I've long regarded
all threats as empty: I figure if they were going to really do it, they wouldn't mouth about it, they'd just carry them out. It's the approach I follow anyway, and why I always make a point of making my own threats patently ludicrous.
For instance when I was working a couple of summers at a youth camp during college (11~13 year olds), I'd threaten to glue their cheeks together, wait a moment for them to draw the obvious conclusion, then inform them that I didn't mean
those cheeks. Then I'd follow up with: "in front."
They never took it seriously, of course, but it usually diverted them from whatever they were doing that I wanted them to stop, and that was the whole point.
