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This sounds much more epic and reasonable until you realize kids will regularly get into this level of game of chicken over liker Katy Perry tickets and the weaker willed parents will cave. You really really don't want to set standards that encourage brinksmanship like this.
I may not have been sufficiently clear earlier:
I do not endorse MAD; I am merely describing a dynamic that anyone that is determined and desperate enough can access. Even if the child wins this struggle, it is likely to be a Pyrrhic victory in many ways and may leave lifelong scars. To say nothing of the dead and maimed people that will be the result of one side or the other overplaying their hand. I've heard it said that war is a dirty, nasty business, and while this isn't Vietnam, it's still a bit nasty and ugly. I hope that most kids will realize this...and that most parents will find ways to make it clear that irreparably altering your relationship with your parents isn't worth Katy Perry tickets.
I mean. In some instances of MAD you need to have plausible deniability. What's Sarah going to do if she doesn't get Katy Perry tickets? Jump off a cliff? If you're a middle-class parent, you just reply that if she's for real, she needs psychiatric care, and she's going to go for a vacation in the grippy sock hotel. Which, coincidentally, is expensive and is going to leave them unable to afford concert tickets. That is fairly likely to work...especially if she's told about all the horrible things that sometimes happen in psych wards, or the side effects of antipsychotics. For this to work you need the credible threat of mutual annihilation.
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And this is the exact reason why parents get really frustrated when it comes to dealing with
young adultteenaged children. (That said, the condition of being "weaker willed" is a sinking waterline with respect to children developing a stronger will over time- the inflection point is popularly around 14, but parents [being too close to the problem] tend to overestimate it.)More options
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