Hey folks,

I'm struggling a bit with a just-turned-5 yo who looks for loopholes in my instructions. This isn't new behaviour; she's been lawyering me since forever. But now I think she's probably old enough to understand 'letter of the law v spirit of the law' - if I could find the words to explain it well myself.

Anyone have any good links that could help me find the words to explain it clearly to a 5 year old?



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Editing to expand a bit:

I've tried searching using lots of different terms but google just keeps giving me results for kids with defiance/anger issues. DD5 isn't defiant, or angry, or unhappy. She doesn't throw tantrums, she isn't rude. She's just always looking for a way to win. She can be pedantic, she can be sweet, she can turn on the tears, whatever tool in her belt will get her the best result for that person/situation. Which is normal, of course, but by god it's tiring. Even in utero she wouldn't let me lie on my LHS, she would kick and kick until I rolled over. This girl has willpower and a drive to dominate (possibly genetic - there's a Franco general hiding in the closet). She's also honest, emotional, social, loves making people laugh, and a bunch of other good stuff, so I don't want you to get the wrong idea, but she has a very strong drive to win/dominate. I can't find the words to explain to her that we're a team and our goal is to have a happy, strong family, so we have to work together to achieve that, and trying to outwit me or look for loopholes in my instructions, just means that our team loses.

A frequently and highly-reccomended book on this forum (despite its title) is "The Manipulative Child". I believe it's this one: https://www.amazon.com/Manipulative-Child-Resilient-Resourceful-Independent/dp/0553379496 . From what I recall of the discussions around this book, you may find it quite relevant.

Thanks Platypus - found and ordered on amazon!

One thought might be to explain that your directions are necessarily brief, and that it is GOOD that she is thinking about them, as people will need to think through all sorts of directions, rules, and laws throughout life. Ask HER to think about the big picture, the little details, and the fill-in-the blanks.

1- The big picture: What do your directions mean in terms of the context of what is going on? What needs to be accomplished, in order to continue with current plans and activities? What is the purpose?

2- The little details: What do your directions mean in a very specific step-wise sense? For example, if you have taught her all the steps in washing her hands, including turning off the water and hanging up the towel, then when you say "please go wash your hands now" that includes connections to all of the steps and details which she already knows, including turning off the water and hanging up the towel.

3- Fill-in-the-blanks: What blanks does she need to fill in for herself? For example, if the towel falls on the floor it is better not to hang it back up as drying one's hands with a towel that has been on the floor defeats the purpose (big picture) of hand washing... so she would fill-in-the-blanks with other lessons you have taught her, such as: deciding to take the towel to the laundry room and hang up a fresh towel.

Given this guidance and direction for her train of thought, she may begin to stay on track and use her analysis more frequently for convincing herself of the value of your directions and monitoring herself for compliance with the spirit of your directions, instead of pressing you on potential loopholes.

She may be very proud of every instance of holding herself to this higher standard and tell you all about her thought processes and her extra efforts.

That's a great idea Indigo - to rewrite things so that she 'wins' by filling in the blanks instead of taking advantage of them.

Setting Limits for your Strong Willed Child by Mackenzie has been amazing. Mine isn't really defiant, but quite argumentative about everything. In the time it takes her to argue, she could have just DONE the thing I asked. This book has been really useful in how to rephrase requests and handle them, and also in how to see this quality in a different light

One of the difficult things I have found with gifted kiddos is their ability and desire to argue (agree with everyone else, not in a defiant way). However I also think they are just like every other kid, in that they do have to learn when it is okay to question limits, and when they need to abide by the rules EVEN IF they don't understand or agree with them. My personal rule for my son (who is just like you are describing!) is that he can question us 1x, and we will try to explain reasons behind it so he can understand, and if he continues to argue, we are not above the "because we said so" since he needs to abide by that with his teachers.

Conversely, one of the great things I've found with gifted kiddos and their ability to argue is that, once I'd given my reasons why the kiddo couldn't do what she wanted, she often proposed solutions that satisfied my requirements while still getting her what she wanted. Yes!

I wonder if maybe many gifted kiddos need to know "why" rules exist in the first place. It's not enough that there are rules, they need to understand their purpose in order to respect them.

DS8 started to challenge rules and try to find loopholes and question everything when he was about 3 years old. He would literally say "You're not the boss of me!". At that age, it was simple enough to tell him that mommy and daddy had very important responsibilities to care for him and his brother otherwise we might go to jail. At age 5, you'd obviously have to be more sophisticated than that. I would suggest trying to enlist her help. Explain that the rules and directions are for the safety and wellbeing of the family and to ensure that everything runs smoothly. And praise her when she is helpful in that regard.

And maybe you can explain that there are times when you can be flexible and other times when you can't (e.g. safety, trying to rush out the door, and so forth). And point out when you are being flexible (yes, you can read for 10 more minutes before turning out the lights) so that she sees that the rules are not overly rigid.

Though if it's the challenge of the game that she enjoys, maybe offer other games instead? Get her into riddles and wordplay and math questions?

But ultimately, it's probably healthy that she's doing this and it will fall into place sooner or later and you'll realize she's not doing it anymore.

Not quite a kiddo, but this is how I'm wired. A rule should accomplish something, and that something should be useful and not abusive. I expect her mother is wired the same, and so we parented DD accordingly. If we could not come up with a valid explanation for why a rule should be, then it wasn't.

You'd be surprised at how many nonsensical traditional rules have been passed on to you until you view them through that lens.

That doesn't mean DD always got the answer on the spot, though, because occasionally the reason was not age-appropriate. She had to trust us and accept, "We'll explain it when you're older." If she chose not to accept that as an explanation, we played the parent card. But we'd earned that trust by giving her good answers in all previous cases, and we built on that by revealing hidden answers when she reached an appropriate maturity level, all of which limited the necessity of the parent card.

This may not be the answer you're looking for, but...I'm of the opinion that this is a desirable behaviour. On this forum, we frequently encounter challenges in school and other settings outside the home, and self-advocacy by our children is often what tips the balance in favour of our children's needs being met. Building that self-advocacy skill from an early age is advantageous and a trait we should foster in our children as adults! You're already ahead of the game.

Your daughter's negotiation demonstrates a solid understanding of the intended ask from you, and a capacity to reason laterally. (I'm very much a better-to-beg-forgiveness-than-ask-permission kind of person, so perhaps that's personal bias speaking.)

Really, what it boils down to is the need for you to carefully craft your instructions. With my DS6, I've been "trained" to give clear, pointed directions with minimal room for re-interpretation. We have a house rule that, if DS can negotiate his way logically out of a framework I've established, he's earned whatever reward he wanted. (Reasonable limits around safety and feasibility still apply.)

It also helps to explain the general spirit of what you're hoping to achieve, and why that outcome is important to you, to motivate your child. Like Dude and his DD, I've been impressed at times by DS' ability to craft a solution outside the range of options I expected--and we were both better off for his advocacy.

As an induction period, you might want to experiment with tightening up single-directive asks, then progress to multi-step instructions.

So, if DS is asked to complete a task, it has a clearly defined desired outcome, a timeframe for completion, and a sequence (if multiple asks are involved). For us, self-care in the morning before school was a frequent challenge, so I just gave him X amount of time on the clock to complete Y, and it was up to him to self-manage the time in order to earn a time-sensitive reward.

Dinnertime was another frequent area of contention, with multiple rounds of negotiations and post-settlement settlements that would bring a admiring nod from even the most hard-driving international trade negotiator. What seems to have worked is reaching a mutually satisfactory pre-dinner agreement, and holding a dessert in "escrow" for after dinner is eaten.

I tend to come down on the side of Dude and aquinas on this one. If she wants to win, then give her a way to win that's a true win for everyone involved. I'm also from a questioning background, but I've learned to live within enough aspects of the status quo by looking for consensus big picture principles and goals.

More, rather than less, explanation is generally my m.o. And I also (with safety exceptions) will respect children's letter-of-the-law arguments when they arise from my own lack of specificity. At the same time, we've also had discussions about "reasonable person" interpretations of looser language, and the responsibility of individuals to seek clarification when they perceive ambiguity. And, verbal language as only one component of the overall communicative purpose of verbal and nonverbal language. That is, if one intentionally obscures meaning by taking the technically-correct-but-commonly-unexpected sense of a verbal interaction, without seeking further clarification first--especially if done to subvert another person's intent, then one is questionably acting in good faith, which, over time, has a tendency to erode the foundation of trust between two communicative partners. This creates a situation where one may "win" the argument, but lose in the larger relationship. If the relationship in question has mid- or long-term value or utility to one, then this would appear to be counterproductive.

In short, communication often operates in service to relationships. Relationships (and communication) are based on trust. Constant "gotcha" argument-winning is not always conducive to building trust.

This is also, used the other direction, one of the ways we explain the occasional need for instant, unquestioned obedience. There are moments where imminent danger overrides our typical pattern of lengthy, thorough explanations. Since our children know that explanations are typically offered to the extent we are able to, in the event that we ask for immediate response, without an explanation, this usually means that the urgency of the situation provides insufficient time for an explanation. Based on the foundation of trust that we have already established, the children know that their parents would not ask them to do something unquestioned if it were not an emergency, and that it would always be with their best interests in mind, to the best of our ability.

On a practical, lighter note, I've found that, sometimes, face-saving is critical. At some point, one particular child may reach a point where they may have painted themselves into a corner verbally, but actually do understand the reason for compliance, and would do so, if they could without formally backing down. In those moments, we've tried (especially earlier in childhood) diversions and displacements. This example isn't fully a logical argument one, but it does illustrate face-saving. We had a period where there was strong resistance to flossing teeth (resulting in multiple fillings--fortunately, in baby teeth only). After many battles over flossing, in which it was thoroughly explained that this was a health and hygiene issue (and, BTW, lack of flossing was causally related to that undesirable tooth drilling exercise), DC understood and agreed with the reasoning, but refused to lose. This is why for many months afterward, we flossed DC's "baleen" instead.

This jumped out at me as an excellent approach. Just wanted to flag it.

Definitely. That's what I meant when I said "I can't find the words to explain to her that we're a team and our goal is to have a happy, strong family, so we have to work together to achieve that, and trying to outwit me or look for loopholes in my instructions, just means that our team loses.".

She had a chat about 'what I say versus what I mean' where I gave her examples of things I might ask her to do and asked her what else I might have meant, eg. if I say 'keep your bottom on your seat when you're eating' what do you think I really mean? Do you think I mean it's ok to bounce in your seat, so long as your bottom is still on the seat? Do you think it means that you could swing your legs madly? Or tap your knife and fork? Or do you think I mean 'be sensible'? She got it, but I'll keep finding examples and having the same chat. And I need to talk with her about how being right all the time doesn't win you friends. But that will be a chat for another day.

One strategy is to have a proactive discussion regarding expected behaviors in certain routine settings, and interactively develop operational definitions of a short list of key behavioral expectations ("rules", or whatever your family calls them). For example, what are reasonable expectations for behavior at the dinner table? I would have her generate a list of all the reasonable concrete, specific expectations that anyone dining together should be meeting, which will likely involve a discussion about the purposes of eating together (nutrition, communication, social engagement, pleasure, etc.), and the obstacles that may arise (unsafe behavior, wasting food, interfering with other people's communications, social conflict, etc.). As much as possible should, and most likely will, be generated by her. My experience with classrooms of even very young children is that they generally come up with all and more of the expectations that an adult would. And they tend to be more restrictive in their expectations, as long as we are discussing behavior in the generic (other people), and not in the specific (them).

Once you have a massive list of specific behaviors, you can start working together to group them into categories (e.g., safety, nutrition, relationship-building), which you can develop short-hand common vocabulary for, and overt connections. So when you reference any behavior in the group, the previously-agreed on meaning is that all of the behaviors in the group should be self-monitored. Different families will have different comfort levels with the next part of this, but in my FOO and in my current nuclear family, adults are subject to the same behavioral expectations as children in nearly all situations. So my children have permission to call me out when I violate an expectation.

I agree with this and it's in line with what we do with our DS4.

We stick to clear, concise directives to avoid the debate that ambiguity invites. And in those circumstances where we aren't clear and he interprets the rules/directions/orders in a way that we didn't expect, we generally concede that his interpretation is as valid as the intended interpretation and go with it - unless he's going to hurt himself.

Giving him that type of freedom to apply his own interpretation to the rules actually makes things easier. Now when we insist that a directive be followed in a specific manner, he knows that we're serious and we don't get the usual pushback.