Game Theory for Parents

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I’ve recently learn’t a few techniques to help me NAIL the hardest job in the world. Parenting.
A couple of weeks ago I read an article on Game theory and I had an epiphany “My wifes an expert at it”, “My kids (who are now) teenagers are experts at it and have had at least a decade of using Game Theory against me”…it’s time I became an expert at it.
At its core parenting is quite simple. If you can stop your kids eating copious amounts of junk food, get them to do their homework and go to bed at a reasonable hour. Your jobs mostly done. If you have teenagers you can throw in a fews extras which include making sure they brush their hair, wake up before midday and shower at least once a week. Yes I have BOYS
Game theory is was invented in 1944 by John von Neuman, an economist, physicist, mathematician and computer scientist. It is now widely used in business and assumes that players are rational- this can be a bit of a stretch at times when we think about children! But we assume that kids are mostly rational and want the result that is best for them.
The next thing game theory involves in considering the various scenarios of each player and the likely outcome or “payoff” of that scenario. One simple technique for considering these scenarios and payoffs is to put yourself in the other person’s shoes.
So now I’d like you all to imagine yourself as an 8 year old - this may not be that difficult for some of you I know but for the majority please try your hardest as it will help you to understand how Game Theory can help you get more adult time. We all know what more “adult time” means don’t we. Yes that’s right. Sleep.
So here goes. Your 8 years old now. It’s 9 o’clock at night and you’re sitting legs splayed apart on the sofa and you’re deep into a Pokemon battle scene. Then breaking the silence an annoying adult announces “bed time”. They haven’t given you any good reason why you should go to bed and there was no real menace in their voice so your first strategy is to pretend you didn’t hear them and hope they will go away…much like what the world is doing with Donald Trump.
Great “Pidgeoto” has just appeared…and you feel a sense of satisfaction in your new found ability to multi-task….ignoring instructions while playing on your ipad is really paying off for you.
A few minutes later you hear that word again “BED Time”. Oops more menace in it now. The ignoring strategy won’t work any longer - you need to respond or the annoying adult will escalate things quickly. You say “2 mins I’ve just found Pidegeoto”. Perfect you’ve just gone back with what seems like a plausible reason for staying up late – all parents are aware of how popular Pokemon Go is. With any luck your parent’s inattentiveness and forgetful memory may result in an extra 10 or 15 mins…after all this has happened before on numerous previous occasions.
OK. I won’t go through blow by blow on how this plays out but you can see where it’s going. But I can see some of you really enjoyed being 8 year olds.
Anyway. So what can we learn from this?
Well by putting ourselves in the shoes of the child was just saying “bed time” enough. No! There were no consequences given for not going to bed on time. How do you think you would have reacted if the parent had said “Bed time now otherwise I will have to ban you using your ipad tomorrow”. Yes you would jump up and quickly hurry to get ready and off to bed. Now, as a parent if you get really good at this you don’t even need to come up with consequencies. You can just say something like “I’m trying to think of a punishment fits”. Once you get really proficient closing your eyes and counting to 10 is very effective.
Kids can smell weakness like dogs can smell fear. So you have to make sure you follow through. Next time they are naughty in the car you are in a car and have threatened them that they will be walking home. Follow through with it! Pull over. Bundle them out and drive off. Don’t look in the rear vision mirror. Oh minor details… make sure that you are within a few km’s from home and have driven that route once or twice before.
The point here is you try to use a threat as a bargaining tool you need to be prepared to follow through on it. Simply saying “Right I’m going to cancel Christmas this year” will not work if Christmas is still 5 months away and still fresh in their memories is that dad had a really good time at last years Christmas party. A really, really good time..
Sometimes the conflict is not always between parents and children, but between the children themselves and it still stresses us parents out. Here is a technique from Game theory to help. You can always toss a coin to resolve a dispute but this can lead coin-toss envy. The situation where you basically lose and don’t get what you want. Try having a sealed-bid, second-price auction where if each child is fighting over the remote then they each secretly write down what they are willing to pay. When the papers are opened, the highest bidder wins the right to the remote and only have to pay 10c more the second-highest bid. It actually makes a great spectator sport.
In game theory, there is this thing called the nash equilibrium. That is the state where no player in the game can unilaterally change their position and be better off. Very simply it means when the choices each player makes result in a WIN-WIN. But once you have mastered Game Theory you don’t need to settle for WIN-WIN….but that would be wrong. Wouldn’t it?