UNKNOWN PUNISHMENTS (COMMENT).

UNKNOWN PUNISHMENTS (COMMENT). I posted here on how effective the threat of a nonexistent spanking machine was when I was a boy. Unknown punishments can be very effective. A lady I knew had a threat that always worked with her son. She would start counting to ten and say, “You don’t want to find out what happens when I get to ten.” After he was an adult, he said one day, “I have always wondered what you would have done when you got to ten.” She paused, and said, “So have I.” My mother said that her mother’s ultimate threat was, “You don’t want me to tell your father.” It was only after that she was grown up that she reflected that her father was very gentle and would never have done any disciplining at all.