Maybe, be nice to kids and don't harm them ? You are teaching and encouraging the behavior "blackmail to get what you want" by doing that.
Instead you could use non violent communication to get by. Tell them how you feel, how you feel hurt by their behavior. Maybe they start talking about how they are hurt being stuck 8h in the car ? And maybe both of you will feel compassion and a way to minimize the damages.
Like I said elsewhere in the thread, do not actually do this: candy is toxic to lots of birds and animals, and if not toxic, it is sticky, and can cause them to choke.
I mean, sure, if your end goal is to give your children anxiety, eating disorders, and unhealthy emotional associations with food (and especially w/ sweets). Not only that, but then you have to give them a bag of candy and give it to them at the end of the trip every trip or they learn that your "punishment" means absolutely nothing because you never give them "their" candy anyway. Oh, and wait to see how that scales when you have multiple children and they start to abuse each other to get the other to act out and lose candy. That'll be fun.
But I guess it'll work well to keep kids quiet in the short term, sure. Advice is a form of nostalgia - a way of picking up the past, dusting it off, and selling it for more than it's worth; and, like nostalgia, it's never as good as it is remembered.
I love the vision of trying to manage this with multiple kids with different candy dislikes and likes. It'd be a free-for-all to see who could get you to throw the most of their siblings favorite candy. Honestly I think they'd have a ball.
Plus you're littering all over the place. That sucks.
> Oh, and wait to see how that scales when you have multiple children and they start to abuse each other to get the other to act out and lose candy. That'll be fun.
Learning about cause, effect, reaction, and manipulation are vital skills in life. Knowing and understanding them does not mean you’re a sociopath either. They’re widely useful in many aspects of life. Makes you a better poker player too.
That's one heck of a justification that one. Childhood trauma and abuse sometimes also sometimes results in functioning, well-adjusted adults with decent abuse coping skills and without crippling mental illness - that doesn't mean it's the best way to achieve that goal.
You should very much know that the null hypothesis for a proposed behavioural modification technique is that it isn't a benefit and doesn't work and may be harmful. It's on the proposer to show otherwise.
A psychological game of mutually assured destruction.