Many parents use fear to gain compliance from their children. It's the oldest trick in the book, right?
If you aren't good Santa won't bring your presents... If you talk back to me one more time I'll...You just WAIT till your father gets home!
It's all about the threat of pain, denial of comfort, leveraging of consequence and withholding of approval. And while there's a growing trend among more enlightened parents to break that habit, it's pretty much a fact of human nature that fear is the default tool for control.
When I was growing up "wait till your father gets home" was pretty much the deal. I've never been open to correction and even as a little boy the threat of a spanking (which was very rare) for the most part didn't move me. I might have even smiled out the side of my face when it happened. The threat of my father's disapproval was marginally more effective. At least it got my attention.
Before we had kids my wife and I talked a lot about how we would discipline. The potential for them inheriting my general defiance and her desire to break the cycle of belt whippings endemic to southern black culture made us very deliberate in our approach. That we wouldn't hit, yell and scream or berate went hand in hand with using adult language instead of baby talk, not being overly protective and letting them learn through failure. We were progressive 21st century parents in the making!
Then our son turned three and I flirted briefly with the power of threat.
I can tell you right now when that discovery happened. We were in the car on the way to some public place and the boy threw an epic tantrum. Unless you have kids you do not understand this tantrum, but every parent knows the one I'm talking about. The details don't matter but the outcome is always the same. It's the tantrum that changes you from naive to seasoned in the course of an hour.
My wife and I looked at each other without speaking and agreed that this was the end of the easy stuff. It's an "oh shit" moment that has the power to inform the rest of your parenting. Some people reach for the belt, or the yell and threaten. Some people try against hope to be calm and use reason. Some people reach for the bottle (of booze).
I reached into that vast expanse of untapped resource known as "my ass" and pulled out a tool so effective I quickly thought better of it. That tool was called The People.
Join me over the unwashed blankie for more.
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The People were an undefined force for compliance. They aren't the police because they have no authority to control or punish. They aren't your father because while you don't want their disappointment they never actually show up. They definitely aren't your grandmother with a bone-handled, hogs-hair brush dealing licks as you run down the stairs. I can attest to that.
The People are simply "there", somewhere, waiting to hear about whatever it is you did wrong and in some unspecified way express disapproval. It was a psychological threat left for the boy put together in his own mind, and that's why I discarded it. Who knows what his three year old self thought when I said The People would be unhappy if he didn't stop screaming in the store. Did he think they would take him away? What if he thought they would make him die? Very quickly I saw the negative in this and decided to burn the scam by telling him The People weren't real, that we made it all up. The incredible power of The People to control through fear had vanished before my eyes.
Not long after they vanished The People were unexpectedly resurrected by our son and became the most useful tool in the parenting bag of tricks. Unmasking hadn't stripped their power but had freed them from the shackles of fear to become an imaginary source of creative play. No longer were The People a scary and nebulous entity but a safety valve through which the boy could explore his feelings and emotions and we could effect positive modifications of his behavior. The People were now a force for development instead of penalty.
Is the boy showing signs of impending meltdown?
"Whoops! Guess we better call The People..." and the ice is broken, an emotional opening instead of a closure. Since The People aren't real it's pretty stupid funny to a three year old. More importantly it speaks to their imagination.
"I'm telling The People on you for bringing me to the store!" and now the tables have turned! He had the power and through fantasy play we might learn what is actually frustrating him. Or it might turn into a story about who they are and where they live and now he's forgotten that he's mad. The outcomes were innumerable and the game evolved into a treasured part of his early childhood. Through The People we early built a family culture of listening and talking that has paid vast dividends. Considering we didn't know what the hell we were doing I figure The People won us the parenting lottery.
Today I was researching a curriculum I'm developing and through a long string of links arrived at
FakePoliceCall.com. It's a phone app that allows parents to fake a call from the cops and deliver a message of praise or disapproval depending on the behavior. Kid won't wear his seatbelt? "Officer Friendly" (very original) is on the line for you, sirens blaring and everything. Kid being an angel in the store? Give them a happy call from the "Store Police" (yup) to reinforce that positive behavior. Sirens for the good call, too.
Unsurprisingly, the Lite version only has three free messages from the Good and Bad list:
- Wearing a Seatbelt
- Wearing a Bicycle Helmet
- Wearing a Life Jacket
- You have to buy the app for access to the good stuff like store behavior (Store Police), mall behavior (Mall Police) and school behavior. It doesn't say "School Police" which is kinda weird since schools all have police now. Actual police, not Rent-a-Cops with police attitudes like at the Mall or the Store. Oh, and this app was designed by a cop.
Regardless, I couldn't stop thinking about how twisted this is compared to what The People morphed into. The app is geared toward the 2-4 set, right in that developmental range where compliance issues peak and minds are most malleable and open to suggestion regarding authority and the role of figures like police. At this age kids role play and dress up, trying on personalities and mimicking occupations as they begin to make sense of their world. Police are the perennial favorite for these kids there's a reason for that. Their authority appeals to their need to control the environment. Next time you see a cop acting like a prick or throwing a law enforcement tantrum, google a video of a 4 year old doing the same. You will recognize a distinct parallel, and I'm not being snarky.
This might sound overly dramatic but Fake Police Call, billed as a harmless learning tool for parental support, is a twisted primer for gaining compliance through the threat of arrest. The use of sirens, stern voices and an authoritative robo-call opening to gain attention is designed to train submission and deference. It is deliberately constructed (albeit in a pretty dumb manner) to fertilize and grow the fruit of a very broken system. We've seen this fruit harvested by the bushel in real life this past year, and will continue to see it for a long time to come.
Fruit like the police murder of Keith Vidal, an 18 year old in South Carolina whose parents called the real police looking for help as he suffered the beginnings of a psychotic episode. Keith was schizophrenic, had major depressive disorder and a history of self harm. All his parents wanted was for the police to help them calm him down so he could be taken to the hospital for treatment.
Except the boy had apparently a small screwdriver in his hand when police arrived from three different departments and from that point on all bets were off. After tasing him and two officers wrestling his 90lb frame to the ground, where he continued to struggle, a third officer said “we don’t have time for this,” and shot him dead.
The officer who shot him, Bryon Vassey was indicted on manslaughter charges. His defense attorney claimed he "had no choice" but to shoot because the victim. Kossack old mark wrote about this back in August
The detective who actually did the shooting of a just 18 year old 90 pound boy, being held by 2 other officers on the floor of his home, "wielding" not a screwdriver, but a hair pick...Byron Vassey...has been indicted and suspended without pay, and has bonded out and evidently is still awaiting trial.
As of
December 23, 2014 that trial still has yet to occur.
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