Parenting Advice – Should I Threaten My Child To Get Them To Behave

In my previous post I talked about physical discipline and why I’m against it. In this post we’re going to talk about coercion.

Coercion is the use of threats to get someone to comply.

Here are some examples:

“If you don’t get in that shower right now I will give you a spanking.”
“If you don’t wash the dishes I will take away your favorite toy.”
“If you don’t pick up your room I’ll ground you.”

Ultimatums, get rid of them. Besides threats, rewards are also used to get children to “behave”. I hate to break it to you, but these are called bribes.

“If you do the dishes, I’ll let you stay up an hour later.”
“If you pick up your room, I’ll let you have a snack.”

Bribes are bad for children unless you want them to become a politician. However, bribes turn into bartering when exchanged for extra responsibility — something that is beneficial to teach.

Doing chores or other jobs establishes a strong work ethic and helps children prepare for reality.

Let’s face it, their boss is not going to give them a snack or let them stay up an hour later for showing up to work on time.

Parents make threats to take away toys, place kids in timeouts, give them spankings, ground them, and more. Most parents don’t follow through with the threat but even if they did the punishment is retarded.

Threats are never good, threats of force are bad, and threats to remove things the kids identify with are wrong. You will damage their ego and self esteem.

Threatening children is another way for you to fuel your ego and pretend like you own them. Imagine if those threats carried into your adulthood — how would you like it?

How would it feel to have someone living in your house telling you to go exercise or they’ll take away your TV time — or to go back to school and stop being a loser or they’ll ground you?

Seems kind of silly right?

If what you are teaching your kids isn’t timeless, then don’t teach it to them at all. It is confusing to them and stunts their growth.

This is the same type of stuff adults are subjected to by their government.

If you don’t pay your taxes we’ll take your house, if you don’t pay your child support we’ll put you in jail, if you don’t slow down we’ll give you a fine — it’s all threats of force and theft.

Tell me how going 5 miles per hour over the speed limit is remedied by you paying them $75. That punishment doesn’t fit the crime. It’s just taking away something you worked hard for to get you to comply with the law.

A better punishment would be to make you stand out on the highway holding a sign that says “I was caught speeding, please obey the speed limit, or you’ll end up doing this.”

At least this relates to the crime.

But kids will always find a loophole. They will comply when they need to and as soon as you look away they are back at it.

It’s better to face the fact that you can’t stop them from doing what they want without wasting your time. Any mistakes you prevent, they are going to make when they leave the house.

I’ve seen it happen with my friends that had strict parents and some of you reading know what I’m talking about. I can probably name at least ten people that didn’t drink and got straight A’s in school and when they hit college they partied hard.

I’ve seen the no sex until marriage rule be completely violated. Your grown up kids move out and become accidental sluts, never sustaining a satisfying relationship.

I’m not saying there’s a way to prevent these mistakes. What I want you to recognize is that you can’t stop it from happening. The best thing you can do is stop trying to control them and start understanding and relating to them.

Open the communication lines and build trust so when they run into these circumstances they will talk to you about it. Too many kids are afraid to talk to their parents because of punishment.

We might not be able to stop them from doing something but as parents we can definitely guide them and help them make good choices.

If you want to spend your time intervening in their life then you might want to consider hanging yourself instead. At least your kids will end up less traumatized, more independent, more confident, and less fearful.

Why would you raise a kid to be afraid to make mistakes?

Mistakes are the essence of living — it’s how we learn and grow.

Coercion not only is a terrible parenting philosophy but it causes a lot of emotional and mental damage that lingers into adulthood.

This is all I have to say on coercion. In my next post I’ll talk about persuasion. Persuasion is my preferred method of parenting right now because nothing else makes sense.