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Parents don't think much of it when we say, you can have ice cream only if you finish your vegetables. What are we really teaching our kids?
Parents don’t think much of it when we say, you can have ice cream only if you finish your vegetables. What are we really teaching our kids?
Finish your homework or I will not let you watch TV.
Eat the greens else no ice cream for dessert.
If you score well in exams that I- pad is yours.
If you keep throwing tantrums like this we will send you to boarding school.
My daughter is 9 now and innumerable times I have been guilty of using this tactics to get results out of her.
When repeated nagging does not work emotional blackmailing is what most parents resort to as a shortcut to discipline. We start using it for something as trivial as forcing them to go to bed, or as important as scoring well in exams. Though it is effective in the short run we often tend to ignore the long term effects it can have on our child.
We tend to forget very early on we are sowing the seeds of corruption in our kids. We are setting examples that bribing is fine. We are teaching them that it is OK to blackmail others to get our work done.
Emotional blackmailing most times makes the child adamant. Repeated blackmailing can curb their own decision making.
It also dilutes the whole purpose of discipline. Kids do not understand the real essence of the task they are asked to do, and instead develop an aversion for the same since they are blackmailed into it.
One day we had some guests over for lunch and their 5 year old child refused palak paneer. My daughter, pointing her index finger at her, said, ”You are not getting the dessert afterwards.”
I was embarrassed, and thought of later having a dialogue with her. When I tried asking her why she had misbehaved during lunch she said, “But that is how it is, there are conditions always. Isn’t it Mumma?”
I realized the what a parenting blunder I have been doing all these days. Eating vegetable had become conditional for her, not that she realized the positives of it.
Corruption, bribery, blackmailing are the last things any parent would want to inculcate in their child. This is exactly what I have been doing all these days.
Freedom of choice and independenceis what I wanted for my child and I was doing just the opposite.
Well! What are the alternatives to Emotional Blackmailing?
I have been struggling with it and sometimes I lose the patience and do fall prey to it again. But I avoid it as much as possible. I try to be more patient, I listen to her and ask her for alternatives. It doesn’t work all the time. But I know that at least I am doing the basics right. I am not compromising with the values that I want to pass on to her.
She has a long life ahead and would face many challenges. But now she would know “Not everything in life is conditional”. At least not vegetables with ice cream.
A version of this was first published here.
Image source: pixabay
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Neena was the sole caregiver of Amma and though one would think that Amma was dependent on her, Neena felt otherwise.
Neena inhaled the aroma that emanated from the pan and took a deep breath. The aroma of cumin interspersed with butter transported her back to the modest kitchen in her native village. She could picture her father standing in the kitchen wearing his white crisp kurta as he made delectable concoctions for his only daughter.
Neena grew up in a home where both her parents worked together in tandem to keep the house up and running. She had a blissful childhood in her modest two-room house. The house was small but every nook and cranny gave her memories of a lifetime. Neena’s young heart imagined that her life would follow the same cheerful course. But how wrong she was!
When she was sixteen, the catastrophic clutches of destiny snatched away her parents. They passed away in a road accident and Neena was devastated. Relatives thronged her now gloomy house and soon it was decided that she should be married off.
Women today don’t want to be in a partnership that complicates their lives further. They need an equal partner with whom they can figure out life as a team, playing by each other’s strengths.
We all are familiar with that one annoying aunty who is more interested in our marital status than in the dessert counter at a wedding. But these aunties have somehow become obsolete now. Now they are replaced by men we have in our lives. Friends, family, and even work colleagues. It’s the men who are worried about why we are not saying yes to one among their clans. What is wrong with us? Aren’t we scared of dying alone? Like them?
A recent interaction with a guy friend of mine turned sour when he lectured me about how I would regret not getting married at the right time. He lectured that every event in our lives needs to be completed within a certain timeframe set by society else we are doomed. I wasn’t angry. I was just disappointed to realize that annoying aunties are rapidly doubling in our society. And they don’t just appear at weddings or family functions anymore. They are everywhere. They are the real pandemic.
Let’s examine this a little closer.
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