The Atlantic

How a Negotiation Expert Would Bargain With a Kid

Some tactical suggestions for managing volatile, sometimes nonsensical negotiation partners
Source: LightField Studios / Shutterstock / Katie Martin / The Atlantic

One common feature of negotiations is that each party has the ability to walk away. Don’t like the offer the car salesperson is making you? Drive another five minutes to the next dealership. Don’t like the terms a business partner presents you with? Get in touch with another supplier.

But every day many people find themselves sitting across the table from a negotiation partner they can’t abandon or replace: their kids.

How might parents manage these often fraught, exasperating conversations in which their counterpart, lacking self-awareness, sometimes seems to think it strategic to ? I posed this question to Michael Wheeler, who has been teaching the principles of negotiation at Harvard Business

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