Why are we afraid of someone?

Recently, I came across a case where a father was having problem in managing his son. His son decided not to go to school and stayed at home playing computer games. For a 15 year old, playing computer game may sound like a normal thing to do. But in this case, he is using playing computer game as a way of passing his time and he is showing his unhappiness about the school by refusing to go to school. The relationship between the father and the son has gotten to a stage where the father is totally out of his wits on how to get his son to go to school to study.
A few things have to be straighten out before I continue with the story. First of all, the son is not a typical defiant child who does not study well or join the wrong crowd in school. By analyzing his birth chart, I realised that he is actually a very smart child who used to have very good grades in school.
From this case, it prompted me to think about how can this father and son relationship developed into what it is today.
In general, be it in office or at home, we seemed to obey to the following rule:
Who ever that is able to carry out his threat will be the one who controls the reaction of others.

In a family, most of the time, parents tend to pose threats to their children. This behaviour seems to be very common in our Singapore culture. When a parent or guardian is trying to stop a child from behaving in certain ways, like stopping a child from walking further from them, they will tell them small threats in hope that the child will be afraid of the threat and stop the unwanted behaviour (it can simple threat like, the policeman will come to catch you if you run further).
Though these threats seems very harmless from the surface, little do the parent know that when a threat is posed and when the behaviour do not stop, and the threat is not being fulfilled, the parent is actually conditioning their children that their threats are not going to come true.
You may want to ask yourself, out of 10 threats that you posed towards your child, how many times do you actually execute those threats when your child really go against your will? If your reply is more than 8, then you will very likely find that your child do listen to your instructions or usually behave in the way you want them to. If your reply is between 5-7, then you may still be able to manage your child’s behaviour every now and then. If your answer is less than 5, then you will need to really re-think how you can establish your credibility with your child in terms of executing your threats towards them.
Then what exactly is a threat? A threat is anything that you say that you will do if your child does not change the undesired behaviour. For example, when your child plays at an escalator, you may see that it is dangerous for them to behave in that way, thus you may threaten that you will call the security personnel to lecture them if he does not stop playing immediately. Then if he continues to play at the escalator, and all you did was to drag him out of the escalator, then you are not fulfilling your threat at all. What you just did will get him out of any harm, but it will also condition him that your threat is never real. The correct response that you should be having is to really go and get a security personnel to lecture your child. The rule is simple, if you cannot or will not perform that threat, then do not pose that threat to your child.
In fact, using threat as a tactic to discipline your child is not really a good way of educating them. The correct form of educating your child is to really let them understand the actual reason why you really want him to stop his behaviour. Using the escalator as an example, you may explain to your child that playing at the escalator is a dangerous thing to do and he may get his hand or feet trapped in between the mechanism. You can also highlight that playing at the escalator is also a very inconsiderate thing to do as he will cause obstruction to other users. More over, the machine was designed and built as a transporting tool, not as a toy to play with. Thus by highlighting all these logical reasons to them, you direct him to his social responsibility and logical mind that not all things are meant for fun and laughter as the way he perceives it.
In a work environment, there is a constant threat on most people and that is that if they do anything wrong, they may just lose their job. This threat is the reason why so many people put up with unreasonable bosses, or unreasonable clients. Though it may not be implicitly spelled to you, it is a fact that you can not deny. Threat is actually not the best motivator for a desired result. In fact, it can be counter productive most of the time. People will start to develop all sorts of defense mechanism and at times resentment towards the source of the threat.
To continue with my story, the young boy has developed so much control over the parents that none of them can actually discipline him anymore. In the end, I recommended them to seek professional help from the Family Service Centres where the parents and the child can go through a program in better managing their relationship.