Daughter-in-Law Uses Guilt to Control Her Children

Reader’s Question

I have a daughter-in-law that puts guilt on her children, such as if it’s something for them but she doesn’t want it, she will state stufff like that will break my heart, don’t do that. I am talking about like if they want to play sports, etc. She told her 8 year old twins that a woman that they knew and liked but she didn’t like was dead and her throat was cut. And it never even happened. The list goes on and on.

Our Consulting Clinical Psychologist’s Reply

As parents, we have a number of methods to educate, control, and correct our children. Parents use incentives, time-out, curfews, play time restrictions, etc. Parents also have some methods that are known to have negative consequences such as physical punishment, verbal abuse/intimidation, and your daughter-in-law’s favorite — guilt. Often the guilt is connected with physical and medical complaints as when the parent is a hypochondriac. Using guilt to control our children or restrict their activities is a very poor technique and a method that often comes back to haunt the parent after a few years. Younger children are pretty easy to control with guilt as they always assume the parent is being truthful — that they will die of a heart attack if Billy quits sports. As the children get older, they begin to realize the guilt is actually a lie. This makes them resentful and bitter, creating the “I don’t care” and indifferent attitude we often seen in teenagers.

Parents who use guilt as their major parenting method fall into a couple of groups.

1. Some are modeling the method used on them during their childhood. They basically learned from one of their parents.
2. Some parents are immature and view parenting as a type of competition or power issue. You’ll notice that she was jealous that her twins liked another adult, responding with a horrible guilt story about her death. Keep in mind that guilt is basically a type of hostile parenting.
3. Some parents have weak parenting skills and don’t have other methods.
4. Lastly, parents often use guilt when they feel overwhelmed as it works quickly without much thought.

To handle this situation, you must enlist the help of your son. Youth daughters-in-law may feel overwhelmed and/or unsupported. The couple need to have a team approach to parenting — not accepting some methods and consistently using others. They can read parenting tips on the Internet and consider parenting classes. Also check to see if the daughter-in-law is overwhelmed — is she getting enough support? Is her husband participating in the parenting?

Guilt is a method that works in younger years, but comes back to haunt you when the children get older. If a parent says “I’ll die of a heart attack if you do that!” — the younger child will behave but the older child will eventually say “I’ll send flowers!”