Why you should not use emotional blackmail to educate your children

Emotional blackmail is not only used by children. Adults too often resort to emotional blackmail without being aware of it in the vast majority of circumstances. In many families, emotional blackmail is used as another tool to turn to to exercise control and domination over the children during the p

Emotional blackmail is not only used by children. Adults too often resort to emotional blackmail without being aware of it in the vast majority of circumstances.

In many families, emotional blackmail is used as another tool to turn to to exercise control and domination over the children during the period of upbringing. But, what a priori may seem a harmless strategy, it is not. Emotional blackmail negatively affects the emotional well-being of children.

Why you should not resort to emotional blackmail with your children

Resorting to emotional blackmail for children to behave in the way we want or consider appropriate, is an absolutely inappropriate strategy, toxic and harmful to the psychological strength of the child.

If we use emotional blackmail, when we interact with our son, we are preventing him from developing healthily. As parents, we must take responsibility for raising happy, autonomous, responsible and emotionally independent children. And, the use of strategies such as emotional manipulation favors children to grow up and become immature, insecure, dependent and emotionally unstable adults.

Ultimately, the child perceives that the people to whom he is most linked affectively threaten him, de in a more or less subtle way, with punishing him in some way if he does not do what they want. We must avoid it!Next, we detail those expressions, based on a type of erroneous communication, that we address to our children without being aware that what we are doing is emotional blackmail:

- I do not love you anymore!

- Why do not you give me a hug? Do not you love me? Do you want me to cry?
- If you do not ask your brother's forgiveness, I will not love you anyway!
- You have to go to the grandparents' house or you will make them very sad!
- If you had not done that, dad and I would not have fought!
- I got sick because of the disgust you gave me yesterday!
- Have you had a good time on the birthday? Have not you missed me? I've been alone all afternoon.
- If you do not behave well, I will tell everyone what happened the other day at home.
- Dad will not love you any more if you behave badly in school!
- When you do not eat your food you make Mom cry!
Finally, these are just some examples of

how we use emotional blackmail in our daily lives to communicate with our children without realizing it. If you consider that you resort to emotional blackmail in some occasions, do not worry, it simply changes the way you communicate with them from now on.

"Our parents sow in us mental and emotional seeds, and those seeds grow with us. In some families, those seeds are of love, respect and independence. But in many others what is sown are seeds of fear, obligation or guilt. " Susan Forward.