I recently read a book that said that when you argue with your children, you should argue generously. (“Argue generously” is my rephrasing of what the author said.)<\/p>\n
That is, you shouldn’t win the argument only because you’re more articulate, or louder, or know how to spin words around better than they do.<\/p>\n
You should try to argue against the best argument that the child COULD present, even if he’s not capable of presenting it. Don’t pretend that his point is only as good as he’s able to articulate at the age of 14. Don’t win an argument by being a better arguer.<\/p>\n
[I only have a toddler, but there are lots of times when I know what she wants, even though she can’t say it properly. If I don’t want to give it to her, it’s tempting – but a bad idea – to pretend that I misunderstand her.]<\/p>\n
Of course, this is good advice no matter who you’re arguing with.<\/p>\n
If you’re only winning because you know how to avoid the best points of the other side, or you know how to hide the weaknesses of your own points, then you’re not doing right. Intellectual dishonesty will never save the day.<\/p>\n
Admit your weaknesses, help the other person find their strengths, then demolish them anyway! Much more satisfying that way.<\/p>\n
[Reminds me a bit of the game of Pente. In short, you try to get five stones in a row. In one variation (the one I like) you’re supposed to tell the other person when you’ve got four in a row, so that they have a chance to block you. You even tell them when you’ve got three unblocked stones in a row.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I recently read a book that said that when you argue with your children, you should argue generously. (“Argue generously” is my rephrasing of what the author said.) That is, you shouldn’t win the argument only because you’re more articulate, or louder, or know how to spin words around better than they do. You should […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humanity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}