Carragee Consulting

Arguing with my 3 yo has turned into serious negotiation.

I try to stay calm, give options and set her up to make good choices.

1) Define the problem
“You haven’t finished your dinner.”

2) Confirm understanding
“You asked specifically for, for Mac and cheesey, but now you don’t want it or you’re full?”

“I’m all done.”

3) Brainstorm solutions & allow choice within constraints
“Do you want to eat more now or be excused from the table?”

4) Get overridden (solicit user inputs)
“Momma, I have two ideas. First, I’ll have ice cream and then I’ll watch Paw Patrol”

5) Inevitable suboptimal outcome occurs
10pm “Momma I’m too hungry to go to bed!”


The learning for me isn’t that three year olds are irrational traitors who go back on their word.

The learning is that everyone is a three year old. In my work I continually channel skills and conversational approaches from attachment parenting.

You can be right and know when bad choices are being made, but you can’t take a principled stand on every issue.

Later, you only cause a protracted meltdown if you rub in that you were right. This doesn’t help you get buy in during the next round.

Dylan Anderson writes a lot about how to be more effective at the higher levels in your career and as a consultant. Somehow, his advice is never proclaim loudly “I told you so” in the face of client failures.

The book Connect: Building Exceptional Relationships with Family, Friends, and Colleagues, also makes a lot of good points on how to collaborate effectively.

Robert Ribciuc recommended Connect to me and I read it last year. I keep looping back on two main ideas from that book.

– you can only have a few exceptional relationships and they take work from both parties

– you can either approach situations to prove you’re right, smart, better OR you can figure out what is driving the other people and work on achieving a desired outcome.

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