> Dorothy: “Dad, you look tired. Want to sit down?”<p>> Me: “Thanks. Where did you have in mind?”<p>> Dorothy: “Ben & Jerry’s.”<p>There's a difference between argument through reason and manipulation. I think this guy is teaching his kids to be manipulative.<p>The little dialog above shows that the daughter doesn't care a wit about how her father feels, she's just using the emotion as a point of leverage. If I had kids and they did this to me, it would sadden me.
Growing up I was usually given my way if I could make a good persuasive case for it.<p>I like this approach and one day when I have kids I'll probably use it with them.<p>However I was never encouraged to be manipulative, only clear and logical.<p>As a result, I expect that most people will respond to reason, which is far from the truth of how the world works.
"And let’s face it: Our culture has lost the ability to usefully disagree." -- great point.<p>Good article.<p>The fact is, that kids do "run" their parents quite a bit. This approach might just bring it out in the open.
A more appropriate (though less-intriguing) title would be "How to Teach your Child to Reason and Communicate". I think it's a great technique - my university requires freshman to take a class on rhetoric - and it really changed the way I communicate. I was more focussed on what I need to do to communicate effectively rather than what my audience needed to do.
<i>5. Let kids win sometimes.</i><p>Some parents have a problem with this. I remember a conversation where a woman volunteered that she completely suppressed her kids every time. She was absolutely proud of this fact.
I immediately emailed the link to my sixteen-year-old son, so that he and I can discuss it. (He's off to the ARML Central Region tournament, so he won't see it right away.) I too like the idea that learning how to usefully disagree is an important life skill.
Everything I know about arguing I learned from Monty Python<p><a href="http://urielw.com/refs/montyargc.htm" rel="nofollow">http://urielw.com/refs/montyargc.htm</a>
Excellent article. Couple this with Dale Carnegie (the real stuff, not the manipulative fluff people try to peddle) and you get real people that you can discuss things with.
There's a lot of merit in what the author calls "argument by the stick", arguments in which convincing the other guy is not the primary goal. If you argue with someone <i>in public</i>, as in most online arguments, simply making your opponent look stupid can make the onlookers more likely to agree with you. I've seen this happen in creationism/evolution debates: the <i>only</i> way to win a debate with a creationist is by trouncing them so hard that the peanut gallery silently drifts toward accepting evolution. And, invariably, <i>someone</i> claims that this strategy is completely ineffective because it fails to convince the one hard-line religious nut that you're arguing with. (I'm sure other examples exist, but I'm most familiar with this one.)
I accidentally invented a game with my daughter when she was about 3 which she really seemed to enjoy and appears to have helped her at school in terms of reasoning and thinking out of the box.<p>There was a football up in a tree - "how could we get that down?" I asked and we proceeded to take turns starting off with the prosaic "use a stick" to the increasingly farfetched "helicopter" "string elastic between the houses and bounce... no it would get tangled".<p>We still play it today and as she gets older the form modifies and she gets more imaginative. There's a nice element of problem solving and silliness. I recommend it.
For what it's worth, Aristotle was the first to make this division of the three 'modes of persuasion' or <i>pisteis</i>, at <i>Rhetoric</i> 1.2:<p><a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text.jsp?doc=Aristot.+Rh.+1.2&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0060" rel="nofollow">http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text.jsp?doc=Aristot.+Rh...</a><p>Or at least, this passage is the earliest attested formulation of this sort. Aristotle may have been codifying a system developed by others.
<p><pre><code> Credibility = Quality + Consistency
</code></pre>
Child should be taught that his communication should enhance the credibility of the elder people.
His book's fantastic... Thank You For Arguing.<p>I read it on the Kindle, then I bought a copy so I could refer back to it easily and make notes in the margins.