Parents have a pretty good weapon in the notion that Santa Claus has children under constant surveillance and that the quantity and quality of Christmas presents are functions of how good the children have been. I know some parents who claim to have Santa on speed dial and threaten to call him and rat out their kids when they’re bad. The best part is that this tool is available when kids cannot be reasoned with when they are small and stupid.
The down side is that parents can’t keep the charade up forever. Moreover, it only works at most in the three months leading up to Christmas. I reckon parents could keep the elf surveillance system on their kids’ minds and working for them for the better part of the year if they worked at it a little. I would tie it in with birthdays and other events. Let your kids know that Santa and the Easter Bunny share intelligence, that you are in regular contact with Santa and that you receive reports on their goodness level, especially when a birthday is coming up.
Parents also make the mistake of assuming that kids won’t figure out that they get presents even when they are bad and that even their worst behaved siblings and friends get pretty good presents every Christmas notwithstanding their evildoing. They begin to have doubts about the elf surveillance system’s efficacy, and the whole thing begins to unravel. Every now and then, let one or more of your kids wake up on Christmas morning to no presents or, at most, socks or a sweater. Their siblings will revel in their fantastic gifts while the target child is reinforced with the idea that Santa knows what he or she has been up to. The lesson won’t be lost on the others, either.
How do you choose which of your children to target in any given year? One way is to pick the one that you are pretty sure has been the worst behaved in the previous year. If you aren’t sure, just pick randomly. Your kids have done a lot of stuff that you don’t know about, and they’ll just figure that they are getting their comeuppance.
This program will strengthen the elf surveillance program child control strategy and may actually help to extend the time that it works on your kids.
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