it is theoretically possible to change minds. But, as I said, which is key to the whole thing, I will not spend my days arguing that 1+1=2 until I find out different. I am confident enough that 1+1=2 that I don't have to make that case to myself in front of others.

Argument is a device for when you are unsure of something and want to learn more. There is no mind to change as you haven’t established a mind yet.

> "making up your mind," a phrase that does not appear in the than the original article and would not fit with the framework of understanding expressed therein

While it does not explicitly appear, a mind cannot be changed if it was never made. Change, by definition, requires something to already exist.

> revisiting the same issues over and over again as new evidence is brought up in these arguments.

Right. But they can't change their mind as they never established something that can be changed. This is the state before a mind is made. It is possible that a mind will never be made. For complex subjects, it is unlikely that a mind can be made.

> I am not holding onto my “already made up” position that dearly.

Perhaps this is just semantics, then? I wouldn't make up my mind until there is effectively no chance of there being an alternative I've overlooked. I'm confident enough in the available information to make up my mind that 1+1 does equal 2 (a topic I would find no interest in discussing further at this point; there is good reason we don't sit around all day talking about that), but for most things I don't have a mind made.

If you can't hold it dearly, is your mind really made?