To pretend to be researching boarding schools to make the Dc behave?

[georgedontdothat]

I know I am but it's funny and they have been buggers all day

[nickytwotimes]

Tee-hee!
Hope you are looking in to really harsh ones.

[georgedontdothat]

Just googled one with really strange uniforms dd went quite pale

[georgedontdothat]

Funny that they don't behave when I tell em

[Yeni]

It could backfire! My DH's mum kept threatening to send him to boarding school if he didn't behave and as soon as he was 16 he took himself off to boarding school on a scholarship and she was heartbroken.

[Mungarra]

My mother was always threatening to send my brother to 'a home' ie. into care. She would go on about cold showers etc. She never said it to me or our sisters, but my brother said that it took quite a long time to stop believing that she might do it.

From my experience, it's a pretty horrible thing to threaten a child with. Obviously, threatening boarding school isn't as bad as threatening to put a child into care.

[Saturn74]

It's OK if they know you're joking.

But otherwise, it's mean.

Nothing wrong with boarding schools, of course.
It's just the idea of "if you're naughty, I'm going to send you away as a direct consequence" that is unkind, imo.

[onebatmother]

My mother was permanently damaged by having this threat hung over her.
She became a lifelong appeaser.

[onebatmother]

sorry, didn't mean to sound quite so forbidding, there.

[bunnyhunny]

my parents threatened me with boarding school. I was a complete pita as a child.
I belivied them, and it worked.

no long-lasting damage either

[MrsMattie]

My mum often used 'packing you off to boarding school' as a threat for me and my sister when we were really naughty. Sounds terrible, but it wasn't, really. She was (is) the best mum ever. We knew she was on a wind up even then, but we also knew that if 'boarding school' came up then my mum was really at the end of her tether and it was best that we start behaving!