Negotiate Like a Boss

My 4 years old daughter was eating ice cream downstairs when she came running upstairs towards the toilet. As she passed me, she asked how many ice cream can she eat.

“How many do you want to eat?” I asked back.
“I don’t know. You are the parent. You tell me how many we can eat,” she replied as she was getting ready for the toilet.
I was annoyed by the flippant answer, so I replied that she can eat as much as she has eaten, meaning she can stop now.

”No, brother asked how much he can eat,” she said.
“But I thought you wanted to eat more?” I said.
“Yes but brother wants to know how much we can eat,” she said. Notice she excluded herself from the question part, but included herself in the resulting action.
“How much do you want to eat?” I asked again.
“Never mind, we’ll talk later,” she replied as she closed the toilet door and completed her business.

I just thought to myself that she just did some mind trick on me and got away with it. That is some negotiation that I can learn from haha.

Thank you for reading.