RULE 24

Never emotionally blackmail them

Have you ever caught yourself saying any of the following (or variations on them)?

• ‘After everything I’ve done for you, surely you can just do this for me?’
• ‘You’re making me sad.’
• ‘It’s not fair on me.’

Recognize any of those? If not, well done – go to the next page. If you have ever heard any of these words coming out of your mouth, you’re certainly not alone. Nevertheless, these are all forms of emotional blackmail and thus a Bad Thing.

Emotional blackmail puts an underhand and insidious pressure on your children, and if you do it often your children will develop an unhelpful tendency to guilt, along with quite possibly a resentment towards you. What’s more, you’re indicating that your feelings are more important to you than theirs, and setting an example of putting oneself first, being self-pitying, and being emotionally manipulative.

Look, you got yourself into this parent thing. It’s normal for kids to behave selfishly, and you’re obviously going to be on the receiving end of that more often than anyone else. You have no right to take it out on them – it’s not their problem if you’re tired, overworked, stressed, feeling taken for granted.

I’m not suggesting that you should encourage your children to be selfish. But you need to find ways that don’t entail emotionally blackmailing them. Point out the effect their actions have on other people, or just tell them straight. Instead of, ‘Please don’t ask me to play football with you when I’m so exhausted’, you can simply say, ‘I’m sorry, I’m too tired. I’ll play with you tomorrow’.

There is simply no point in telling your children, ‘I work my fingers to the bone for you – I cook for you, clean up after you, wash your clothes, take you to football practice, ferry you about in the car …’. I can tell you that all they hear is, ‘Blah, blah, blah, football, blah, blah …’. So you’re wasting your breath. It’s quite true that someone needs to point all this out to them, but it isn’t you. What you need is a partner or grandparent or big sister or someone to say, ‘Don’t drop your clothes on the floor like that. Why should your mum/dad pick up after you at your age? Don’t you think they do enough for you already?’ And you can do the same thing for your partner. The kids are far more likely to listen to that.

Another option is to offer to swap jobs with them for a day (preferably not a school day, or it gets tricky). You’ll get up late and play or read most of the day, and they can do all your jobs. They’ll probably decline your offer, but they’ll have to think about what you do in order to make that decision.

So you see, there’s no excuse for emotional blackmail because there are lots of better ways to teach your children not to be selfish – and ones which won’t leave them emotionally scarred.