I am aware that considering that threatening a child with not wanting it, giving it away or hitting it, telling it that it makes us feel despised or that it is bad if it does not obey us may seem like an exaggeration. But the point is that the age of the victim and the loving intention of their parents does not change the fact that it is used emotional blackmail to achieve their obedience or to do things that resist, sometimes rightly, sometimes without it, to do.
What is wrong if we do it to our partner is wrong if we do it to our children. If a behavior is emotional blackmail towards our partner, it is emotional blackmail towards our children.
Not using emotional blackmail does not mean that we let children behave capriciously, treat us without respect or harm others. It does not mean that we are going to educate children without limits.
The point is that emotional blackmail It is not a suitable tool and we are able to overcome it by learning, first, to identify it, second not to use it, and third, to develop other healthier tools.
Examples of emotional blackmail towards children
He emotional blackmail towards children It includes quite common expressions: from the threat of losing the love of parents, to point out that no one will ever love them, to comments about calling the police, the man in the coat, social services, the father or the mother absent at that time .
Children have to learn to be respectful, to comply with living standards, to eat healthy and to control, in a healthy way, their negative emotions and their aggressiveness. Of course. But they must learn by conviction, by their own desire, not fear.
Even when it threatens the loss of Christmas gifts, making the Wise Men complicit in the blackmail, with that if you don't behave they will bring you coal, we are using a manipulation and a threat.
It is such a widespread custom that anyone, even people who don't know us at all, are encouraged to use it with children, without realizing that they are hurting them. From those who tell them that they are going to take them or their siblings, to those who make fun of the children for still wearing a pacifier, diaper or taking the tit or bottle.
Humiliation
Telling others, as partners or family members, "bad behavior" is another way to blackmail, threatening ridicule, humiliating the child. The thing can go further, if in addition to a general threat we warn that we will make them visible and recognizable, so that anyone who sees them mocks them, and that, even if we do not intend to comply, only with the idea already We hurt the child.
Other ways to use the fear of humiliation is the negative comparison of the child with others, especially harmful when we talk about bodily functions, food or skills acquired at different ages according to the degree of maturation. Dangerous is especially when we use blackmail in feeding or sphincter control, because the humiliation It joins that they are very delicate bodily functions.
If, on top of that, the comparison is between the brothers, we are laying the best basis for insane competitiveness, envy and jealousy, or the terrible feeling of not being as loved by parents as the other brother for not being as good or as smart as he.
Obviously, there are more violent threats, which already overcome their emotional blackmail to control through more direct fear. I mean threats of hitting you, or harming ourselves, saying that we want to die or that life, because of you. If we analyze what has been said, we can realize that its only possibility is a nightmare, in which potential actions are used to intimidate.
I would not stop giving examples, but surely our readers, at this point, are able to give me a lot of examples. I would love to share them in the comments. But come on, the typical thing is that "eat everything or mommy is going to be sad" or worse "Mom will not love you if you start running in the doctor's office."
The middle and the end
They may be shameless lies, but that the child, or they affect him, or worse, they no longer affect him because he has lost confidence in us fed up and immunized from hearing so many threats. So, whether they serve or not, they are bad ways to achieve a supposedly educational objective.
It is true that emotional blackmail It can lead to punishment: not watching TV, not going out to the park, not reading a story or not buying something they wanted very much. It can also lead to the father fulfilling his threats and hitting the child, yelling or insulting him. And in addition, it can cause the father to see distort the image of his own son and the child's self-esteem, who, whether it is something important or something superficial for which he is threatened to stop being loved or respected, will end up believing himself unworthy of paternal love and label himself as that bad boy he is not.
