As a parent or caregiver, you may have experienced moments when your teenage child’s behavior feels calculated and controlling. This behavior, often referred to as manipulation, can leave you feeling frustrated, confused, and unsure of how to respond.
When dealing with manipulative teenage behaviors, it’s important for parents to examine the situation and explore what’s causing this toxic behavior. Many teenagers who manipulate are trying to get their needs met, but in an unhealthy way. They lack may lack proper communication skills to express what they are going through and what they need. Or, they could be experiencing underlying mental health conditions that affect their behavior.
Let’s take a closer look at the psychology of manipulation and the common tactics teenagers use to try to get their way. We’ll share tips for responding to manipulative behavior with a balance of empathy and firmness and explore ways to prevent manipulative behavior in the future. Lastly, we’ll discuss when your teen’s behavior could be a sign of something more serious that could require professional help.
Key Takeaways
- Teenagers who use manipulative tactics are trying to get their needs met the only way they know how.
- Teens might use a manipulation tactic such as charm, debasing, negotiating, coercion, or using the silent treatment to get what they want.
- There are underlying mental health issues, such as trauma, depression, and anxiety, that could cause a teenager to act manipulatively.
- Parents of manipulative teenagers need to work together to stand firm, set boundaries, and avoid negotiating with their teens.
- It’s important for parents to talk to their teens and consult a mental health professional to find out what’s going on under the manipulative teen behaviors.
What Is Manipulation?
Manipulation is a form of social influence that aims to change the behavior or perception of others through indirect, deceptive, or even abusive tactics. It involves a calculated effort to control or exploit others for personal gain or advantage. While manipulation can take various forms, it often relies on emotional manipulation, guilt-tripping, and playing on the vulnerabilities of others.
Manipulative behavior is not only hurtful and frustrating for parents, but it can has the potential to impede emotional growth, foster unhealthy relationships, and contribute to future challenges for the teen. Teenagers may resort to manipulation out of emotional immaturity or for a need to control. Recognizing the nature of manipulation is key for parents and caregivers to effectively address it.
The Psychology Behind Manipulative Teens
The need for control is often at the root of manipulation. Teenagers may use manipulation to gain power and influence over their environment, particularly when they feel a lack of control in other areas of their lives.
A lack of emotional maturity and healthy coping skills at this age can hinder a teenager’s ability to understand the impact of their actions on others, making them more prone to manipulative behavior.
Difficulty expressing emotions can also contribute to manipulative behavior. When teenagers have trouble communicating their feelings, they may resort to manipulation as a way to get their needs met.
10 Signs of a Manipulative Child
Teenagers often use manipulative tactics such as guilt-tripping, emotional blackmail, playing the victim, or acting helpless. They may throw temper tantrums or have emotional outbursts to get what they want, making it difficult for parents to distinguish between genuine distress and manipulative behavior.
They may also use flattery or excessive charm to gain favor and manipulate others. Being able to recognize and respond to emotional manipulation in teenagers is crucial in preventing future incidents. Be alert to sudden changes in your teen’s behavior, including excessive demands, or attempts to control situations.
Here are some signs that your teenager might be manipulating you to try to fulfill their needs.
- Ignoring parents and the rules they put in place
- Giving parents the silent treatment
- Gaslighting parents
- Retaliating against parents’ rules by being hurtful, mean, or disrespectful
- Emotional blackmailing
- Telling lies
- Acting overly charming and obedient
- Playing parents against each other
- Explosive behavior, throwing tantrums
- Threatening suicide
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What Is Emotional Blackmailing?
Emotional blackmailing, sometimes called emotional extortion, is a type of manipulative teen behavior in which a teen uses guilt, fear, and intimidation to get their way. Teens may emotionally blackmail you by acting as if you don’t care about them and their needs. This could look like the child telling the parent, “You don’t love me as much as you do [my sibling]!” or “You never give me what I want!” Parents then feel guilty and may make decisions based on that feeling rather than on what’s right for their teen and family.
Another form of teen emotional blackmailing is making promises they don’t keep. For example, a teen who wants to go out with their friends tell their parent, “If you let me go out tonight, I’ll do all my chores next week.” Then next week rolls around, and they don’t do anything they said they would. Situations like these end up leading to arguments, anger, and explosive behavior from parent or child—or both.
What Is Gaslighting?
Gaslighting is a form of manipulation where a person makes someone seem or feel irrational, that what they are seeing or experiencing isn’t real, and that no one else will believe them.
While the term may seem synonymous with romantic relationships, teens are known to use the same tactics to gain control of situations, get sympathy from parents, or avoid taking responsibility.
Common ways teens gaslight parents:
- Insisting that an event or behavior never happened, and that the parent is just remembering it wrong
- Twisting the truth to make themselves right and the parent wrong
- Minimizing hurtful behaviors or words by saying something like, “It was just a joke” or “You’re way too sensitive”
Temper Tantrums and Manipulative Behavior
Although temper tantrums are typically associated with toddlers, they can continue into adolescence in different form. Teenage tantrums can be more intense and disruptive than those of younger children, and they can be a form of manipulative behavior.
By screaming, crying, or throwing things, teens are attempting to get what they want by making the parent feel guilty or frustrated. Giving in to these demands will lead to a dangerous cycle of manipulative behavior, where teens become increasingly skilled at using tantrums to maintain control and get their way.
Importantly, recognize that temper outbursts can be symptomatic of deeper mental health concerns, such as anxiety or depression. If your teenager is frequently experiencing severe tantrums, a mental health evaluation can help determine if there’s a deeper issue at play.
What to Do If a Teen Threatens Suicide as Emotional Manipulation
Parents should always take suicidal behavior seriously, even if they believe it’s taking place in the context of manipulative behavior. Whether or not a teen is actually suicidal, it’s essential to respond to this threat. Moreover, even if the teen is not planning suicide, talking about ending their life may be a symptom that they need mental health treatment.
Take the following actions for preventing teenage suicide and accessing help for a suicidal teenager:
- Do not leave the teen alone.
- Remove anything that could be used in a suicide attempt, including firearms, alcohol, drugs, razors, or other sharp objects.
- Call the US National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988.
- Take the teen to an emergency room or seek help from a medical or mental health professional.
Associations Between Manipulative Teenager Behavior and Mental Health Issues
Underlying mental health conditions and past trauma are often the root causes of manipulative teen behaviors. For example, personality disorders usually develop as a result of childhood trauma. Hence, teens with borderline personality disorder or other personality disorders tend to use charm and truth-bending to get what they want.
We’re not suggesting that all manipulative teenagers have a personality disorder. However, it’s common for kids who have gone through traumatic events to try to get what they want by any means possible. Most of the time “manipulative teens” are acting in a way that got them through difficult times as a young child. They’ve learned to get their way by lying and using other manipulative tactics. When they succeed, they learn to repeat these behaviors.
There are other mental health conditions that can cause teens to use manipulative behaviors. Characteristics of a manipulative child often include internalized self-loathing and low self-esteem, which may have resulted from bullying or abuse. Teen manipulation can be a symptom of depression. Teens might try to mask their depression by charming and lying to others. This is known as smiling depression.
How to Deal with a Manipulative Teenager: 5 Tips for Parents
As a parent, it can be extremely difficult to deal with manipulative teenager behavior. Here are a few approaches for addressing manipulative tactics in adolescents.
Avoid either anger or appeasement.
Teen manipulative behavior can push parents’ buttons. Your first reaction may be to yell or dole out punishment. Or parents might be tempted to give in to their child’s demands. It’s hard to say no to a child when they’re acting sad or frustrated and you have it in your power to make your child happy. But ultimately, either approach will only make the situation worse. When a parent realizes that their child is being manipulative, they need to focus their attention on what might be behind those behaviors.
Don’t negotiate with a manipulative teen.
Negotiating with a teen who is being manipulative doesn’t work. They’ll find a way to twist your words as a way of getting what they want. In fact, negotiations usually result in the teen having the upper hand because they can control the situation by making deals with their parents that they later don’t live up to. Stay firm and stick with the established rules and agreements.
Respond to the underlying need, not the behavior.
Responding rather than reacting is the first step for parents. Instead of flying off the handle, take a step back, access compassion, and intentionally engage with your teen. Remind yourself that they are using this behavior as a way to get a need met. Then see if you can figure out what that need is and meet it some other way. Be careful, though, not to fall into the web of charm and lies that the teen might spin. In addition, don’t get defensive, and be open to what the child has to say.
Set clear boundaries and consequences.
Establish house rules as well as consequences if those rules are broken. And stand firm in imposing those consequences even if teens try to use emotional blackmailing or negotiating to avoid them. For example, if you agree to let your teen take the car if they drive their younger sibling somewhere next week, there should be a consequence in place should they not follow through. Learn tips for setting rules and consequences.
Establish a united front with your co-parent.
If you have a co-parent, it’s important to establish a united front so your teen can’t play parents against each other. Both parents need to be on the same page when it comes to rules, boundaries, and the way they allow their children to talk to them. If parents of a manipulative teenager work together, they stand a better chance of handling manipulative behavior in a way that doesn’t cause further harm.
Treatment for Mental Health Issues Underlying Manipulative Child Behavior Symptoms
Manipulative teenager behavior can be a sign of a mental health issue, and possible signs of depression, anxiety, and trauma. Mental health professionals are trained to work with children and teens who act manipulatively as a way to get their needs met. A teen mental health assessment with a clinician can uncover underlying issues contributing to the challenging behavior.
At Newport Academy, we help young people ages 12–18 to build healthy emotional regulation, form a strong sense of self, and make positive connections with peers and mentors. And, to respond to the country’s ever-growing need for mental health services, we have expanded our program to include children ages 7-11. Additionally, our expansive list of insurance providers now includes TRICARE to ensure military families have access to mental healthcare.
If you need help finding age-appropriate resources in your area, contact us. We’re here to help you and your child manage manipulative teen behaviors and other behavioral issues that accompany adolescence.
