Even very young children need to be informed about dying. Explain the concept of death very carefully to your child. This will make threatening him with it much more effective.

Delivered with dry, exaggerated irony, this mock-parenting advice suggests explaining death to children not out of compassion but so the concept becomes a more potent disciplinary threat. It satirizes both overly clinical parenting guidance and the absurd lengths adults go to for leverage over kids.

Context reviewed 23 September 2026