The parent scares the child in order to achieve obedience. If you don't brush your teeth , I'll give you to Torbalan ! If you don't eat your food , Baba Yaga will eat you! If you don't go to sleep, the wolf will come! Adults often resort to the help of fairy tale characters to achieve obedience on the part of children .

But is intimidation really an effective method of education ? And won't it lead to problems in the child 's future life?

When the parent frightens the child in order to achieve obedience, the message is transmitted to the child: "I, your main protection and support in the world, can abandon you." The smaller the child , the greater the scale of the emotional catastrophe. For the child, the mother is almost the whole world, for the preschool child it is an important part of the world, but even for the student and adolescent parents are important and the relationship with them to some extent remains a prototype for all other relationships. If my parent can leave me, then everything that is dear to me in this world can betray and abandon me.

Of course, a single case is unlikely to cause deep trauma for life , although much depends on the emotional tension in the situation and the sensitivity of the child. But, unfortunately, the child is often threatened . In Bulgaria, intimidation is a very common pedagogical method . Probably this fact contributes to the large number of gloomy adults in our country who do not expect generosity from life and harbor fears that all happiness is followed by disappointment. We even have a saying on this subject: " After a toy comes a cry ."

In most cases, when the parent reacts with a threat of unwanted behavior, instead of explaining what is bad and how to fix it, the adult gives a vague negative assessment of the situation (do not behave badly) and even the person as a whole (do not be capricious), or requires things that are impossible to accomplish with desire alone (to fall asleep , to calm down ).

Usually the child does not intend to behave badly : he behaves as he can. There is a need that he wants to satisfy, but he does not know how, or there are feelings that, perhaps, do not bring joy to himself. Until the parent shows how to behave properly and the child understands and remembers this, the vague "stop behaving badly, otherwise ..." is more like "stop acting, stop being yourself." Instead of helping the child understand how he can behave, we teach him to reject either himself or some of his feelings. This is a serious blow to the child 's self-esteem , faith in their own importance and success.

Many parents do not realize how few things a child is able to learn while afraid. The developing child's brain in a stressful situation focuses on what it already knows, not on learning the new . He makes every effort to survive to the detriment of training, even if the situation is not dangerous, but only assessed as threatening. Fear teaches only one thing - to stay away from it. It prevents more complex conclusions from being drawn.

A child who believes in parental threats experiences constant stress. If not a character (Baba Yaga, Torbalan) is used for intimidation, but a real collective image (passer-by, policeman, doctor), the child begins to be afraid of such people. That is, adults themselves teach children not to trust new acquaintances, to avoid police officers and doctors. It is one thing for children to learn to hold hands with their parents in the crowd so that they are not kidnapped and lost , and quite another to be taught to see a threat in everyone they meet . After that, more than one training for social competence will be needed in order for the grown-up child to become communicative and proactive in communicating with new people. And, of course, the child should not learn to be afraid of people whose job it is to help him.

In general, a child who believes in parental threats experiences constant stress caused by fear, which at least slows down his development , and can also provoke such nervous behaviors as enuresis, stuttering, tics, nail biting .

At the same time, sooner or later the child begins to understand that the adult's threat will not be fulfilled: the mother will not abandon him, no matter how much he threatens with it; grandmother will not give it to the unknown uncle, although she has promised several times; despite his father's stories, no matter how capricious he was, no Torbalan would kidnap him. The child begins to suspect that the parents are not telling the truth. Unfortunately, this does not eliminate the listed negative effects, but only adds one more. When the fearful external factor calls for help , the adult not only loses the usual opportunity to influence the child with the threat of coercion, he himself reveals to the child his helplessness in creating discipline .

The child needs protection and guidance not only factually but also psychologically. It is important for him to feel that he, who does not particularly understand the world around him, is under the protection and care of loving and authoritative adults . Practically behind every unacceptable behavior of the child there is an unspoken hope to clarify the limits of what is permissible . Children need not only restrictions, but also precise guidance: the game is wonderful, but if there are no rules in it, it ceases to exist. Restrictions give freedom of action , the lack of restrictions creates chaos .

It is important to understand that intimidation has nothing to do with information or the possibility of the child facing the consequences . When we communicate the danger to the child and explain to him / her how to act specifically to avoid this danger, we help him / her to become more aware, knowledgeable, successful.

If the danger is great and we can not allow the child to face it, we create rules of conduct and keep the child abiding by them. However, if the danger is small, we can warn the child, make sure he understands and give him freedom of action. It is important to be ready to accept any outcome, not to rejoice and to help him cope with the consequences. By doing so, we help the child learn to take responsibility , deal with problems , and follow the rules and restrictions adopted by the family, kindergarten , or school he or she attends.

The psyche of the child up to five years is designed so that he accepts everything said by the parents for granted. Threatening a child is a hopeless activity. Fear creates insecurity in the world around, increases anxiety. The chances of success in a child 's life are reduced. Why do adults scare their children ? We parents do this in cases when we can't explain something to the child, negotiate with him, make him do what we think is right.

The psyche of the child up to five years is designed so that he accepts everything said by the parents for granted. Depending on their temperament and sensitivity, each child reacts to threats differently: sanguine people pass information about Baba Yaga by their ears, and melancholics wake up in horror from nightmares on this topic. The child's psyche is arranged in such a way that the fictional character is perceived as real. And all sorts of witches and fairies acquire additional details. And if the character from the children's fantasies stands in front of the adult in the form of a living picture , then believe me, the parent would also be horrified. Evidence of this can be children's drawings of their fears , which children draw in consultation with a psychologist .

The collection of scary images can be different. For example, if you scare the child with the uncle of a police officer who comes for the bad kids, be prepared to form a different image of the profession. The child only interprets exactly what bad children are. And if he is lost , he also feels like a bad child , which means that he will not turn to the police for help , but will run away from him. Another common way to intimidate is with an injection doctor. This is a centuries-old threat that has been tested on our parents and sounds particularly convincing. As a result, children are insanely afraid of doctors.

Parents should not spare time to explain what is good and what is bad, what can be done and what should not be done. Calm and without threats. Then the result is a confident, peacefully sleeping child who will not spend money on a psychologist in the future.