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I get a feeling that my DD's teacher might not describe DD's relentless negotiation tactics as a little inconvenience. Hopefully, both she and I can look back and laugh about this when she is older.

Eh, DS is still a fervent nurser, so I'm insulated from stress by the delightful hits of prolactin and oxcytocin throughout the day, whose pleasure-inducing effect has been likened to that of cocaine. Maybe the view from the inside is rosier than from the outside in our case. Ha!

When your Kindergartener asks you if there are levels of giftedness like there are
Different belt colors in Karate. He then asks when can he take the test to move up since he finds his Gifted class so boring!

There are many things I do not say to anyone anywhere for that very reason. This is/was especially true regarding dd's very early babyhood. Her 1st year of life was so surreal. I sometimes do not believe what I saw and heard, and I was there.

Now it is getting to feel normal to me. dd3 is just another one of the decision makers of our house.

Awhile ago, DD's teacher wanted to discuss how we can best handle DD's persistent negotiation and she shared with me what transpired between them earlier in the week and it went something like this:

DD: Would you please give me another choice?
Teacher: You have two choices to choose from and that is all you get at school.
DD: I want a third choice, please.
Teacher: Thank you for asking me so politely but no.
DD: But neither of your two choices are acceptable to me. I don't see why I cannot have a third choice.
Teacher: I'm sorry but we do not have the time to have a discussion about this right now. If you cannot choose then you can sit out of this activity. There are no other choices.
DD: That is a false dichotomy. (This comes straight from SO; he's been talking to her like this since she was 1)
Teacher: ...I am giving you a last chance to choose.
DD: You're always telling me to be flexible and I think it's only fair that you set a good example.

I told her, I really did not know how to make her stop either but in moments of desperation, I have resorted to giving her bribes incentives to stop, which probably made the problem even worse. I'm just grateful that her teacher has the patience to deal with DD without losing it.

That's a good teacher.

I think the key part of negotiation is anticipating the range of acceptable values of your counterparty, and the strategy of offering a limited menu of choices impedes that learning. That perspectve taking before the negotiation begins is crucial because it anchors your Bayesian calculations during the negotiation. Why not ask your DD to make an offer, where possible? I find DS is quite reasonable when I give him carte blanche, and if his initial suggestion is unreasonable, I explain why and ask him to try again without making a counter offer. Only when his opening offer is reasonable will I participate, and I force a null outcome at impasses.

I do this for two reasons:

1. It requires him to evaluate both our ranges.
2. It trains him to make the first offer, which the negotiation literature says is a more successful strategy due to framing and anchoring.

Would your DD be open to practice exercises with toys, or if given hypothetical scenarios for others?

Or, perhaps you could discuss the social contract, and how, in a school setting (among others), there are necessary restrictions to individual freedoms that arise from the need to prioritize the needs of the group. In this case, offering a wider menu of choices may not be in the best interest of the majority (having a lengthy discussion about this during instructional time certainly begins to impinge on the interests of the group).

...though I know that these discussions always have the potential of opening up even more cans...

It's also worth keeping in mind that there are a lot of adults who implement the idea of giving children choices poorly, by only offering two, neither of them considered desirable by the child, and making a stand-off out of it. It's like you're at a buffet, and you want the child to have a vegetable, so you say, "broccoli or carrots - choose!", when the child would be perfectly happy to meet your requirements if a salad or corn were also options. And they're right there in reach!

We don't know much about the situation and the choices offered in this particular scenario under discussion, but from what little was presented here, that may be what the teacher was doing, and in that case, the child was showing superior social skills by respectfully requesting more options.

I've always found it more productive to tell my child my requirements, and why I'm suggesting these two choices, and if she can come up with an alternative that meets both our needs, I'll listen. Some of her proposals have been brilliant.

Oh god, Mana, that is my life with DD. It makes me want to run screaming from the house on a regular basis.

Personally, I feel like this is not really so great for kids. It may be great one day when they are adults. MANY adults strongly DISLIKE this from a child. I wish we had negotiated less when DD was small.

This is a good intermediate strategy, because it's explicitly communicating your minimum acceptable offer.