Threatening your toddler with taking away their weekends is a “white lie”? Why not actually working on helping them manage their own feelings/emotions without punishment looming over them?

All this kind of stuff does is teach them that they shouldn’t do “bad” stuff when they’re likely to lose something from doing so… which usually becomes “I can do ‘bad’ stuff as long as I’m unlikely to face punishment for it”.

Telling these lies to your kids and other forms of manipulation also usually makes them more distrustful of you and less likely to be open to you when they start to become more socially/emotionally intelligent.

Lying and the punishment-reward system (or threatening punishment) are both counterproductive/destructive when it comes to human parenting, even though it works well on less individualistic animals like rats and dogs. It’s usually lazy or poor parenting, and unfortunately most parents use it as their primary method of dealing with behaviour they don’t want.