Conditions & threats

Do not make a positive experience depend on completion of a chore: "If you clean up your room we go outside and play."

This will create the illusion that cleaning up the room is bad and also undermines authority because the child will not clean up her room as a result of the parent asking so; she will clean up her room so she can go out and play. Used often, this approach will remove all authority from the parent over time and all future requests will have to be bribes and begging. "I give you a cake if you finish your homework". There is no place for conditions in the parent - child relationship. A more popular concept is unconditional love. Love should be constant, regardless of behaviour, performance or anything else.

Threats are another way to undermine authority and to create an unstable environment. "If you don't put away your shoes you don't get dessert." Shoes should be put away because the parent said so and should have nothing to do with dessert. And because it's likely that at least a small piece of desert will be given anyway, it'll leave the child second guessing the real merit of the threat.