"One of the issues might be that the discipline is not coming from you as a parent. You"re giving it away to somebody who is outside of your own family home," says Andrew. This can open up the potential that your child doesn"t see you as the person they need to change or monitor their behaviour for. Also, Andrew sees the age-old threat of Santa not delivering toys to naughty children as realistically unenforceable. "It"s not proportionate to any behaviour that a child is going to do, that they might lose all their Christmas gifts. And I haven"t met a child yet who"s not had any gifts due to their behaviour. It"s unlikely any parent is going to follow it through, so it is also an empty threat."