Negotiation is often a skill set associated with boardrooms, courtrooms and high-stakes commercial deals. What parents, however, are not realising is that they are already negotiators during the most formative moments of their children’s lives – during bedtimes, homework, screen time and the endless squabbles of who gets the front seat.
According to Advocate Veerash Srikison, a mediator and lecturer in Leadership at the Stellenbosch Business School Executive Development, negotiation is not a corporate trick children pick up later in life.
“Negotiation is a life skill, and, like every life skill, it is best learned early and practised daily. I have mediated many a conflict, witnessing disputes that could have been avoided if they had learned, as children, how to negotiate well,” says Advocate Srikison.
At home, children are too often treated as the subjects of a decision rather than as participants in it and talked about rather than negotiated with. In raising a capable negotiator, the distinction lies between deciding about your child and deciding with them.
“When you teach your child to negotiate, you are not raising a sharper deal-maker. You are raising an adult who can disagree without destroying, who can hear an opposing view without feeling threatened, and who can solve problems with words rather than walls,” she says.
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the South African Children’s Act, recognises that children have a right to be heard in matters that affect them, with weight given to their views according to their age, stage of development and maturity.
This does not mean you hand your child the keys to the household, says Advocate Srikison.
“When you listen to your child, you teach them to reason and a child who learns to reason learns to negotiate rather than to demand. When you encourage negotiation, you teach participation rather than victory.”
The everyday discipline of negotiation comes down to a few habits you and your child can practice together.
One simple way to start is to help your child see the difference between a position and an interest. When your child insists on staying up an extra hour, the position is “later bedtime”. Their interest might be a fear of missing out or simply wanting more time with you. Once you hear the interest, you can offer a real trade, such as a later bedtime at the weekend in return for a calm weekday routine. By doing so your child learns that good outcomes come from understanding what the other person actually needs.
Advocate Srikison says it’s important to give children real but bounded choices.
Rather than asking, “What would you like to do?”, parents can ask, “Would you prefer to do homework before supper or after?” Both answers work for the parent, allowing the child to experience genuine agency while learning that negotiation operates within limits.
“Remember to praise the reasoning, not only the result. When your child makes a fair argument, name it: ’That’s a good point, you’ve thought about your sister too.’ You are rewarding the very skills of perspective-taking, fairness and problem-solving, attributes that make for a strong negotiator,” she says.
Advocate Srikison encourage parents to ask before arguing.
“Most conflicts are misunderstandings in disguise, and a genuine question often dissolves them. The best agreements, as any seasoned negotiator will tell you, are the ones people reach themselves, so a solution your child helps to design is one your child will honour,” she says.
“You should also know that your children are watching you far more closely than they are listening to you. When you negotiate with their other parent or your partner respectfully in front of them, calmly, without contempt, reaching a decision that works for both of you, you teach more than any lecture could.”
The hardest negotiations you will have are not about screen time. They are the difficult conversations about divorce, illness, money, grief or your child’s own struggles, and here, communication matters far more than tactics.
“I have witnessed the harm done when parents, meaning only to protect, shut their children out of conversations that reshape the children’s entire world. A child shut out of a difficult conversation does not feel protected. They feel powerless, and they fill the silence with fears far worse than the truth,” she says.
Including your child does not mean burdening them with adult detail. It means age-appropriate honesty, delivered with care. Parents should choose the right moment to talk, rather than raising difficult issues in passing.
Lead with reassurance by telling children what will stay the same before you explain what will change. Plain, concrete language is important because children hear euphemism as evasion. Invite questions and expression of feelings and resist the urge to fix every problem with a biased solution.
“Sometimes the most powerful thing you can say is, ‘That’s a hard thing to feel, and I’m here to listen to you,’” she says.
Listen more than you speak and reflect back what you hear. “It sounds like you’re worried about your friends at school” so your child knows they have been understood.
“This is the same skill that sets a real negotiator apart from a mere arguer: you are not there to win the conversation, but to make space for the other person to be heard and to help shape what comes next,” she says.
“You are, in the truest sense, building communication and communication, as I have long believed, is what builds collaboration and understanding. That lesson does not begin in a boardroom. It begins at your kitchen table, with a child who has been given a voice and taught how to use it well.”
