@picandor even as an adult i fucking hate "BECAUSE I SAID SO." that's a one way ticket to making your kid angry/resentful. there's a good reason for pretty much everything and i think you can dumb a lot of stuff down for younger kids to understand it. "why can't i have a candy bar?" shouldn't be answered with "because i said no" because it only teaches your kid to either 1) blindly comply with authority or 2) become a rebel. instead, you can say "well, candy tastes good but it isn't good to eat all the time" or "we have some candy at home" (i see that one a lot and it seems to work pretty well, assuming they actually have candy at home and the parent isn't just lying to keep them happy at the store). i feel like you can teach so much more lessons that way and actually get your kid to think on their own instead of just becoming an NPC.

i mean, you see adults doing it to other adults even. they don't really have a reason for what they believe they just think you should do it to and it's all about enforcing control at that point. "YOU CAN'T DO THAT" "well why not?" "BECAUSE IT'S BAD" "well why is it bad?" "BECAUSE I SAID SO" "because you said so?" "YES NOW DON'T DO IT OR YOU'RE EVIL"

and, just like with adults, this isn't something that you can really switch to easily. if your kid is like 8 years old and you've been just telling them "because i said no" all the time, it's going to take a lot more work to deprogram that. when you get to adults it's even worse, where a lot of people need some traumatic event to happen to get them thinking in a different way (speaking from experience). i think it ends up in becoming a stronger person though.