Saying 'Santa wont come if you're naughty'.

[PumpkinZulu]

Lmao, no pedestal here. We're gentle, involved, pretty good parents, and DD1 is a handful and a half. Like others have said, intelligent and hilarious and beautiful, but a lot of hard, hard work. I'd never cancel Xmas, let alone threaten to. I don't like to parent with fear, anger and threats like that in my bag of tricks.

[shellbell3]

I do use the elves are watching when they misbehave, or they may get potatos, gets them a little worried but honestly would never not give them gifts b/c overall they are pretty good kids even tho they do have there moments. But to your OP with the rude comment, I don't think I would cancel xmas I would hate them to miss the magic of santa. From what you've said with the kids being a handful I don't think santa not coming would really help the situation.

[squeezles]

I don't think you should make threats you can't or won't follow through with

[Cassius2]

I don't like to parent with fear, anger and threats like that in my bag of tricks.

that's it in a nutshell for me as well.

In our house we have tangible discussions about not so awesome behaviour.

I could never ever cancel christmas. it is, for us, a time of immense joy, that sometimes brief moment to forget the horrors of the world, the hardships of the year and just celebrate as a family. Reading that article that Tinks posted was really disturbing...i just want to run in and hug my girls after reading that! how can you strip the joy away from those children when it might be one of the most important moments for a child to actually feel loved and appreciated in a time when, as the parents mentioned: it was all rush rush rush. gosh, it just makes me feel quite sad.

If my child turned around after I said that i was going to 'tell santa' not to come...well, TBH, i would probably burst out laughing and grab my kid in a big bear hug and tell them, that no, never would they miss out on christmas. I would see it as a pretty good opportunity to discuss that although santa will still come, and christmas will still arrive, that you (the mum) would reckon that it would be a MUCH better and heaps more fun christmas if they were not so mean to eachother/helped out more etc. i am quite open with DD1 (6yrs) in that I tell her if she is being a bit rotten that we really want to have a fabulous time, but that she might want to consider how her behaviour might make that hard...it then also leads into (i have found) positive discussions about how she is feeling and why and allows for her to sometimes focus on what is that is bugging her and making her cross/moody/mean.