Take the High Road or Gain the High Ground

Everyone who has siblings has at some time been told to take the high road. Most of the time kids were told this after their siblings did something bad to them. The parents would always tell them to take the high road and do better than their siblings. They did this by making an argument about what they want from the kid. Whether this was by telling the kid it was wrong, that it would upset the sibling, that it would upset the parent, or whatever they come up with at the moment. Now, anyone who has ever been told to take the high road didn't want to and weren't convinced not to by the parents (whether or not they actual did something about it is another story). Your parents argument was in crumbles from the beginning because they based their argument on what they wanted and not what the kid wanted.

When the parents argument was about what they wanted without thinking about what their kid wanted it wasn't going to be effective. If the parents really wanted to convince their kid not to hit their brother back they probably should have considered gaining the high ground. To gain the high ground parents should have thought about what the kids wanted and manipulated it to get what they wanted. By this I mean that the parents should have started with something that their kids believed or wanted to convince the kids to do what they wanted.

To gain the high ground in this situation your parents should have started with a commonplace. A commonplace is something that the audience all believes. So for the example above, the parents may sit the kid down and say how they know why they want to hit their brother (and potentially say they would have wanted to hit them back too in the situation). This helps the kid feel like they are understood and that the parents get why/what they wanted. A commonplace is something useful to find in every argument as it boils down the audience place which makes it easier for the persuader to manipulate the situation to benefit themselves.

In order to find a commonplace look for babbling. This is where the audience keeps repeating the same things over and over again. The parents may find the commonplace from their kid repeating that they hit them first a bunch of times when they talk. This would help the parents realize that the reason the kid wants to hit the other is because they hit them first.

Another way to find a commonplace is to see the rejection. This is good to spot a commonplace because the audience has a reason why they turned you down and that is a commonplace. The parent may be able to find the rejection when they offer the kid a piece of candy in exchange for them not to hit their brother but the kid doesn't want it because they want to hit the sibling back.

The commonplace label is where the persuader will add the commonplace into their argument. By doing this it makes it seem like the audience got what they wanted and if someone objects to it they seem like an outsider who doesn't have the same opinions as the audience. The parent may do this by saying something such as if the kid hit the sibling back that their hand would hurt and it would hurt them more than their sibling.

Gaining the high ground will always be better than telling the audience to take the high road. By telling someone to take the high ground you are simply making they stew in their anger and not understand why they shouldn't hit their brother back. By gaining the high ground it is actually possible for the audience to change their opinions and believe what you want them to believe.