Aliantha, you left out the most common meaning ascribed to "manipulate" that I found in ALL definitions:
To influence or manage
shrewdly or deviously
To
tamper with or falsify for personal gain
To control or play upon by
artful, unfair, or insidious means especially to one's own advantage
To change by
artful or unfair means so as to serve one's purpose
To control somebody or something: to
control or influence somebody or something in an ingenious or devious way
To falsify something:
to change or present something in a way that is false but personally advantageous
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When a baby is born, much of the rational brain is undeveloped. They are ruled largely by their reptilian and mammalian brains in the first few years of life. "In order to control an adult, a baby needs the power of clear thought, and for that he needs the brain chemical glutamate to be working well in his frontal lobes [within the rational brain]. But the glutamate system is not properly established in a baby's brain, so that means he is not capable of thinking much about anything, let alone how to manipulate his parents"
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When a baby cries to be picked up, she is not being "needy" or "clingy". "The separation distress system, located in the lower brain, is genetically programmed to be hypersensitive [because] in earlier stages of evolution, it was very dangerous for an infant to be away from her mother... if she didn't cry to alert her [mother] her whereabouts, she would not survive" (Sunderland 50). With age, the development of the rational brain helps to keep the separation distress system in check.
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Babies can't be spoiled and they don't know how to manipulate.
From the
The Science of Parenting