make you feel good. You may run the risk of losing this good feeling
if you subsequently frustrate the child.
“Gee, Mom, you’ve got the prettiest eyes of anybody on the block”
is a fairly blatant example. Or, “I think I’ll go clean my room. It’s
been looking kind of messy for the last three weeks. And after that
maybe I’ll take a look at the garage.”
With butter up, the basic message from child to parent is: “You’ll
feel really bad if you mistreat or discipline or deny me after how nice
I’ve been to you.” Butter up is intended to be an advance setup for
parental guilt. The child is implying, “You’ll feel so positively toward
me that you won’t have the heart to make me feel bad.”
Children can use promises as butter-up manipulation. “Please,
Mom. Please. I’ll eat my dinner and I promise I won’t even ask for
any dessert,” said one little girl who wanted a snack at five in the
afternoon. Some promises kids make are impossibilities. One little
boy, while in the process of pressing his father for a new computer,
said, “I’ll never ask you for anything ever again.”
Apologies can be sincere, but they can also be examples of butter-
up testing. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I said I’m sorry,” one little boy
pleaded in an attempt to avoid being grounded for socking his little
brother.
Butter-up manipulation is obviously the least obnoxious of all the
testing tactics. In fact, some people don’t think it should be labeled as
testing at all. It is true that butter up is sometimes hard to distinguish
from genuine affection. If a child says “I love you” and doesn’t ask
for anything immediately afterward, it’s probably genuine affection.