"Deliberately manipulating" is a biased term that negatively taints your statement. With the bias removed, the statement's ambiguity is revealed. You must unpack what you mean by "deliberately manipulating".

For example, teaching and parenting is a form of deliberately manipulating. Picking my kid up when he's about to fall down a slide is deliberately manipulating. Handing him a banana is deliberately manipulating. We are deliberately manipulating children constantly and for critically good reasons.