How to parent this Christmas without the threats and bribes

“If you kids don’t knock it off I’m calling Santa” is the calling card of many patents at this time of year. 

Are you even a parent if you haven’t said at least one of these things:

“If you don’t settle down, we are turning this car around”

“if you don't eat your dinner there will be no dessert” or

“Santa is just a phone call away”

My hubby used the Santa one this week. One of my boys was mucking up and he said “if you don’t settle down Santa won’t get as many gifts.” Most parents dabble in these thinly veiled threats, especially at Christmas when everyone is heightened.

We use these things to get our kids to cooperate.

To get kids into or out of the bath, or just some days to survive. Sometimes they do work in the moment.

But there is a significant catch, they simply don’t work to teach our kids HOW to do things differently and as a result we wind up on a treadmill of threats and rewards that quite frankly gets exhausting. 

In addition, threats and punishments simply don’t address the underlying reason that kids muck up. The biggest reason of all that threatening to phone Santa won’t help your child behave better or stop hitting their sibling: kids don’t muck up deliberately. Kids go well when they can, and poor behaviour is never their first choice. In fact, ironically it is when our kids are behaving badly that they need the most love.

So, in general, punishments and consequences that are not natural or relatable simply won’t work because they assume that your child hitting his brother is a choice.

Alphie Kohn showed in his book ‘Punished by rewards’ that conditional parenting and the use of rewards and punishments do not change behaviour long term. In fact, they lead to a lack of compliance and a decrease in cooperation longer term. They also lower intrinsic motivation, decrease connection and can lead to an increase in mental health issues and lower self-esteem.

 Kohn explained that praise works best if we: “Don't praise people, only what people do. For example, instead of saying "You are so smart," or "You are so talented," say "I can tell you worked really hard on this assignment."

Ross Greene agrees and argues “The reason reward and punishment strategies haven’t helped is because they won’t teach your child the skills he’s lacking or solve the problems that are contributing to challenging episodes.”

Both the carrot (praise, rewards, bribes) and the stick (threats, punishments, ignoring) are what we would say are from a behaviouralist model. We either punish to extinguish a ‘negative behaviour’ or praise to encourage the ‘good behaviour’ – the problem is, it’s been proven that neither of these approaches will lead to long term cooperation, and they may in fact negatively impact your child’s mental health and self-esteem in the process.

The other reason these things hinder more than help is that when we threaten our kids, their cortisol or stress response flares. Believe me when I tell you that cortisol doesn’t help them behave better. It’s usually the trigger for meltdowns in both our kids and often times us too.

Here’s what doesn’t work long term to change behaviour:

The Carrot: Rewards, star charts, praise: “if you are really good and stay in our beds we can tell Santa and he might bring more gifts”

Before you panic this doesn’t mean we can’t use some of these techniques in parenting, it just means they won’t change behaviour long term. They can still be good tools in your parenting toolkit so don’t chuck them all out, just be mindful with them).

The Stick: Timeouts, punishments, threats (if you don’t stop screaming, I am calling Santa!)

If you are anything like most of the parents I work with, your next question might be…. “Um, so…. what’s left??”  Here is the good news. When we change the way we communicate things often go much better for our kids.

Here are my top four tips to increase cooperation without the need to call the big guy:

 1. Connect before you direct

It only takes a moment to stop, to notice what my child is doing and tune in. I might get down at their level and say “wow you have built the biggest LEGO DUPLO tower this morning!” Or maybe I’ll notice they are just having a hard time and go in for a big hug, where I hang in long enough to really feel their little bodies settle.

2. Whisper and get closer

Touch is a wonderful way to tune their bodies in to hear us. By simply touching your child’s shoulder or getting down low and close and being physically near your child it lets them know you are there. This helps them to ‘tune in’. Because children live so much in play, in imaginary worlds and in the moment, this touch simply helps to tune them back in to our world.

 3. Make it achievable

Two step instructions are much better for tired kids than a list of tings to do. Help them go better with visuals and tasks broken down into achievable bits.

4. Help kids when needed

Sometimes our kids just need a little bit more helpful stop this might mean coming close to noticing that they're finding it hard to do the thing that we've asked him to do. It helps if we give them some compassion before helping them to move forward with what needs to happen next.

Christmas is an intense time of year we are tired and busy. Our kids are tired and often quite overwhelmed by changes in their schedules, food, sleep and their worlds. Slowing things down and starting with connection makes a huge difference. And chances are it will lead to a happier Christmas Day then any threats of a phone call to Santa.

Keen for more help getting kids to listen? Check out my book Little People Big Feelings